I just released Ecere SDK version 0.42.1.

This release features major bug fixes and improvements to the EDA library (Ecere Data Access), support for executables and DLLs compression through UPX, an improved EditBox Undo buffer, important optimizations to the region updating engine, as well as a bunch of other bug fixes and improvements.

Download Ecere SDK 0.42.1 for Windows - June 11, 2008

Download Ecere SDK 0.42.1 for Linux - June 11, 2008

I’ve been wanting to add a few features to the Ecere Fractals explorer (a sample project in the SDK) ever since I coded it up years ago. I finally took some time to work on it! Improvements include support for smooth coloring; a brand new gradient editor; the option to save with or without computed data; export to image files with bilinear filtering; and some new interesting presets. The new version is included in the SDK and here are some links to pre-built executables and source code:

Download Ecere Fractals Explorer for Windows / Linux / Source

Here is a screenshot of the new version:

and some of my new creations:

I am pleased to announce the release 0.42 of the Ecere SDK, for both Windows and Linux.

It brings a long overdue undo/redo buffer to the IDE’s code editor, improved X support, improvements to the IDE and numerous bug fixes.

The new installer for Windows comes with a GCC 4.3 alpha MinGW and should install and compile on Windows Vista with much less difficulty than last release.

The Ecere Database Access system (libEDA.so / EDA.dll) is included in this release, with two new samples making use of it: MedDB and EDATest. Please take a look at this wiki page for a quick walk through (draft) of using EDA and get in touch with me further assistance.

You will also notice a new libec.so / ec.dll which holds the compiler functionality. It is not required by applications built with the SDK, but shared by the IDE and compilation tools (you will notice they shrank in size).

The latest version of the programmer’s guide (a work in progress) is bundled as a PDF in a documentation folder as well.

Please register on the Mantis bug tracker to report any problem with this release.

Ecere SDK 0.42 for Windows - May 15, 2008

Ecere SDK 0.42 for Linux - May 15, 2008

Hi there!

I’m Redj, Ecere Contributor. This is my first post and I hope to be posting more and more as I have interesting news to report or cool code snippets like I have today.

Here is an early implementation of a Regex class the ecere way…

Download Regex.ec

Just add Regex.ec to your project and use it as follows:

import "Regex"

void TestRegex()
{
   char * result;
   Regex regex { "[abc][xyz]", true };
   if((result = regex.Match("match me aZ I am")))
      printf("we have a match: %s\n", result);
}

Note that at line 6, “[abc][xyz]” sets the regex property and true sets the caseInsensitive property.

If you need the POSIX Regex extended syntax, just set the extendedSyntax property to true. Do the same for the newLineException, lineStartException and lineEndException properties if you need them. If you don’t know what they are, you probably don’t need them.

For Windows users: Note that in order to use this class, you will need to download the user contributed mingw regex library mingw-libgnurx-2.5.1-bin.tar.gz and extract it’s contents (libgnurx-0.dll) to Ecere SDK’s bin directory. You will also need this regex.h file to be present in mingw’s include directory.

For Linux users: Make sure your include paths are correctly set to find regex.h and you should be all set.

If you need assistance or would like to give use feedback, join us in #ecere on freenode.net or visit the forums and wiki (see links in the Ecere section of the sidebar).

That’s it for now. Enjoy!

Posted by Redj

It has been more than a month since the last blog post, but both sections 1 and 2 of The Ecere Tao of Programming are finally completed. The first sections teach mostly the aspects that eC shares with C, while at the same time pointing out the innovations of eC. The second section teaches the object oriented concepts introduced with eC.

These sections together are intended to teach eC programming to both new programmers and experienced programmers alike (regardless of the background experience, be it C, C++, C#, Java, VB…). They therefore make up the official eC programming guide.

The remaining sections of the book will focus on teaching the various functionalities available in the Ecere SDK, such as the GUI toolkit and 2D/3D graphics engine.

I realize it has already been two weeks since the last blog entry. I’ve previously mentioned I would resume the work on the Acovel Media Player as well as improving the IDE’s code editor (Undo is still a blatantly missing feature…). These things are still high in priority, but I started working on a new project which should turn out very valuable. Thus those goodies will not be ready in 2007 as I would have hoped, but they’re still coming sometime soon in the new year.

About the new project, despite the abundance of good samples, I believe the lack of documentation is a major reason for people hesitating to jump on using eC and the Ecere SDK. Filling up the API documentation reference would certainly be helpful, but I think an in depth guide on how to use these various technologies available in the SDK would be even more useful. That is why I decided to start writing a book.

