MapTool 1.3 Development Build 15

jespley · Post by **jespley** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:07 am

One bug:

When you close the properties window for a token (and a stamp too I'm guessing) with the upper right 'x' instead of the 'Ok' or 'Cancel' buttons then you can't open up any other properties windows. Something to do with the destructor function methinks.

This may have been present in previous builds but hadn't been noticed until now.

Thanks as always.

Post by **dorpond** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 6:18 am

*Dorpond loads up his demo for his big day - he has a list of 12 people that are going to show up today! All is going to be grand! Awesome! They are connecting up! Let's see what they have to say on this fine afternoon!*

Dorpond: "Hello all!"
User2: "Hi!"
User5: "Hello!"
Dorpond: "Thanks for showing up!"
User3: "Thanks! Thanks for throwing us this demo!"
User2: "I can't see the buttons all that well - they are very hard to make out."
User1: "Yeah, I agree. Is there a setting or something to change them?"
Dorpond: "Ah yes, those button are really close in color and to be able to see them well, you will need to calibrate your monitors. Why don't we all do that now. Also, you can buy this 75.00 peice of equipment to calibrate your monitors - All serious graphics artists should have one of these anyway."

Post by **trevor** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 9:51 am

jespley wrote: When you close the properties window for a token (and a stamp too I'm guessing) with the upper right 'x' instead of the 'Ok' or 'Cancel' buttons then you can't open up any other properties windows.

Interesting. Thanks for the bug, I"ll fix it for next build

Cweord · Post by **Cweord** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 11:42 am

snikle wrote:I wonder what the statistics are on the percentage or people who have had their monitors calibrated? Anyone seen any before?

Sorta like those statistics on how many gamers use hexes...?

Just for shits and giggles, and so we all can be calibrated, I looked up some free calibration tools, this one seemed to be one of the better ones I quickly found:
http://www.photofriday.com/calibrate.php

guess that explains why I had no problems, my monitor didn't need calibrating (though interestingly enough there is brightness but no contrast control)

RPMiller · Post by **RPMiller** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 12:00 pm

I have similar experience Cweord. I am very suspicious of all the calibration talk. As an IT person I have dealt with just about every type of monitor out there and in a prior life I was a CAD draftsman and had very high end monitors for my job. In all my years I've only seen one "modern" monitor that needed calibrating and that was because the user did some very bad things to it (can anyone say "magnets bad"). I've seen other bad looking color calibrations, but in every instance it was because the person screwed up when installing their software and either chose a bad color profile or told the software to use the wrong monitor.

Now as for brightness and contrast, I see adjustments being needed almost all the time, but again it is almost always because the user has taken it upon themselves to monkey with the settings. This is probably the biggest issue that people are having with those icons.

I'm not saying that calibration isn't needed, but based solely on my perception I just don't see many problems out there. I'm sure the colors are off slightly he and there, but unless you are a professional who needs absolute color matching you shouldn't need calibrating. In fact, just to test, I used that calibration page that was posted and checked in on 3 laptops and 2 desktops, all of which have never been calibrated and are running different software and all of them matched, as best as I could tell, meaning I could see all the grades of gray with no problems.

Full Bleed · Post by **Full Bleed** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 12:35 pm

dorpond wrote: User2: "I can't see the buttons all that well - they are very hard to make out."
User1: "Yeah, I agree. Is there a setting or something to change them?"

I was wondering, why not have MT start calling the button graphics from a subdirectory so that the first steps toward skinning MT can be taken?

Post by **dorpond** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 12:43 pm

RPMiller wrote: As an IT person I have dealt with just about every type of monitor out there and in a prior life I was a CAD draftsman and had very high end monitors for my job. In all my years I've only seen one "modern" monitor that needed calibrating....

I am an IT manager and in our CAD department we have dual monitors setup. We also have HP laptops and for the most part, we use whatever is cheap when it comes to desktop monitors.

In our CAD department, the left monitor displays color differently than the right. That is because the left monitors and right onitors are different brands. The colors are noticably off but not off enough to screw up their CAD drawings. I noticed it and so did the CAD manager.

In my last year or so, I have noticed all the HP Laptops being off in color. On mine for example - I will make a map in Photoshop and it will look awesome. I will then open that picture at home on a real monitor, and it will be yellowish. It looks like crap and it pisses me off to be honest with you.

On the several desktops, I have found that the CRT monitors are the most accurate compared to the LCD's.

So I have to disagree with you RPMiller, I see color being off all the time at work. Never used to be years ago but it seems to be a problem now with LCD's. The problem with LCD's is that there is little control also. My laptop for example - I spent over an hour trying to make mine work better so that it doesn't produce that yellow when viewed on other monitors. The only thing I could adjust was the gamma settings on the video card for each color and that always left another color off a bit. Crappy controls. I notice my the CAD manager has his own HP laptop too and his is just as off as mine.

Fun wow!

RPMiller · Post by **RPMiller** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 12:57 pm

As I said, in my experience...

There are some serious differences between our experiences obviously.

We buy only Sony laptops, and all our monitors are Philips except now we are converting them all to Acer LCDs. When I drafted I drafted on a sun sparc machine with dual matching monitors.

Our engineers, draftsmen and marketing folks at my company all use HP desktops with Acer LCD screens. I have not had a single complaint about color matching or being off on anyone's computer in the 4+ years that I've worked there.

As I said, our experiences are obviously different. You have made a good argument for getting the calibration tool for your work though.

Cweord · Post by **Cweord** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:15 pm

Both my Laptop, and My monitor are Dell.

The only conversion I can talk about is to print (and I print high res photos) both my monitors provide good results and comparable ones when printed.

I'll have to bring up my old 19" CRT and set it up as a second monitor and see what happens with that

RPMiller · Post by **RPMiller** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 1:23 pm

If you use the color profile for your printer the printed results should match the monitors view or be nearly identical. I will be interested to hear if the CRT looks different.

Post by **dorpond** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 4:15 pm

RPMiller wrote: ...except now we are converting them all to Acer LCDs.

What are your thoughts of the Acers so far? The price is right with them but that scares me a bit. Acers comeback is strong and aggressive but that could be a curse more than a blessing. Let me know.

RPMiller · Post by **RPMiller** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 4:59 pm

I like the Acers. We haven't had any problems with them. We are using the 19" ones and they auto configure to a resolution of 1280x1024 so you get a lot of screen real estate. We did have one that seemed to be having a refresh problem, but that is one out of about 50 that we have bought so far.

snikle · Post by **snikle** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 7:57 pm

I use strictly Dell LCDs at work, never had any problem with them, but in the past I have had Acer monitors before and had no problem with them. Currently, I have an LG LCD and I absolutely love it.

RPMiller · Post by **RPMiller** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:00 pm

I've been curious about the LG line. That is good to know.

snikle · Post by **snikle** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 9:48 pm

I have the LG 19" Flatron Slim, had it about 1.5 years, still going strong, no problems, easy to set up, very happy with it.