Refining GSoC Proposal

[Kieran Duggan]

Hello,

So I recently received an email informing me that I have the option of
refining or improving the list of D3DX functions that I came up with for my
proposal.
My current time line and list isn't a very good one to say the least.
Basically, in the interest of time, I put together the proposal by grabbing
a set of functions I saw in spec files marked with 'stub' without much
thought.

Clearly that wasn't optimal, so I'm pretty happy that I don't have to stick
with that poorly put together list. It doesn't really represent my best
work,
and I'd like to do better, so I'm reaching out here in hopes that
someone can point me in the right direction on how to start compiling a
more meaningful list and time line to go with it.

My idea right now is just to look at the stubs and cross reference that
with MSDN
to try and get a grasp of how they might be implemented and move on from
there.
maybe the MSDN documentation can help me find related functions that would
make sense to work on together?

Just so anyone reading this has something to work with, I'll attach a draft
of
my proposal[1]. It should be identical to the one I submitted.

[1]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kjWMNBX8xba_MlTOYgoh2DMBLdWZA3wDQPBvI5sN...

Thanks for the help,

Kieran Duggan

[Matteo Bruni]

2018-04-11 6:07 GMT+02:00 Kieran Duggan :
> Hello,
>
> So I recently received an email informing me that I have the option of
> refining or improving the list of D3DX functions that I came up with for my
> proposal.
> My current time line and list isn't a very good one to say the least.
> Basically, in the interest of time, I put together the proposal by grabbing
> a set of functions I saw in spec files marked with 'stub' without much
> thought.
>
> Clearly that wasn't optimal, so I'm pretty happy that I don't have to stick
> with that poorly put together list. It doesn't really represent my best
> work,
> and I'd like to do better, so I'm reaching out here in hopes that
> someone can point me in the right direction on how to start compiling a
> more meaningful list and time line to go with it.
>
> My idea right now is just to look at the stubs and cross reference that with
> MSDN
> to try and get a grasp of how they might be implemented and move on from
> there.
> maybe the MSDN documentation can help me find related functions that would
> make sense to work on together?

Yeah, that should be a good starting point. You're probably going to
find terms / techniques you don't know much about, so you may need to
branch out from there a bit in your research. Also looking at our
current d3dx9 implementation and tests might be helpful.
FWIW, notice that there are also a bunch of interface methods (some of
which are mentioned in our Summer of Code wiki page), rather than
plain functions, that are stubs or otherwise not complete. Just in
case you didn't see them earlier.

No pressure, take your time, but let us know when you make progress.
Feel free to ask specific questions if you have any.

[Kieran Duggan]

So I've been busy this week unfortunately. I had the chance to look over
some functions though today. I saw that on the ideas list text rendering
functions were mentioned specifically, so I took a look at those and found
a few of them with their corresponding MSDN pages:
ID3DXFontImpl_GetGlyphData
ID3DXFontImpl_PreloadCharacters
ID3DXFontImpl_PreloadGlyphs
ID3DXFontImpl_PreloadTextA
ID3DXFontImpl_PreloadTextW
ID3DXFontImpl_DrawTextA
ID3DXFontImpl_DrawTextW
ID3DXFontImpl_OnLostDevice
ID3DXFontImpl_OnResetDevice

Could working on these fill enough time for a summer project?
Also what exactly is the suffix A/W for? I remember seeing it in the code
a while ago and not understanding it.

On Tue, Apr 17, 2018 at 5:50 PM, Matteo Bruni 
wrote:
> 2018-04-11 6:07 GMT+02:00 Kieran Duggan :
> > Hello,
> >
> > So I recently received an email informing me that I have the option of
> > refining or improving the list of D3DX functions that I came up with for
>
> my
> > proposal.
> > My current time line and list isn't a very good one to say the least.
> > Basically, in the interest of time, I put together the proposal by
>
> grabbing
> > a set of functions I saw in spec files marked with 'stub' without much
> > thought.
> >
> > Clearly that wasn't optimal, so I'm pretty happy that I don't have to
>
> stick
> > with that poorly put together list. It doesn't really represent my best
> > work,
> > and I'd like to do better, so I'm reaching out here in hopes that
> > someone can point me in the right direction on how to start compiling a
> > more meaningful list and time line to go with it.
> >
> > My idea right now is just to look at the stubs and cross reference that
>
> with
> > MSDN
> > to try and get a grasp of how they might be implemented and move on from
> > there.
> > maybe the MSDN documentation can help me find related functions that
>
> would
> > make sense to work on together?
>
> Yeah, that should be a good starting point. You're probably going to
> find terms / techniques you don't know much about, so you may need to
> branch out from there a bit in your research. Also looking at our
> current d3dx9 implementation and tests might be helpful.
> FWIW, notice that there are also a bunch of interface methods (some of
> which are mentioned in our Summer of Code wiki page), rather than
> plain functions, that are stubs or otherwise not complete. Just in
> case you didn't see them earlier.
>
> No pressure, take your time, but let us know when you make progress.
> Feel free to ask specific questions if you have any.

[Austin English]

On 04/23/2018 01:35 AM, Kieran Duggan wrote:
> Also what exactly is the suffix A/W for? I remember seeing it in the code
> a while ago and not understanding it.

A = ANSI
W = Unicode

Many (but not all) APIs have both versions, whereas others are ANSI or
Unicode only.

[Stefan Dösinger]

> Am 23.04.2018 um 08:35 schrieb Kieran Duggan :
> Also what exactly is the suffix A/W for? I remember seeing it in the code
> a while ago and not understanding it.

The A / W is ASCII (char *) vs Unicode (WCHAR *). Ideally the implementation is in the W version and the A version converts strings from ASCII to Unicode with MultiByteToWideChar, calls the W version, and if necessary, converts result strings back to Ascii. See for example FindWindowExA in dlls/user32/win.c for a simple example.

The A->W conversion is not always trivial, e.g. care has to be taken with NULL pointers and string sizes.

[Matteo Bruni]

2018-04-23 8:35 GMT+02:00 Kieran Duggan :
> So I've been busy this week unfortunately. I had the chance to look over
> some functions though today. I saw that on the ideas list text rendering
> functions were mentioned specifically, so I took a look at those and found
> a few of them with their corresponding MSDN pages:
> ID3DXFontImpl_GetGlyphData
> ID3DXFontImpl_PreloadCharacters
> ID3DXFontImpl_PreloadGlyphs
> ID3DXFontImpl_PreloadTextA
> ID3DXFontImpl_PreloadTextW
> ID3DXFontImpl_DrawTextA
> ID3DXFontImpl_DrawTextW
> ID3DXFontImpl_OnLostDevice
> ID3DXFontImpl_OnResetDevice
>
> Could working on these fill enough time for a summer project?

I think it's not enough for a full GSoC project, although I'm
notoriously terrible at assessing work / time needed to do
something...

I just sent you a private email with a bunch of GSoC info
(congratulations for getting accepted btw!) and some more exploratory
stuff I suggest you to do WRT those ID3DXFont methods. If / when you
get some more time, keep looking for other functions you might be
interested in implementing. It's probably better to come up with a
larger set of functions / APIs and do as much as time permits (i.e.
not expecting to finish everything) than the other way around.