Suspected typos (low priority)

[michalis]

Big thank you for these notes. I addressed many of them, improving docs. I also just implemented TDisk2DNode.InnerRadius

@Arioch

Castle Game Engine: CastleControls: Class TCastleLabel

weirdly, no linke to .Border property nor TB order type on the pagem despite PasDoc presen in a deep ancestor TCastleUserInterface

Known issue: PasDoc documentation doesn’t show inherited members.

The TBorder is documented in TCastleLabel ancestor, TCastleUserInterface, Castle Game Engine: CastleUIControls: Class TCastleUserInterface , but you need to manually search ancestors to find it.

This is already reported and I’d like to tackle it some day (I’m also the maintainer of PasDoc):

API Documentation - Show inherited members

@Arioch

no any examples or tutorials for TCastleText :-/

It’s mentioned in

• Text and fonts | Manual | Castle Game Engine
• Viewport with scenes, camera, navigation | Manual | Castle Game Engine,

It’s used in numerous examples:

• examples/fonts/test_local_characters/
• examples/physics/physics_joints_3d/
• examples/tiled/strategy_game_demo/
• examples/viewport_and_scenes/position_from_world/
• examples/viewport_and_scenes/shadow_volumes_whole_scene_manifold/

@Arioch

is a “create by editor” example, and there is no “create by code” which should showcase the minimal bootstrapping.

The rule always is: it is exactly equivalent to create things by code and by editor, just make sure to set the same properties. We have some examples showing the idea, like castle-engine/examples/lazarus/load_model_and_camera_manually/mainf.pas at master · castle-engine/castle-engine · GitHub . Maybe we should document better the correspondence.

Basically, playing with component in the editor also gives you the knowledge about it’s code API. It’s the same as with LCL, Unity etc.

@Arioch

Also, this tutorial, if it is required doc, could be lionked from the TCastleText/TCastleEdit/TCastleLabel class documentation pages, it is not.

Added, thanks.

In general, indeed I like to make API docs link to manual where appropriate. Let manual and API docs in the end link to each other.

@Arioch

Then TCastleControl.OnPress moves them fine - but renders none…

I’d need to see bigger example to say what’s wrong. The code looks OK.

Without knowing the code, I can recommend to prototype in the editor – try to set up exactly the same thing, same values, same properties in editor. You may likely find quicker this way what goes wrong. Editor really doesn’t do anything magic, it sets up the same classes with the same properties – but you will see everything clearer.

You can also try inspector (F8) to debug at runtime, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jBdPdj75yk .

@Arioch

7. ``

Oh, great! Except i had to read into Deprecated section. But… won’t even compile

Do you try to assign SomeLabel.CustomFont := UIFont? This will indeed not compile without a typecast, because UIFont doesn’t have to be of TCastleFont class. And you should not need this assignment.

DefaultUIFont - this is internal, only in implementation. I’m unsure why you mention it, and what do you try to do. Same for FallbackFont(small) or DefaultUIFont.Small, I’m admittedly lost what you’re doing, what you want to achieve. If you believe you found a bug, please report a complete reproducible code.

@Arioch

tt.CustomFont.OptimalSize := 30; gives a pretty nil^ AV

Please show a complete example code to reproduce it.

@Arioch

      tt.CustomFont := FallbackFont;
      tt.CustomFont.OptimalSize := 30;

…gives another exception about missing FreeType library, but it was not advertized it would be needed (for the bare bones stuff).

It should not need FreeType. FreeType is used to read TTF / OTF files. Again, please submit a testcase to reproduce.

@Arioch

tt.TranslationXY := - tt.BoundingBox.Center.XY; did the trick it seems, yet i am not sure it was intended/optimal way, perhaps the text components better be auto-centering? At least, no clues i found in tutorial or the class doc.

Castle Game Engine: CastleScene: Class TCastleText shows Alignment, VerticalAlignment. They are also clearly visible as “Basic” properties in editor – as above, the simple advise is to play and prototype in the editor, even if you later want to instantiate them from code.

@Arioch

i am still struglging to internalize bs2D sorting and blending though.
Spent a lot of time on unstable sort - until i realized that i had to z-translate the “root” scenes, which i used as mere logical container and rotation/translation joint, so they all had zero Z, and the real Z had the objects within them. This hit me later when i got to bed, after i wasted like 3 hours trying different combinations of everything i could think of

I’m not happy with our current blending sorting and its limitations. This is scheduled to be improved soon, I have hopes even for this weekend. Roadmap:Roadmap | Manual | Castle Game Engine .

@Arioch

When i did just that it ruined my rendering. I assume the default values from TAppearanceNode.Create were not all set up as TShapeNode expected them, or something.

Perhaps consider adding explicit API like procedure TShapeNode.CreateDefaultAppearance or function TShapeNode.CreateDefault(nodeclass): TObject - that could more or less uniformly be added to all the nodes? Something that would blend mere calling consturctor with ad hoc properties assignment both of creator and of the created node?

I don’t know what exactly you did, so I’m not sure what went wrong.

Anyhow, we don’t want more shortcuts and misleading The appearance node should just be created like any other class,

MyAppearance := TAppearanceNode.Create;

and assigned like any other property,

MyShape.Appearance := Appearance;

@Arioch

It’s puzzling… And the lack of the immediate, here and now linke to the LineSet class (with at least some explanation what it was the beast) contributes.

Linked. But I agree in that I’m not happy about these pages about X3D nodes. We should move all these things to API docs, and make API docs perfect. We need to focus on one thing, instead the docs for X3D stuff are now somewhat spread between

• API docs generated by PasDoc
• Own pages like Geometry2D component | Castle Game Engine
• X3D specification.

The way forward is to make API docs perfect, and link to them everywhere.

@Arioch

Meanwhile OutlineGeometry := TLineSetNode.Create... and while it can receive coordinates array, it can not be assigned to the TTriangleSetNode instance, or i failed to find in the tutorial.

I do not understand this statement, what did you try to assign to what?

@Arioch

    OutlineGeometry.Coord := OutlineCoords;
    OutlineGeometry.SetVertexCount([OutlineCoords.FdPoint.Count]);

This tutorial part also looks very redundant and fragile. Why the second line is even required? Can’t the property setter just do it?..

I added SetVertexCount docs, Castle Game Engine: X3DNodes: Class TLineSetNode docs.

@Arioch

Google found me a TCastleWindow.AntiAliasing - which TCastelControl is sadly lacking.

Now i wonder if xxxx.MultiSampling can actually be anything but the very same thing by any other name (like its description and comments seem to vaguely imply). However i can witness, that searching for “antialiasing” is comes easier, than for “multisampling”.

If anything, MSAA is always full-screen(or full-window) and maybe there still are more local low hanging fruits

Yes, AntiAliasing is mostly just a fancy way to set MultiSampling.

It also controls Nvidia-specific NV_multisample_filter_hint extension of OpenGL. But I hesitate whether this bit is actually useful, which is why I ultimately “chickened out” and didn’t make TCastleControl.AntiAliasing.

For now, just set TCastleControl.MultiSampling. Values like 2,4,8 are worth trying (higher values → more anti-aliasing, but also potentially more costly). Leave MultiSampling at value 1 or 0 (they mean the same) to not have anti-aliasing.

@Arioch

It would’ve been nice if TDisk2DNode.InnerRadius had been clearly marked as not-implemented, both in PasDoc and using something like deprecated or experimental

It was easier to make it implemented

Tested on sample from X3D for Web Authors Examples Archive, Chapter 10 Geometry 2D, Disk 2D .