Recovery of midoras plugins

[midora]

Hi guys,

 

after a short break (5 years? 😉), working quite intensive in sw development for mobile network testing in R&S (5G, IoT, v2x), I' m back and like to spend some time to recover and improve my plugins. Recover because 5 years ago I lost access to ComSquare which hosted the plugins and most of the source code (including backups).

Thanks a lot to the people in the forum who replaced the ComSquare links with local copies of the plugins or even improved the code to allow the plugins to work in the current version of paint.net. Well done.

 

I will start to collect and publish a list of all the plugins and their source code versions which I have access in the moment (still there is a chance to get access to the backups but this is not for sure). There will be a new version of OptionBasedLibrary (used in many of the plugins) to get a common base for the new versions of the plugins.

 

Do you have any ideas for improvements or know about errors? Feel free to comment here or send a message. I appreciate any help.

 

So let's hope the best that there is no sudden break again 😉

 

Martin

 

Plugin Titles	History	OptionBased	Source	Remarks
Filetypes
'GIF Animation‘ FileType Plugin (.AGIF)	0.13r (16.7.2019)	no	0.2	Developer‘s Central: ImAGIF.FileType v0.13.zip (revamped)
'GiMP Native Format' FileType Plugin (.XCF, .XCFGZ, .XCFBZ2)	1.4 (31.12.2014)	no	yes
'Interchange File Format' FileType Plugin (.IFF, .ILBM, .LBM, .ANIM)	1.0 (31.10.2014)	no	yes
'PNG Animation‘ FileType Plugin (.APNG)	0.3 (06.04.2015)	no	no	Developer‘s Central
'Portable Document Format' FileType Plugin (.PDF) – Open	1.1 (3.7.2014)	0.7	yes
'Portable Document Format' FileType Plugin (.PDF) – Save	1.4 (15.3.2014)	no	yes
'Portable Anymap' FileType Plugin (.PAM, .PBM, .PGM, .PPM)	1.1 (19.2.2015)	no	yes
'PostScript' FileType Plugin (.PS, .EPS, .AI)	1.0 (15.3.2014)	0.7	yes
'Scalable Vector Graphics' FileType Plugin (.SVG, .SVGZ)	0.18 (23.3.2014)	0.6	yes
'Windows Metafile' FileType Plugin (.EMF, .WMF, .EMZ, .WMZ)	1.1 (8.3.2015)	0.7.9	no	But something from 19.2.2015
'ZIP Archive' FileType Plugin (.ZIP)	1.0 (8.7.2015)	no	no
Effects
'Color Matrix' Adjustment Plugin	1.1 (25.6.2015)	0.5	1.0
'Parallel Lines and Patterns' Render Effect Plugin	1.6 (8.3.2015)	0.7.8	1.5
'Spirit Level' Photo Effect Plugin	1.0 (16.5.2015)	0.7	0.3
'Turbulent Curves‘ Effect plugins	1.1 (10.11.2012)	no	yes
'Turbulent Lines‘ Effect plugins	1.1 (10.11.2012)	no	yes
Tools
Chop Up and Save (Tools Effect)	1.2 (15.10.2013)	0.4	yes
Color Harmonies (Tools Effect)	0.7 (25.7.2014)	0.7.3	yes
Look At It (Tools Effect)	0.6 (17.8.2015)	no	no	Developer‘s Central: There is source for an LookAtIt executable
Measure Object (Tools Effect)	1.5 (26.3.2014)	0.7	yes
Measure Selection (Tools Effect)	1.5 (26.3.2014)	0.7	yes
Paper Kaleidocycles effect plugin	1.3 (24.1.2013)	no	yes	There is an unfinished OptionBased variant
Path Tools (ToolsEffect)	0.8	0.7	yes	Developer‘s Central: ‘Peephole Drawing‘
Print It (Tools Effect)	0.9 (3.9.2014)	0.7	yes
'What's It?' (Tools Effect)	1.0 (11.4.2015)	no	no
Others
OptionBasedLibrary	0.7.9	-	yes

 

Edited January 28, 2021 by midora
Added list of plugins

[Ladybug]

Welcome back @midora. I have only had the pleasure of using your plugin but I like it and really appreciate it. Looking forward to more plugins you might develop or just to see your new art creations. 🤓

[toe_head2001]

1 hour ago, midora said:

Do you have any ideas for improvements or know about errors?

