Chair coding progress

[Phil G]

Hi Martin,
This in in danger of crossing posts, but it makes sense to me to ask this question here.
As this post is exactly the type of thing I am thinking about.

I will ask my question or questions in a totally different way.

The questions being, once the code for plug track is released in 244A, is there anyway you can think of, where other people could help you start to create the custom chairs?

Clearly one possible answer is, yes if you had full knowledge of how Templot is working within Delphi. Unfortunately it seems the answer to that question is. There is nobody to date with full working knowledge of Delphi who could correctly create a chair generation part of the code.

So what about the idea of somebody being able to take the right part of the code that creates REA chairs ( highlighted by yourself) and adapt it within the correct syntax, so it creates not an REA chair but say a GW chair or even a LSWR chair dimensionally.

I think we would need to take baby steps, such as suck it and see with the equivalent of an S1 type chair first.
You would remain in total control, and only add anything into Templot your happy with. Would that be a possibilty?
cheers
Phil,

 

[Martin Wynne]

The questions being, once the code for plug track is released in 244A, is there anyway you can think of, where other people could help you start to create the custom chairs?

@Phil G

Hi Phil,

Custom chairs are individual chairs which users have modified to meet their own requirements. I think you mean the standard chairs which I haven't yet done, such as for K-crossings, slips and tandems, etc.

As with the existing 2018 open-source Templot code, I shall be releasing my current code under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence (version 3 or later). For details of that see:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

If anyone would like to work on it to create new chairing options -- using my existing mechanism or a new mechanism of their own -- and publish their code, that would be great. If there is a way to use it in Templot2 to advantage I would certainly be very happy to do that.

However, based on the history of what has happened with the 2018 code in the 6 years since I released it, I think the above is not very likely. But who knows?

A separate forked version of Templot with different chairing options and compiled on a different platform is probably more in line with what other developers would want to do.

• Be aware that I shall be releasing the code as-is, i.e. it will compile and run only in Delphi5 (maybe also in Delphi7, I haven't tried it). In 2018 I modified the code so that it would compile and run in Lazarus (free). That took a lot of work and time, so I won't be doing that again. It will be up to others to do that, if wanted.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Steve_Cornford]

Hi Martin,

• Be aware that I shall be releasing the code as-is, i.e. it will compile and run only in Delphi5 (maybe also in Delphi7, I haven't tried it). In 2018 I modified the code so that it would compile and run in Lazarus (free). That took a lot of work and time, so I won't be doing that again. It will be up to others to do that, if wanted.

That would be a very good way of having a backup/checkpoint, as you never know what is around the corner, and I assume would impose the least diversion and displacement from what I hope is still the enjoyable part of your hobby!
I performed a rain dance last night in the hope that I would get some modelling time today, but got sidetracked by the missus into a decluttering and charity shop run, then it transpired I had perormed the wrong dance so we have had a drop of sunshine instead.
Steve
ps don't plant any bedding plants yet as the slugs and snails are on the rampage!

 

[Martin Wynne]

ps don't plant any bedding plants yet as the slugs and snails are on the rampage!

@Steve_Cornford

Hi Steve,

I'm not planning any such planting this year, with the excuse of a bad arm. The slugs will have to go hungry.

I have spread some wildflower seeds instead. Which might or might not grow, on past experience.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Steve_Cornford]

During a tea break I started reading the Embarcadero white paper on "Delphi and Unicode"......
I decided that it would be excellent bedtime reading...
Steve

 

[Martin Wynne]

During a tea break I started reading the Embarcadero white paper on "Delphi and Unicode"......
I decided that it would be excellent bedtime reading...
Steve

@Steve_Cornford

Hi Steve,

A full understanding of Unicode in Delphi would of course be a fine thing, and I applaud your decision to master it.

It is however completely unnecessary for Delphi5 and Templot, because they don't use it. Templot uses old-fashioned 8-bit ASCII characters throughout.

The need to convert to 16-bit Unicode for modern versions of Delphi is one of the reasons which makes bringing the Templot code into the modern era a bit challenging.

But Lazarus uses 8-bit UTF which is fully compatible with Templot, so it's very preferable to Delphi for playing with open-source Templot code. Lazarus is also free, which Delphi is not -- it's very expensive nowadays (the free Delphi Community Edition is just a marketing exercise for Delphi with constant nag screens and a risk of losing your work after 12 months).

However, unlike in Delphi, Windows EMF metafiles are not directly supported in Lazarus. Refer back to the replacement code which I used in the 2018 code for implementing metafiles in Lazarus.

cheers,

Martin.