Re: Animated icons
Someone mentioned 'pronto/prontoedit'
supporting animated icons/buttons...true ??

If so does it support imported animated images for animated icons/buttons ??
Does it support Gif 89a format ( the std. gif animation type) as used on web sites etc ??
or another std...??

I'd like to start drawing/mod. images but don't want to waste time in a format that might not be supported (Gif 89a)....

I gathered programmable/user screen size
219 horz. x 240 vert pixels
4- shades mono
best button size approx. 40-100 pixel horizontal x 35-80 pixel vertical (to maintain aspect ratio ....

:) john :)

Animated gif's??? Pronto knows not. Only bmp's max as stated in your post. It's poor little brain might explode!

What kind of animated gif's could one possible want for a remote control??????!!!!!!

I think the biggest problem would be conversion to grayshade. If such a thing was implemented it would probably have to be via a propeitary format.

It would be some pretty neat macro eye-candy though: A screen blinking on or a beckoning hand for TURN SYSTEM ON, a hand waving goodbye for TURN SYSTEM OFF, a DVD feeding into a player for WATCH A DVD. :-)

I was not really refering to Gif in particular.
The idea came from: I quote
"It Features four shades (white, light gray, dark gray and black) along with animation and scrolling. "
ON [Link: sunstorm.com]
as reviewed by daniel Tonks.(paragraph 3)
I wondered if the PRONTO could animate it's own icons, whether or not it was possible for an icon to be imported & made to animate/flash.

If one 'system' icon could animate (as in daniel's review) why not a user icon....
I suppose it really needs 'AHP'(a helpful person) type that knows something on the O.S. to shed some light.. :)

:) john :)

You seemed to of beat me to the 'post' Daniel :)

Yes that's what I thought, This might need further info on the OS. from some kind folk to help it on it's way.
I'd love, as you mentioned Daniel, the idea of a flashing/Animated type, HAND/ICON FLASH/DISC SPIN etc in 4 shades of grey.... basic but it would add life to the menu....
I realize the PRONTO might not of been intended for it...but it has a 68xxx CPU in it's little heart...power beasty for a 'REMOTE' to say the least.

:) john :)

I would have thought that such animation would EAT batteries quite rapidly as the CPU never goes to sleep, unless the animation also goes to sleep until a button is pressed or backlite turned on.

For the record GIF files have a color palette and it could hold just 4 colors.

The hard part of GIFs would be the decompression, the animation and color depth is the easy part.

But just a series of 4 or 8 "Normal" bitmaps "Played" in succession is all that's needed and it could timeout with the light or sooner if it's a power issue.

I'm not sure when the CPU is actually "asleep" and it may or may not be a power issue.

See what trouble we get into while waiting for ProntoEdit :-)

P.S. I don't particularly care if animated bitmaps are supported. I'd much rather see the time spent on making everything as robust as possible.

O.K.
As you implied George, I think it's a case of wait & see, when 'PRONTOEDIT' arrives....

But I was really only using Gif as an example because there is a std for that format that supports anim.
Color is not an issue because color / grey scale, (be it 4 shades) in extra information and isn't really contested. Only if there was a facility via prontoedit or direct, to set a flag/bit to enable anim/flashing of a bitmat or other graphic std.
Like 'Jack' wrote in a message, where he mentioned that 'PRONTOEDIT' did auto color to 4 shade grey scale conversion, I wondered if anim/flashing icons was supported...because it was mentioned some PRONTO system icons were animated/flashing.. :) well

I suppose we'll have to wait a little bit longer and see :) it's early days....

John,

User defined animated icons are currently not supported. By the way, the user defined portion of the display is 240 x 219 (not 219 x 240) with a total display of 240 x 320.

Regards,

Jan

ProntoEdit currently only understands how to import Windows Bitmap (.BMP) files. Neither Pronto nor ProntoEdit support user-provided animations at the moment. The line had to be drawn somewhere, or it would have never made it out the door :-)

As I've mentioned before, if this is something you really can't live without, go to the product support form and request it as a feature in the next Pronto software update.

THANX ALL

I'll do that, AHP.......

:)