Bad luck - no release today, tommorrow maybe

I was going to release new builds. New and better builds although changes wouldn't have been very visible:

• Prefix in new console if you want to talk to one person



• You can hide panel at the top of main console

The main feature for the next release is _really_ working Channels Manager. And there will be some extra goodies for Windows' users. You'll have to wait for new build - sourceforge was down for maintaince when I was trying to create new release.

Be aware of Dockable Document Interface

There is one feature which some of you may find tempting to try, but results may be awful.


First of all when using some of look and feels there won't be any action buttons on titlebars,

which are pretty useful in fact - letting you minimize panel to window's borders and closing the windows. This might be inconvienient, but it certainly isn't so severe problem as ui hanging when trying to drag game board out of the window to make it floating window or trying to reopen chess board window - it won't work as well (or bad rather).

Thanks for the interest

I'd like to thank all ficsers that despite funky release name, quality warnings and not too informative file names they downloaded Tonic and tried it. mccrack tried to run on MacOS X and he reported it worked fine. On the other side of barricade maciejg run Tonic on Windows and he didn't encounter any severe problems. Just to ease running Tonic - main jar is tonic.jar in tonic's directory and you should start with java -jar tonic.jar command or double-click on it (depends on your platform).

By the way, I 've found two bugs: 1. User is not able to access board preferences panel from button on the board. 2. When user adds/removes channel from channel list, chat notification icons does not appear on the right tabs in Channels Manager window. The latter was solved just minutes ago. The former I leave myself for breakfast.

But before going to sleep I have one question: have you noticed two new buttons in board window?



Unfortunatly the one with thick does not work as excpected (see bug 1. above), but you can still customize board through menu Preferences>Chess Board item. Second button does flip the board so now you examine your games from the right perspecitve.

So it have begun

Today I released first Tonic packages to public. It is just a prelease and I tested it only on Linux. I hope there will be some users that will find some of the features I developed useful. Tonic package for Linux can be grabbed from here and for Windows/Mac users here.

I thought it would be harder

Some time ago ryoshu from FICS asked me to add tabs for shouts in Channels Manager window. Well, know they are in place. I thought it would be harder.

I don't know if you find ability to have multiple console for chatting useful, but I find it so. Tonic is now capable of creating multiple consoles that can hold all kinds of tells from FICS (I am not implementing any new features for ICC - it is enough for me to learn Java and code goodies for FICS, but I am sure there is a way to change my mind). New consoles can be spiced up to your taste: you can choose from various types in drop down list with one being special - Custom console...

Choosing this item from list enables text field at the right when you can type what kind of tells new console will receive. It can be any of:

• announcment,
• channel-tell # (where # stands for channel number),
• cshout (chess shouts),
• ishout ("it" kind of shouts),
  
• kibitz # (kibitzes, where # stands for game number),
• ptell (partner tells),
• qtell (bots tells),
• say (opponent tells),
• shout (normal shouts),
  
• tshout (tourney shouts, I think it is ICC kind of tell, isn't?),
• whisper # (whisper for the game number #).

I hope you will find this feature useful. If you have found any bugs or have feature request, questions etcetera please use tonic project site on sourceforge.net.

Back to Poznań

We've came back this Sunday. The long weekend was nice, but not always easy.

After some thinking I decided that colorful tabs for notifying about chatting events is not so good idea - some (read many) look and feels for Java doesn't honour changing background color. It is easier to notify user with icons. Nothing special I think, with one exception - when there is user's name in chat text diffrent icon will apear on the tab.


One of the first things I'd wanted to change in Jin was the background of Seek graph. Well, in Tonic I still haven't changed the background image, but I've thought that it would be better to have information about seek in tooltip - it is not size dependant like in Jin. I know size does matter, but not everyone likes his seek graph taking one quater of screen, right?

Waiting is over, let the weekend begin!

So there is a tonic-chess on sourceforge.net. No content yet, but it is just a matter of time - I have to learn how to import sources to cvs and how to distribute builds. Today we (I am married, you know) are going north for long weekend. Tommorrow is free day for my wife, while I still haven't found a job.

But before I leave I want to show one more thing that I am devoloping for tonic - it is icon in the notification area.


So there it is. For now I only tested it on Linux, but I will test on Windows as well. This feature was possible to implement thanks to JDIC (Java Desktop Integration Components) library and with Java 6 (aka Mustang) you can do it without any outside libraries, but I haven't tried that since Java 6 is far away from final release.

Waiting

Last Saturday I applied for a project on sourceforge.net for tonic - internet chess interface of mine. As it is based on Jin source code tonic is quite feature rich and I continue to add a useful IMHO features here and there. Small things as I am not a Java developer. For example I added a window with separate tabs for every channel, that changes colors (randomly for now) when new chat message is sent to specific channel.


Prefix supplier for easier chatting.

I have almost forgotten to mention that tabs are channel list aware - i.e. if you type for example "+ch 67" tab for this channel will apear and when you remove channel corresponding tab will disapear. Of course there is plenty room for improvement (list of channels with descriptions for adding and removing, better way for notifing user about channel tells, more features for prefix supplier and whatever user may find useful and developer within his skill range).