The Ecere Tao of Programming will teach programming from the ground up, making use of all the tools making up the Ecere SDK. I haven’t totally decided yet on the distribution method, but I would like to print and publish hard cover editions. You can take a look at an excerpt from the first chapters as well as an overview of the table of the contents for the book here. The intent is for the book to be a thorough Programmer’s Guide for the SDK, while at the same time it should be able to teach basic programming using C and eC to previously non programmers. It will also cover advanced programming concepts such as 3D graphics, multithreading, networking and much more.

I would like to wish everybody very happy holidays, and a wonderful year 2008. Also, special thanks to every current and future Ecere SDK users for their support

The Ecere SDK now supports multi monitor display setups on Windows.

Download Ecere SDK 0.41.17.11 for Windows

I’m pleased to announce the first preview of the Acovel Media Player for Linux. Acovel is currently limited to playing albums: bring up the Media Library, and click on the import button in upper right corner. Choose a folder containing music albums to import, and enjoy an intelligent algorithm which will analyze both ID3 tags and filenames to fill up its music collection database. Acovel’s search feature is amazingly fast (We tested against iTunes search and the results were very impressive). It makes use of the Ecere Database engine (EDB), an extremely light and simple database solution under development.

Acovel has been on hold for a while as I was attending to Linux & Unicode support in the SDK, but now that I’m back on it you can expect a lot more improvements to come in the next few weeks.

Download Acovel 0.01 for Linux

Download Acovel 0.01 for Windows

Some extra calls to XSync which were used for debugging purposes mistakenly got slipped into the last release.

This is mainly a patch release to correct the performance issue.

Download Ecere SDK 0.41.17.11 for Linux

Download Ecere SDK 0.41.17.11 for Mac OS X

Here is the first attempt at supporting Mac OS X. For now the interface & graphics driver run on X11. Support for a more native solution such as Carbon is planned for the future, but it is not a priority for the moment. This should allow Mac folks to give the Ecere SDK a try, and hopefully attract contributors who would like to improve Mac support.

There are a few glitches with Ecere on X on Mac. To get anywhere you will most likely need the X.org server rather than the old XFree86. X.org comes by default with Leopard, but for those still on Tiger, here is where you can obtain prebuilt binaries for it. Also take a look at this page. You will also need the same dependencies as for Ecere on Linux, such as libjpeg, libpng, freetype, fontconfig, etc., some of which might not be already installed on your system. Some other problems seem to be caused by the interaction with quartz-wm (another window manager might work better). For some reason, new windows always want to be positioned at the top-middle position of the desktop. I had to patch the X driver to get around this problem, but it still causes some annoying repositioning of the windows. Sadly, the overall performance especially with text seems a lot slower for me than on Linux/X.org 7.3. I am not sure what is making XRender so much slower on my Mac. On my system the IDE has a little trouble dialoguing with the installed GDB 6.1 which prevents the integrated debugger to function. It might work on a more recent version of GDB.

Please give me feedback on how Ecere on Mac works out for you in the comments.

A few important improvements were also made to the X driver. Windows can now be closed through the window manager. Repositioning windows from the Window manager doesn’t confuse their positions anymore. 15/16 bit displays are now supported.

I found that the Xrender API documentation is very difficult to find, and quite incomplete. Here is where the latest Xrender protocol is at and here is a copy of Xrender library API documentation. Trying to get 16 bit working, the XRenderFindFormat function was particularly difficult, but I learned that the count parameter which the above documentation isn’t so clear about had to be 0. The color masks should also not be shifted.

Download Ecere SDK 0.41.17.10 for Windows
Download Ecere SDK 0.41.17.10 for Linux
Download Ecere SDK 0.41.17.10 for Mac OS X

After all this struggle to get SCIM working, I could finally implement the international input support.

Ecere Communicator now includes the new runtime library and supports international input as well.

The Linux SDK now also properly supports X keysyms to follow the correct keyboard layout.

I believe the X clipboard operations should be fixed for good this time. (I tested and was able to copy to and from FireFox and between two Ecere IDEs.)

The X bitmap rendering features some additional support.

Two small samples were added, a transparent clock, and a utility to take a screen shot of the X desktop.

A smal fix was made to desktop-level transparent windows using OpenGL. The IDE and Debugger had some minor improvements done as well.

An issue was resolved on Windows, whereas internal resources could not be accessed when a executable was inside a path containing non-ASCII characters. The last installer itself would not work when ran from such a path.

With the Windows taskbar autohiding, the Ecere applications do not resize anymore (it was causing a “jumping” effect) .

The runtime now prompts for reestablishing Windows network connections.

Download Ecere SDK 0.41.17.9 for: Windows or Linux

Download Ecere Communicator 0.02 for Linux