Shoutbox

howdy to all u
i have been using messenger since version 3.x, and i believe i used one of the earliest versions of msgplus. since the addition of 'handwriting' support in msn messenger (properly known as ms ink) i have always thought that a good addon that msgplus would be capable of doing would be to extend the ink capabilities. like a proper colour chooser box and maybe a slider bar to change the pen size.
i know this is possible, as the colour can be changed via the registry (but only once per drawing ) and there is also a value for the pen size but it has weird functionality and i kinda crashed messenger by changing it to an invalid value.
i have the tablet pc sdk installed for vs.net on this machine, and i have been playing with the idea of making my own client with better ink support. but i think it would be better if msgplus could just add a few extra hooks for the ink control and make it alot more functional.
i was also thinking about having straight line and paint bucket fill functionality would be ultra1337.
patchou, if you can do this for the next release of msgplus, i would worship you forever. thankyou.
-dex.ouT.

like the idea of paint bucket.. and yea pen size slider is also a good option can be introduce..
some other feature from ms paint can also be added .. like drawing rectangle, circle etc...

yea i was thinking of trying to do something like this, but i havent been able to find out much info on 'ink' maybe ive been looking in the wrong places

quote:

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Originally posted by Shezi
some other feature from ms paint can also be added .. like drawing rectangle, circle etc...

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While we're at it, let's add gradient fill, bezier curves, transforms...

Handwriting isn't meant o be a fully-featured image editor - it's purpose is twofold: quick sketches and, on PDAs, handwriting recognition. If you want to send more complex images, make them in Paint, and send them as files.

for dempsey: the ms ink "tablet pc" sdk is available for download on microsoft's website. i have been playing with this, and unfortunately it is fairly limited, paint bucket is somewhat impossible, but straight line stuff should be do-able. i would mainly just like to see options for better pen size and pen colour.

for raceprouk: i understand that its not supposed to be a full featured image editor, as you said for decent images a photo editor is best. but i think the control could be a little more functional... you see i like having graff battles with my friends on msn... ink is very cool for this. also the ink format does actually support some bitmap-based functionality (i believe) and this isnt implemented in the msn ink control.

the erase tool could also be a bit more comprehensive, the current one is really only a square 'inverse' white pen. the examples in the tablet pc sdk allow you to erase strokes or parts of strokes, as well as deleting 'cusps' which i believe are like control points on the strokes.

but i was thinking just a simple addon for plus! to start with would be to hook the colour button and add a nice colour picker. (well i guess it shouldnt be too hard, everything else in the im window is hooked!)

peace y'all
-dex.ouT.

I think it would be good if you could press a button and an extra box thing comes up that you could draw in, and at the top it would have all the formatting options etc.

This would be good so you don't have to resize your msn contact window to draw somehting.

That at least would be a great feature.

nice idea bigcheese... i never thought of that but i really hate having to resize the window all the time.
maybe i would write a plugin for plus! that did something like this, if i had any idea how to hook the windows and vars etc.. come to think of it, the ink msg could (i think?) be easily sent with the plus! plugins api (plz correct me if im wrong)
windows api really isnt my thing though. (hey, im more of a directx programmer...)

[edit] the ink message is a text message with something like application/xms-ink or something in the header. it contains a base64 encoded payload which i assume is the ink data in some easily readable format. tbh i havent bothered decoding it to find out.