 

Many people have reported issues with the PrintIt plugin.

 

https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/28520-print-it-tools-effect/?do=findComment&comment=564419

[Pixey]

Welcome back @midora @Martin Osieka - I include the latter name, so that newbies will know you are one and the same 😁

 

I have missed you a lot - wow - how five years have gone by 😱

[NSD]

Hi Martin and welcome back.

Any chances to improve OptionBasedLibrary?

[Red ochre]

Good to see you back on the forum!

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Welcome back Martin! For all those members wondering, here's a list of the plugins

 

Released as Midora:

 

ImAGIF 13 Mar 2015

Loads and saves animated gif files.

ImAPNG 13 Mar 2015

Loads and saves animated PNG files.

LookAtIt.Effect 13 Mar 2015

View image files including animated image files.Supported formats: Animated GIFs: *.gif, *.agif, Animated IFFs: *.anim, *.iff, *.ilbm, *.lbm (Amiga and Atari), Animated PNGs: *.png, *.apng (ImAPNG.FileType required), Animated WebPs: *.webp, *.awebp (ImAWEBP.FileType required)

 

Released as Martin Osieka:

 

Chop Up and Save 12 Oct 2013

Chop the current layer into tiles and save them to individual files in a range of formats (including option to ZIP). Four files are required: place them all in /Effects/.

Color Harmonies 21 Jul 2014

Easily create harmonious palettes or variants derived from a base color.

Color Matrix 15 Nov 2013

Transform pixels under selection in the active layer using a transformation matrix to manipulate the individual RGBA channels. Many predefined matrices are included as well as the ability to save your own.

Im(age)PDF filetype 12 Oct 2011

Allows paint.net to open and save images as PDF documents. Requires OptionBasedLibrary and Ghostscript be installed.

Interchange File Format 31 Oct 2014

Filetype plugin which loads files in some of the IFF file formats. No save option is supported. IFF is a container format which may contain numerous data types (images, animations, documents, audio, video, ...). This format was used on Atari and Amiga computers in the 1990's.

Measure Selection 2 Apr 2013

Take measurements of an active selection or the whole layer. Option include setting the unit, dpi and scale. Useful for mapping or technical drawings.

Paper Kaleidocycles 25 Dec 2012

This plugin allows the creation of nets for kaleidocycles. A kaleidocycle is a ring of pyramids which can be twisted inwards and outwards to show different sides of the pyramids.

Parallel Lines and Patterns 11 Dec 2014

Draw parallel lines or patterns or fill a region with them. Like an enhanced paint.net Fill Style.

Portable AnyMap (PNM) File Type 28 Feb 2014

Loads and save files in one of the PNM formats. PAM - Portable Arbitrary Map (Black and White, Grayscale, RGB; Alpha channel; raw only; up to 16bits per channel), PBM - Portable Bit Map: (Black and White; plain and raw), PGM - Portable Gray Map: (Grayscale; plain and raw; up to 16bits per channel), PPM - Portable Pixel Map: (RGB; plain and raw; up to 16bits per channel).

PostScript FileType 16 Mar 2014

Imports PostScript (*.PS), Encapsulated PostScript (*.EPS), and Adobe Illustrator (*.AI) files and renders them as bitmap layers in paint.net. Requires Ghostscript to be installed.

Print It 1 Jun 2014

Customized printing tool with a huge range of options like paper size, image size, DPI setting, alignment & offset, tiling, header & footer, watermark, etc…,

Spirit Level Photo Effect 16 May 2015

Rotate a layer using a virtual spirit level. Ideal for misaligned horizons in photos. Note: the rotation is limited to the range +/- 45°. Many options to rescale or refit the image to the canvas.

SVG Filetype 14 Oct 2013

Imports SVG and SVGZ files (Scalable Vector Graphics) and renders them as paint.net layers. Updated by Ievgen Naida to support LAYERS.

