07 April 1996, Oulu, Finland

Hello world,

This upgrade was both easy (1.14) and difficult (1.15), therefore I
would like to say something about the process and the future of this
and other TooLate programs.

It took a couple days to figure out what a cursor mask is in general,
how to create it from the cursor data and how to code it with as small
effort as possible. I came up with two different ways to create a mask
and, since I wasn't happy with them, I added a third one, too.

I had saved all the code for this program, so making an upgrade took
only about a hour - from the start of writing new code through debugging
till I had a fully functional version 1.14. Piece of cake, no problems
at all.

Then I made a very serious mistake.

In recent years I have been developing a graphical user interface
library for myself and now desided to use it with this program, too.
After all the TooLate series uses the same code that later developed
into Minerva GUI library. Furthermore only the ButtonField routines were
used in the editor, the required changes should be minor.

I found out the changes were small, indeed. The only problem was that
the buttons were in color magenta and the button edges in light magenta.
All the programs I have created with Minerva GUI have used a custom
color palette. For the cursor editor that was not possible, because at
the bottom of the screen I have default colors for testing purposes.

I had to change library code: ButtonField structure has some colors
defined, the related functions know to use them and a few other
functions have extra parameters. I recompiled the library, then the
editor and everything was ok.

The problem is that the changes I had to make into the GUI library are
visible outside and thus each and every program with which I have used
it is now incompatible - except TooLate Cursor Editor. I'll have to go
through about two dozen programs and make some small changes into each
of them. I am not looking forward to it.

I wanted to use the GUI library, because then it would be easy to add a
FileSelection dialog and offer better file load/save operation to you.
Well, this operation didn't go as planned, so I'm not going to add it
after all. Originally I wrote this program, cause it was fun and this is
far from fun now.

Maybe later..

Maybe I'll have to take this seriously and re-release as shareware:
redesign the interface, add a menubar and some dialogs, especially the
FileSelection dialog, offer possibility to load the saved cursor images,
a bunch of sample cursors, a real manual and a cursor tutorial. Some
sample course code, maybe code for the cursor tester program I have. I
might also include a mouse library, that I wrote for my own programs.
Guess I should add possibility to save as Windows etc. cursor data, too.

Definitely later. I really don't believe in shareware (too much effort,
too little reward) and have other programs to do/fix.

I'm not as grumpy as I sound like. New suggestions, requests and ideas
are still welcome and I am prepared and willing to do small changes in a
couple of days.

Uh, here's a smile..   |>

--jouni the old and tired one for a moment
