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[StrongED] StrongED 4.70a3 available



Hi All,

The third alpha release of StrongED 4.70 can found on the website:
http://www.stronged.iconbar.com/archives/releases/se470a3.zip

This release has one major change from the previous version:

 - StrongED now supports bitmap fonts in sizes other than 8x8 or 8x16.

To allow this the font and redraw systems had to be altered. The main
user facing change is that bitmap fonts are no longer stored in the
Bitmaps directory itself but in subdirectories according to their size.
An 8x8 font would be in Bitmaps.08x08.<name> and a 06x13 font would be
in Bitmaps.06x13.<name>.

Another change is that each bitmap font files only contain one sprite.
Previously a font file could have 8x8 and 8x16 inside it, such files are
now faulted. The option 'Use 8*8 in hires' no longer works, you'll need
to select an 8x8 font now.

In order to get this working lots of changes had to be made to various
parts of StrongED, the work is not fully completed yet and there are a
number of limitations:

 - Currently only 32M, 16k and 256 colour modes are supported
 - The ViewFinder card is not supported

 - Fonts should be no more than 32 pixels wide

 - Special characters for Ctrl/Tab for sizes other than 8x8 and 8x16
   are not provided by StrongFont, although these can be added easily.

 - There are still lots of hardcoded 16's in there so things may go
   wrong. The 16's come from 8 pixels wide with Xeig = 1, so that's 2
   assumptions in one - lovely.

All in all this release is much more alpha quality than the previous
releases but it seems stable enough for public testing so please give
it a try.

As always, all feedback is welcome and appreciated!

Cheers,
Fred.


Changes in StrongED 4.70a3 (from 4.70a2)
========================================

  - Handling of bitmap font files revised to allow different sizes.

    This includes; scanning for bitmap fonts and converting to internal
    format. Generation of bitmap font menus, decoding font selections.

  - Changed Fastchars to allow plotting of different sizes. No longer
    uses colourtables as these are unsuited for wider fonts - takes up
    too much memory. Redraw is less sophisticated and slower now but
    performance seems to be acceptable.

    Adjust code to account for characters being wider than 1 byte. Use 1
    byte for [1-8], 2 bytes for [9-16] and 4 bytes above 16. RiscPC is a
    problem here as no support for LDRH. Other problem is register set
    size, 16 regs is too small to do this comfortably.

    Rework clipping code for arbitrary sizes, such fun to get right.

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