Turbulent.Effects 9 Nov 2012

Two plugins to render lines and circles combined with turbulence. Turbulent Circles: Renders concentric circles ranging from smooth to wavy (creates textures like smoke rings, lava, flower petals, etc…,). Turbulent Lines: Render lines combined with turbulence with results ranging from smooth lines to chaotic waves (creates textures like waves, horizons, marble, wood grain, smoke, etc…,).

What's It? 12 Apr 2015

Identify files by looking for a specific signature in the file content. Can correct improperly assigned extensions.

Windows Metafile FileType 23 Feb 2015

Imports Windows metafiles and renders them to paint.net bitmap layers. Supported types are WMF, EMF, EMF+, and the compressed variants WMZ and EMZ. There is a very basic implementation of export to EMF.

XCF filetype 5 Jan 2012

Load and save images in GIMP native file format XCF (and its packed variants XCFGZ and XCFBZ2). To install, copy the two files into the /FileTypes/ folder.

ZIP Archive FileType 9 Jul 2015

Loads/saves the contents of a paint.net document (layers and metadata) from/to a compressed ZIP Archive. Each layer becomes a separate file in the archive. Several formats for the layer files are supported: PNG, BMP, GIF, and JPEG. Additionally a thumbnail and a composite image can be stored in the archive.

[midora]

@LadybugThanks for the support. I see you are active for a while now. Have fun.

@toe_head2001Yeah PrintIt may have issues because of the direct access to printer drivers. I may check if some more try catch statements would help.

@PixeyI'm still a little bit disappointed about my self that I disappeared without comment. But the issues with ComSquare and then the new job just got me. This should not happen again.

@NSDOptionBasedLibrary is on the list to replace the set of old versions with a single new one. If you need some additional options we could talk about. Maybe we could create a separate OptionBasedLibrary topic.

@Red ochre🙂

@Ego Eram ReputoAs always you are looking that people are getting the complete picture. Thanks.

 

I added the list of plugins and their state to the first post (there are some small differences to EERs list). Seems everything newer then February 2015 is not accessible for me in the moment (and maybe forever). Let's see how this issue can be solved.

 

Maybe a private comment. For sure there are reasons that I'm back just now. R&S in Switzerland reduced the number of employees in Switzerland by 5 percent because the profit was below 10%. That's easy in Switzerland because the standard is just 3 months of protection against dismissal. My latest project was the integration of the HiSilicon chipset (Huawei mobiles). This business case has been killed by the ban of Huawei. So now I have to look for a new job but this is not so easy during the Corona crisis. Let's see what happens. But for sure there is some spare time now 😉

 

Thanks to all for the warm welcome.

Martin

[Reptillian]

3 hours ago, midora said:

So now I have to look for a new job but this is not so easy during the Corona crisis.

Oh for sure. It doesn't help when employers are not reachable. Like when you send email per se their request, email sends back error. Or running into indeed apply job bug that leads to blank apply job, etc. I think I will let them contact me and practice skills instead.

 

During the meantime, the pandemic was the only reason I bothered creating pdn plugins.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Reptillian

[midora]

@ReptillianYou are right. You always have to use the time to train yourself. In addition I prepared a new web page to publish some of my deen tools for decoding and encoding of protocols with the focus on mobile communication. I will also set up a blog. Just to support people with 5G layer3 issues.

[midora]

@BoltBaitsupported me to recover the midora account. Still there is no solution for the MO one. This means I'm not able to fix some of the plugin topics.

 

I.e. I collected the missing images in the Parallel Lines and Patterns plugin. If an admin has some spare time 😉 then it would be nice to remove the image links to comsquare and paste in a copy of the image in the attached archive.

 

Removed attachment parallellines.images.zip

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by midora

[NSD]

Maybe you can solve the following exception:

 

Exception details:

 

System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Value of '0.25' is not valid for 'Value'. 'Value' should be between 'Minimum' and 'Maximum'.

