Bimixual Mono

Calculating the tangent to a Bezier curve

2009-04-28T15:02:00.000-07:00

I wrote an article explaining how to find the tangent to a Bezier curve. At least, how I did it in the animation library.

Bezier Curve Tangents

Random number generation

2009-04-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Given the same seed, Mono, using the Random class, produces different random numbers than .net. The remedy to this is to write your own random number generator class so you can be sure the numbers will be the same.

I'm not a math whiz so I did a web search and found a generator written in C# that implements the Mersenne Twister. I have now included this code with a test project on the site: http://bimixual.org/MersenneTwister/

Thanks to the author, Akihilo Kramot.

Eclipse and why I barely tried it out

2009-04-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

Currently I want to find a good text editor for Gnome that is as functional and easy to use as TextPad is for Windows. Good luck with that.

After hearing that Eclipse is oh-so-powerful I installed it. Opened it up. Wtf do I do now? So I opened an HTML file. It shows me a rendered view, not the HTML source code. So how do I edit the source code? Why isn't that the default? I don't know. I couldn't find a button or menu item to switch to source view so I did a little searching. I read you need plug-ins to edit different types of docs. So you have to find and install them..it just gets uglier and uglier.

I open the Eclipse help and there is a tutorial. But there is no "next page" button. The first page just has a list of links at the bottom. That does not a tutorial make. Eventually I realize I manually must select the next page of the tutorial from the tree on the left. And it isn't even a tutorial since it doesn't walk you through actually doing something. It just tells you about the windows in the IDE. When do I actually get to do some work? Do I have to read a book before I can edit some HTML?

So I did a search to read what other people think of Eclipse and it isn't pretty. Lots of people hate it. The consensus is that it is too complex and confusing - even for those who (unlike me) have decided to dive into it.

Finally, here is my complaint in short: A new user should immediately be able to work with a program if that user has functional knowledge of other programs in that class. I have used tons of IDE and in every other one of them I could open and edit a file at first blush. I could get syntax highlighting a second blush. But not with Eclipse. If Eclipse is this simple (and I'm too stupid to see it) then the UI is not user-friendly enough.

XP fix

2009-04-21T20:53:00.000-07:00

I found an XP version that had a problem. I fixed it and now version 0.2.2 is online.

0.2.1 uploaded

2009-04-20T17:50:00.001-07:00

version 0.2.1 is now online. See the previous post to read why

Darn that message structure

2009-04-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

Well I don't know how it happened but somewhere along the way I got XP incompatibility on account of the message structure. This is how it was broken:

System.Windows.Form.Message used in Win API message functions (PeekMessage, GetMessage, etc) works in Vista but not XP.

So to do the fix, I made my own message structure that magically works in both XP and Vista:

struct MSG

{

IntPtr hwnd;//HWND hwnd;

uint message;//UINT message;

long wParam;//WPARAM wParam;

long lParam;//LPARAM lParam;

UInt32 time;//DWORD time;

IntPtr pt;//POINT pt;

};

This is not in the current source code on the site. But you can implement it yourself if so inclined.

Version 0.2 is released

2009-04-13T16:05:00.001-07:00

I just uploaded my newest version. 3 significant changes:

BezierSprites calculate normals and tangents so sprites can angle themselves appropriately
Put thread to sleep between frames therefore not using 100% as it previously did. Although it is worth noting that the previous version was still fully cooperative and had no negative impact on other apps.
More use of static methods where the results of their calculations can be useful elsewhere

I have not updated the UML diagram. I'll get around to it.

Download from http://bimixual.org/AnimationLibrary as usual.

oh yeah, this is not backward compatible with v0.1. Since I suspect I have no serious users of that version, I figured I'd let it slide.

Bezier curve tangents and normals

2009-04-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

Got It ! woohoo.

In the last post I said I couldn't find information (or a forumla, or code) on determining the tangent of a point along a curve. After staring at the wiki page on Bezier curves for a few hours while I watched tv on the other screen, the solution just formed in my head. I'll detail it later. But now that means I have 100% of what I wanted for the base functionality of the library. Now I just need to clean it up and post v0.2.

Bezier curve and refactoring

2009-04-01T17:54:00.000-07:00

Currently online is v0.1 of the Animation Library.

I'm working on v0.2 now which is a couple fixes plus some refactoring. Since I seriously doubt anyone is using v0.1 for any serious work, v0.2 may break v0.1. Probably not but I'm not back testing it. I'm only taking this lazy route because the library has only been online for a week so I'm sure no one is using it yet anyways.

New to v2.0:
- Bezier curve can be timed by speed (pixels/sec) or by time to traverse
- Matrix alterations can be combined rather than replacing the existing transform (this is a bug fix IMO)

Refactoring:
- Going to standardize some naming conventions
- Going to make more method static when they can be useful anywhere

Needed:
- I can't find a simple formula to get the tangent and normal along the bezier curve. I can find the technical math formula, but not something broken down that a non-math-monkey like myself can convert to source code.
- so, if you are a math whiz or animation whiz (this is a pretty basic animation technique for those in the know), then please let me know and consider contributing.

Plan for v0.3:
- Revisiting the core looping engine and double buffering system.

Feedback request

2009-04-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in the Animation library or any other part of Bimixual (there aren't any other parts yet), then send an email to feedback@bimixual.org so I know. That'll encourage me to keep updating this more often.

Thanks.

First Entry

2009-04-01T17:35:00.000-07:00

Hi. Welcome to the Bimixual blog. This is the blog for the Bimixual libraries and website.

Bimixual is C# code that works unmodified between Windows/.net and Mono runtimes. Mono, for those who don't know, runs on Linux.

Read this blog regularly to see what is going on with Bimixual.

As an aside, I'm sure glad I thought of the name "Bimixual". Apparently this is a new word. All the domain names are available, and now the blog address is available on blogspot. Sweet.

btw, it is called Bimixual for a reason:
bi = it works on both, Mono and Windows
mix = pick and choose the parts you want
ual = this is an individual project.