World: r3wp

I have much more routines from IM, but I must to clean the sources 
a bit.

not entirely free, but powerfull - http://xnview.com/en/features_nc.html
  It enabled to Carl to batch process Italy devcon images in few 
minutes - no wrapper needed, just a command line ...

You don't need wrapper, but you cannot do: save-image %test.jpg to-image 
layout [button "hello world"]

Also IM can be used as a command line tool, which I was doing quite 
a long time. But finally I'm working on wrapper as it's faster than 
doing many calls to external app. Of course.. if you want to resize 
100 photos per year, you don't care if it's call or by using wrapper.

you can save temporarily as tmp, do whatever you want to image afterwards. 
I would not estimate overhead of calling an external app. Especially 
on unix systems, many tools are just command line tools anyway,no? 
:-)

Thanks for the info guys.

Oldes, its for a personal tool so I can dfeal with the memory leak 
but the quality refinement sounds useful.

I'll check out XNVIEW too..

Can you have an inform window without hte title bar (and border)?

Try rolling your own maybe... source inform.... would give you the 
important bits I would guess.

Just checking incase something was not documented..

For some reason I can't get  %CORE_RL_wand_.dll to load using Oldes' 
save-image script. I have it in the same directory as the script 
and I tried it in the systemn folders...
error:
** Access Error: Cannot open CORE_RL_wand_.dll as library
** Where: context

** Near: lib_ImageMagickWand: load/library either system/version/4 
=

what happens if you try it from the console?

I treied "doing the script from console..same error.

It might be a version problem...
Using ImageMagick-6.4.9-Q16

I get a different error with version:  ImageMagick-6.3.2-Q16
errror:

The procedure entry point MagickOpenStream could not be located in 
dynamic link library CORT_RL_.dll

I think you may need to right-click the DLL from Windoze Explorer 
and register it.

I also get different erros if I launch script from within magick 
folder:

** Access Error: Cannot open MagickImportImagePixels
** Where: context
** Near: set routine make routine! specs 
with older version

register it?
Never did that before.
I do not see anything in hte right click menu about registering

I'm probably wrong then.  It's been a few years since I played with 
it...

From inside folder of the newer version I get a Visual C++ Runtime 
errror...

program ..rebol.exe

R6034

An application has made an attempt to load the C runtime library 
incorrectly.
Please contact the application's support team for more info..

I comneted out all references to "MagickImportImagePixels" and it 
starts without error...

but anytime I try to save it says I do not have the Encoder for that 
file format...:


** User Error: 0 = NoEncodeDelegateForThisImageFormat `C:\Documents 
and Settings\Alan\Desktop\ImageMagick-6.3.2-Q16\test.jpg'
** Near: make error! errmsg

Alan, do you have DEP turned on? I did, and I saw the same problem.

you need the other libs as well I think.

for jpeg support it will be the CORE_RL_jpeg_.dll

and I'm using ImageMagick 6.4.9-6 2009-02-18 Q16 - the older may 
be different so that's why for example the MagickImportImagePixels 
is missing.

if you're got an empty table or whatever, and you're wating for data 
to load ... do you think is better .. to hide the widget, and have 
a "loading...." or other busy indicator ajax like ... or flash up 
a flash ?

Don't hide the widget. A busy indicator on top would be good, or 
at least have a single row in the table which says "loading data...".

I had the "loading data" in a single row ... decided to move away 
from that.

In terms of visuals, it is much more apparent that you have a result 
when the whole table appears as opposed to a table that fills ?  
right?

I think it's better to let the user see the container where the result 
will appear, so they can resize it appropriately etc. while they 
are waiting for the data. This also prepares them for the type of 
data that will appear, as the shape and colours of the table can 
remind them. Also, partially loaded data may be all that they need, 
and that may allow them to move on to the next step of what they 
are doing.

The busy indicator should make it apparent then that the data is 
yet incomplete.

Think about the kind of experience you would have with web browsing 
if the browser only showed you a page after it had completely loaded. 
In small part, this is what you seem to want to build into your app. 
Those decisions could accumulate into a very irritating web experience.

VID and RebGUI widgets don't have a 'loading now ..." state.  Perhaps 
they should

In my app, the data loads instantly once it has arrived.

no, to the whole page.  the window has all the buttons showing ... 
just not the data container itself ...

Well, I would want to see three things:
1) A "loading data..." message.
2) A progress bar.
3) A busy indicator.

All three could be combined into a single widget, or kept separate.

You could ghost the table widget until the data has arrived and is 
ready. Put a box over the top of it with effect [merge luma -20] 
or something like that.

The other thing is .. if you have no data returned from your database 
query ... you then present a useless empty widget.  Or, you present 
an alert that there was no data .. which means you then have to close 
it down .. or you just update your "loading ..." message.

At least the user knows there was data expected there, and what type 
of data it was. ("Knows" visually.)

It's not useless. If your query returned no data, that's no reason 
to pop up alert windows and bug the user. Just indicate inside the 
table widget that there was no data for the particular query.

I'm being influenced by how web apps work.

Eg if you do a search on your gmail ... it doesn't return an empty 
table, but a message saying there were no results.

Same if I have an ajax type of search ... I don't show an empty table 
until it fills .. I show a spinning image and then show the table 
when it is filled.

Fewer widgets on screen means easier comprehension for the user.

And while we're talking about querying and result displays, I often 
am confused as to whether a query I submitted actually returned, 
when it returned empty data. This causes me to query several times 
just to see if the server actually got my query and returned. The 
answer to this (in my opinion) is to return the query and time of 
query in the results as well, in the table title. So you can see 
*something* change on every query result.

Which is part of my search to improve the user experience.

I am now hding the table if someone is repeating the search....until 
the results appear.

Well, that approach doesn't sound bad.

I don't think there are guidelines or best practices :(

We all roll our own GUIs

Hiding the table has the side benefit of telling the user (visually) 
that their query was accepted, but relies on the data transfer to 
be slow. A negative is if the user wanted to keep looking at some 
of the data from the previous query while waiting for the results 
of the next query.

If the table has a selection facility, and the user wanted to do 
something like select row 4 (and then maybe copy it or do something 
else) from several consecutive resultsets, then that might be disrupted 
by hiding and showing the table. Something to keep in mind. (Do you 
keep the same table, or do you remake it for each resultset?)

hi, getting this error.

** Script Error: Face object reused (in more than one pane): none


is there any solution to 'copy or clone' a layout or reuse a layout

for multiple usage ? putting the layout into a object doesn't help 
either. 

same error message. I need a layout-template containing buttons, 
label etc.

and want use this template for to 'pane' it into 20 different independent 

boxes. these boxes will shown 20 different numeric datas, progress 
bars etc. 

have had a look also into stylize/master but can't mix vid with facets 
or 

am I to tired to see a simple solution. builing a very complex facet 
from 

scratch is very time consuming, what is the best design for this? 

tom