Image Markup Tool blog

Initially I had written the zip package functionality into the product using the TZipForge component, which is commercial (Half-Baked Software has a licence for it). However, that's incompatible with an open-source application, so it's now been replaced by TZipMaster, which is an open-source (Lesser GNU) Delphi component based on an adapted version of the InfoZip freeware code. Changes:

• Added the required dll to the app folder, and to the installer.
• Added unit zipmasterfunc to replace the other unit based on TZipForge.
• Managed to retain the existing progress dialog; it can be used with both zip components.
• Tested and debugged.
• Added licensing info and updated documentation on the site to include the component.

Remaining related work is covered by the "Update documentation for 1.4" task.

The "Set the viewing scale of the image" tooltip for the Zoom combo box in the main screen cannot be translated. My fault: I was using a TComboBox instead of a TTntComboBox, so the Hint property wasn't Unicode. Changed the component, tested the results, updated the English GUI file, and added the bug to the Website bug list.

It's long been part of the plan for IMT to include the ability to create a zip archive which includes the XML markup file, the image, and the schemas and odd files associated with the project. This is now working:

1. Installed ZipForge into Delphi 2005. This took a few tries; in the end I had to get the latest version, run the installer, then manually install the packages in D2005 using the BPL files which end up being built in zipforge/Lib/Delphi 2005.
2. Created a hidden form to house the component, including a zip file save dialog and a couple of umsg labels for user messages.
3. Created a progress dialog box with two progress bars to show the file progress and the overall progress.
4. Created a function in the hidden form which accepts a zip file name and a TWideStringList containing file masks to add to the zip file.
5. Created event handlers to update the progress window (this is largely based on the ZipForge basic demo for Delphi).
6. In the main application form, created an action aCreateZipPackage, along with an associated menu item on the File menu.
7. Built the function which saves a temp version of the file, populates the TWideStringList, and calls the zip file building function.
8. Tested and tweaked.

The next stage is documentation.

Made the following changes as part of the migration to 1.4:

1. Renamed the IMT schema and odd files to imt_1_4_p5.
2. Changed the app variable imtSchemaFileName to reflect this.
3. Created XSLT files to convert 1.0 and 1.3 files to 1.4 (I've decided to cut of 0.9 files at this point; it was an early beta and anyone using the app seriously will have upgraded in the interim).
4. Tested the update system, and discovered a bug: when a temp file is created by the update XSLT, it's created in the temp folder, which means relative links to images are lost and the image can't be loaded. Changed the update function which calls the XSLT, so that it actually saves the temp file in the same folder as the original file. Tested this, and it works well.
5. Updated the docbook i/o files to 1.4. This revealed a couple of oddities in those conversions, introduced when I was using the app to create help documentation. Figured those out and fixed them. IMT 1.4 can now export to docbook, and import from docbook to IMT 1.4. Old docbook files are not imported; there's little evidence that anyone except for me is using this functionality, which is only just approaching maturity, so I think we're safe with this for the moment.
6. Tweaked and tested the Web View output. The changes are minor, but will affect the Mariage project code, so once IMT 1.4 is released I'll need to move it to the working machines for Mariage and make small changes to the XSLT on the Mariage site. Added a task for this at the end of January.
7. Began planning the zip functionality which will be the main new feature. I'll get into that in more detail tomorrow.

I've begun work on the 1.4 update, and did the following bugfixes (based on bug reports by Paolo Cutini):

1. Fixed a missing tooltip hint in the Delete Annotations(s) toolbuttons.
2. Addressed the problem of translating column captions in TTntListView components. The way our translation engine works, there's no simple method to delve into the component's properties and extract/change the Columns[i].Caption values, so I took a different approach and did away with the regular column captions, replacing them with overlaid panel components. It seems to have been easier than I expected; I just needed to update the column widths whenever the panel splitter is dragged. If this proves a workable approach (especially when there are more than two columns), then it will save a lot of work in future applications.
3. The main Title label on the main window was set to ParentFont = False, which meant that it didn't change when font settings were changed in the preferences window.