 

How to reproduce the issue:
1. Start the plugin Parallel Lines and Patterns
2. Change tab to Orientation
3. Change Factor for Reference Scale > 0.06x
4. Adapt value to scale factor > click on Apply
PDN crashes

[midora]

Parallel Lines is the plugin I'm currently working. I'm missing the latest source version but I guess I can add the missing stuff.

'Adapt value to scale factor' has a conceptual issue. You can change the Reference Scale and the rendering in the background works but apply then finally sets the values of other option controls and may try to set there values which are not in the range of these option controls.

So the best way to fix is to adapt MinValue and MaxValue of the 'Reference Scale' if one of these other option control changes. This will block to select a value for the 'Reference Scale' which would raise an exception on Apply.

I'm fighting a bit with the theme support for comboboxes showing images.  Like in the 'Shape' option control.

Maybe I will also extend the plugin later to produce parallel circles.

[BoltBait]

@midora whenever I see your name, I think of:

 

 

I'm a huge fan!

 

[Djisves]

10 hours ago, midora said:

Maybe I will also extend the plugin later to produce parallel circles.

That would be great! It would have made my life so much easier when I was making this:

(...but then again it may not have been as satisfying)

[midora]

@BoltBaitI guess I tasted it once when I spent some time working for Hughes Network System in LaJolla. From Mexico if I remember right. High percentage.

1 hour ago, Djisves said:

(...but then again it may not have been as satisfying)

That's the point.

[BoltBait]

1 hour ago, midora said:

@BoltBaitI guess I tasted it once when I spent some time working for Hughes Network System in LaJolla. From Mexico if I remember right.

 

It is a Japanese Melon Liqueur.  Mix with 7up for Summer time in a glass. 

[midora]

PrintIt

 

Just some remarks regarding the PrintIt plugin.

- Opening the plugin may be slow especially if your printer is sleeping. The management functions in .NET need some time to respond and PrintIt looks for the settings of the default printer (i.e paper size and orientation). The used interface is quite old maybe in the meantime there is something better with a faster response. I will check. But a change may be a lot of work.

- DebugView shows tons of 'Invalid parameter passed to C runtime function' when PrintIt asks for the default paper size. There is nothing I can do. The return SizeF of the method is correct. I don't know what happens inside of .NET and why this method prints these error messages.

- I catched one exception killing paint.net. But this happened only in the rare condition that the PrintIt dialog was open on wakeup of the computer.

- I added some more try catch just in case of.

 

1978, Driver license picture 😉

 

Edited February 17, 2021 by midora

[midora]

I'm fighting a bit with the font size in the effect plugins.

If I'm using the latest public PrintIt version then the dialog uses a smaller font then my current version in development.

Has anyone an idea what triggers the size of the fonts?

It looks like that I have to increase the standard width of the dialog depending on the font or some elements may overlap or wrap around (like the Virtual Sheet checkbox text. The screenshots show that the dialog width is the same.

 

Public                                                                                                          In development

  

 

 

 

 

[BoltBait]

It looks to me that your second dialog box is running higher than 100% scaling.

 

Windows display settings:

[midora]

@BoltBaityou are right that I'm using the recommended 125% in the display settings. But I'm just replacing the dlls and getting different font sizes. There is no change in the display settings in between. I just tried it with 100% and the effect with the larger font size is the same.

[BoltBait]

I always recommend doing all development at 100% because Visual Studio doesn't work well above that.

[midora]

7 hours ago, BoltBait said:

I always recommend doing all development at 100% because Visual Studio doesn't work well above that.

Visual Studio 2019 works fine for me in 125%. Only if you are using the Designer to create your UI, it may make sense to switch to 100%. But in the meantime VS alerts you to do it locally for the design window panel.

PrintIt doesn't use the designer for the UI. It is much easier to do it in code because all the formatting of OptionBasedControls is handled at runtime. This is important to get a unique look of your UI and to avoid all these alignment and size settings.

I will measure a standard string at startup and adapt the width of the dialog.

Will be interesting to see what happens if Rick implements Per Monitor DPI awareness. I did it for some of my applications and it really works (for sure there are unexpected effects if a window covers more than one screen).

The problem with font size may have to do with the combination of glass and theme support.