[wxWidgets.git] / contrib / src / animate / readme.txt

Animation sample
================

Every now and then someone asks whether there are animation
classes in wxWindows. I started these animation player classes
nearly two years ago and never got round to finishing them.
Now I've done some hacking on them and (after very limited testing)
it seems to work on Windows for animated GIFs, both transparent
and non-transparent.

Basically the classes makes use of the existing GIF decoder in
wxWindows to read an animated GIF into wxGIFAnimation, and then
play that animation using wxAnimationPlayer. It's quite tied
to the animated GIF way of doing animation, so don't expect anything too generic.
However, it would be quite possible to write code to convert an animated
GIF into a PNG-based invented format, and then write a wxPNGAnimation
handler.

The next steps are:

1. Test on other platforms.
2. Write control classes to make it easy to embed animations in dialogs, etc.
   See my thoughts in animate.h.
3. Write documentation.

*** IMPORTANT NOTE: to compile this, you must first edit the
file:

include/wx/gifdecod.h

and change the keyword 'protected' to 'public', then recompile
wxWindows. If you have downloaded the latest code from the CVS trunk,
the problem has been corrected already.

As an exercise, you might like to write a handler for the
PNG-based animation format:

http://www.libpng.org/mng/
http://www.libmng.com/

Julian Smart, 5th July 2001
Commit	Line	Data
4638d697 JS	1	Animation sample
	2	================
	3
	4	Every now and then someone asks whether there are animation
	5	classes in wxWindows. I started these animation player classes
	6	nearly two years ago and never got round to finishing them.
	7	Now I've done some hacking on them and (after very limited testing)
	8	it seems to work on Windows for animated GIFs, both transparent
	9	and non-transparent.
	10
	11	Basically the classes makes use of the existing GIF decoder in
	12	wxWindows to read an animated GIF into wxGIFAnimation, and then
46d0e4b2 JS	13	play that animation using wxAnimationPlayer. It's quite tied
46d0e4b2 JS	14	to the animated GIF way of doing animation, so don't expect anything too generic.
4638d697 JS	15	However, it would be quite possible to write code to convert an animated
	16	GIF into a PNG-based invented format, and then write a wxPNGAnimation
	17	handler.
	18
	19	The next steps are:
	20
	21	1. Test on other platforms.
	22	2. Write control classes to make it easy to embed animations in dialogs, etc.
	23	See my thoughts in animate.h.
	24	3. Write documentation.
	25
	26	*** IMPORTANT NOTE: to compile this, you must first edit the
	27	file:
	28
	29	include/wx/gifdecod.h
	30
	31	and change the keyword 'protected' to 'public', then recompile
	32	wxWindows. If you have downloaded the latest code from the CVS trunk,
	33	the problem has been corrected already.
	34
46d0e4b2 JS	35	As an exercise, you might like to write a handler for the
	36	PNG-based animation format:
	37
	38	http://www.libpng.org/mng/
	39	http://www.libmng.com/
	40
4638d697	41	Julian Smart, 5th July 2001