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Old 22-11-2010, 14:35   #796
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Hello,

Actually at the most dark setting there are some OpenCPN detail appearing too bright to me:

- The OpenCPN text on the upper window tab
- The OpenCPN Icon on the upper window tab
- The outer square (the thin square around the chart)
- The mile scale (only the mile one: the grey colour seems too bright)

Here is attached an example of dimmed NZ chart (see full-screen at 1280x1024) with the custom palette. It should be watched in the dark...

Ciao, Marco.
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Old 22-11-2010, 14:59   #797
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Latest detail about dimming feature:

OpenCPN just crashed while it was running in dimmed mode. Well all the windows menu remained dark. I mean all menus, even when OpenCPN was not running. The reboot of windows didn't help: still dark menus.

I had to change windows style to restore default menu colours. Maybe the default windows colours should be saved in the OCPN ini file to restore them in case of crash with a simple OCPN restart.

Ciao, Marco.
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Old 22-11-2010, 18:16   #798
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Hey, guys, I guess I should weigh in here with a few points to consider.

1. Percentage dimming is OK in principle. Have to work out what to do if we are quilting a palette-ed chart with a user-dimmed chart. This might look funny, but arguably no worse than the current situation.

2. For information, Windows provides absolutely terrible support for dimming displays. Redmond never intended for Windows to be anything other than a desktop computer. We have a difficult time adjusting the colors of the window decorations. To compound the problem, wxWidgets is designed to intentionally use only the Widgets provided by the host O/S, in order to preserve application look and feel within a platform.. This is not a good thing for us.

Our current approach of changing system element colors (context menus, windows frames, etc.) has been broken by Vista and Win7. And as Marco notes, a crash (btw, Marco, how did you crash) can leave the system in an unusable color condition.

We really need to move to a Theme-based approach. This is a big piece of platform-specific code that has not had much effort placed on it. It should rise in priority after the release of 2.3 Unfortunately, Windows Theme support is a nightmare, with lots of proprietary stuff, patched dlls, cryptic API....sigh...

I follow this discussion with interest.

Dave
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Old 23-11-2010, 01:04   #799
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Originally Posted by bdbcat View Post
Hey, guys, .... (btw, Marco, how did you crash) ...

Dave
Hello Dave

While playing with colours, I put the following palette (note the sequence inversion) in a kap chart, and OCPN crashed (I don't know if this is the exact reason, I didn't try to replicate)

NGT/2,30,30,30
NGT/1,0,0,0
NGT/3,30,0,30
NGT/4,15,10,15
NGT/5,0,10,25
NGT/6,0,5,15
NGT/7,0,15,0
NGT/8,20,10,0

Regarding windows themes, as far as I know you cannot change it. Only microsoft can release a microsoft signed theme.

There are some hacked windows system .dll that skip the microsoft theme signature check allowing the use of custom designed themes, but I think this is not a simple way to go expecially for different OS compatibility.

Ciao, Marco.
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Old 23-11-2010, 05:50   #800
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Instead of investing development time humouring an anachronistic OS that doesn't even permit theming, it might be sufficient to recommend an appropriate (free-of-charge?) 3rd party theme for Windows.
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Old 23-11-2010, 06:16   #801
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Instead of investing development time humouring an anachronistic OS that doesn't even permit theming, it might be sufficient to recommend an appropriate (free-of-charge?) 3rd party theme for Windows.
Hello,
to use any windows custom theme (non microsoft certified) you have to hack some windows dll (uxtheme.dll and others depending on the version).

One patcher is:
Download Uxtheme Multi-patcher 7.1 Free - This program will patch your theme engine files so you can use any 3rd party visual style - Softpedia

Another is:
Universal Theme Patcher - Download

(never tried, use at your own risk)

Now, none of them can be proposed in an Open Source project like OCPN, so I think a custom theme is not an easy way for screen dimming.

Unfortunately, Windows is not open source...

Ciao, Marco.
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Old 23-11-2010, 08:12   #802
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Thanks Marco - instructions in the manual on how to achieve this might be the easiest solution. On my gnome desktop making everything black and dark (or any other colour for that matter) is easily achieved
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Old 23-11-2010, 10:04   #803
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Trying to make OpenCPN truly palette compatible with a number of differing chart formats and operating systems seems like putting your head into a hornets nest.

As mentioned earlier,although not perfect,a user defined % dimming function would be adequate until a sensible,less time consuming method can be found.
This is the stance also taken by several other well known nav prog. creators, and for good reasons.

Tore
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Old 23-11-2010, 13:54   #804
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An additional feature that may also help in night vision:

*** full screen ***

Is it possible to run OCPN in full screen? Without the outer window?

Ciao, Marco.
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Old 23-11-2010, 15:19   #805
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Originally Posted by GPS-Marco View Post
An additional feature that may also help in night vision:

*** full screen ***

Is it possible to run OCPN in full screen? Without the outer window?

Ciao, Marco.
There is a patch for this in FS #44.
FS#44 : Full screen mode patch

Thomas
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Old 23-11-2010, 15:41   #806
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Talking about patches......
Here is my patch to tif2bsb.c.
To compile I downloaded the source for latest stable version 0.07 not the CVS (that don't compile as is).
I also needed to install the libtiff dev package to compile.

I have tested to recalibrate Brazilian and Swedish charts, no problems.
See the provided scripts for one way to do the recalibration.
The script is not recommended for charts that already has a proper dimming palette, for example the US charts.

Thomas
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File Type: doc dim.patch.doc (839 Bytes, 80 views)
File Type: doc redim.rb.doc (741 Bytes, 65 views)
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Old 23-11-2010, 15:54   #807
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Talking about patches......
Here is my patch to tif2bsb.c.
To compile I downloaded the source for latest stable version 0.07 not the CVS (that don't compile as is).
I also needed to install the libtiff dev package to compile.

I have tested to recalibrate Brazilian and Swedish charts, no problems.
See the provided scripts for one way to do the recalibration.
The script is not recommended for charts that already has a proper dimming palette, for example the US charts.

Thomas
Thomas, can you compile a win version (mytif2bsb.exe)?

Marco.
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Old 24-11-2010, 10:49   #808
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Thomas, can you compile a win version (mytif2bsb.exe)?

Marco.
No, I'm on Linux and don't have access to a win dev setup.
There are members with this setup. Hopefully someone can provide a compiled win version.

Thomas
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Old 02-12-2010, 12:01   #809
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The discussion about dimming started on a Swedish forum....
It is interesting to note that one of the leading private chart producers in Sweden, who publishes charts labeled BSB 3, does not include a dimming palette even in their public demo chart. Check this :Hydrographica BSB-demo

I like it better this way....
Thomas
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Old 02-12-2010, 13:10   #810
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Thomas,
I must be daft, I totally miss the point.

Isn't the RGB,DAY,DSK,NGT headers the dimming palette headers?

/J
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