Visual AGI Picture Editor

[troflip]

Much appreciated. I like the clean simplicity of the tool, although I guess that's somewhat a reflection of AGI?

Being able to move vertices is nice. It looks like you have to position the slider at the correct spot first though, right? Like, you are only able to move vertices for the line/fill at the current position.

The zoomed in view is useful too.

I think another nice feature would be to have a mini-preview of the final picture as you're editing stuff earlier on in the vector stack - so you can see what your edits are doing to the final image.

[Collector]

It is alos on the Wiki http://agiwiki.sierrahelp.com/index.php?title=Visual_AGI

[Crispin]

Late replay... Thanks for that. Unfortunately I couldn't run it at Linux, probably some .net thingy.
I can't install Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAARK) neither (got some weird message).
But you should provide it anyway as a companion file, if needed (e.g. for Win95 emulation, new ARMS are strong enough to do it).

[Collector]

Of course it has .NET dependencies. it was written in C#. The Microsoft Active Accessibility is really only needed for older versions of Windows. Were you trying to run it with WINE? One of the Linux users here may have some information on running .NET apps on Linux.

[Kawa]

Not a Linux user perse but I do try to keep most of my own .Net stuff compatible enough to run on Linux. But not to run it on WINE. I meant compatible with Mono.

In fact right now there are two instances of my made-in-C# chatbot running on my Debian server through Mono.

Mono-compatibility basically boils down to not using any OS-specific system calls (P/Invokes). That goes all three ways -- if you write a Mono app on Linux and have it use Linux calls it won't run on Windows either. Now, the standard library mscorlib uses a shitton of P/Invokes, but that's the beauty of it -- Mono's implementation of mscorlib doesn't... necessarily. And it can even do WinForms!
Another important thing is not hardcoding paths and such, or even using "\" as a path separator. Instead, you use the System.IO.Path static and its various helpers. That way, running under Linux, you'll automatically use "/".

Now, what one could do is run the program in question through the Migration Analyzer, see what it has to say about the feasibility of running this on Mono.

[Collector]

Not that that really helps with such an old binary.

[Kawa]

Another beautiful thing about .Net apps is that they are usually quite decompilable

[Collector]

Oh, I have the source for it, but not as a standalone application. What I have is an MDI child form of the old, unfinished Visual AGI project. The MDI Picture Editor child could be extracted for a standalone app, but I do not see much point in that. Besides the code for color selection was rather bizarrely convoluted. I have simplified and modernized it. It has now been incorporated into our larger AGI/SCI IDE project. I have made the missing editors, but more work sill need to be done on the backend for the logic and save for the objects editor. Unfortunately Gumby has not been around lately.

[Crispin]

Of course it has .NET dependencies. it was written in C#. The Microsoft Active Accessibility is really only needed for older versions of Windows. Were you trying to run it with WINE? One of the Linux users here may have some information on running .NET apps on Linux.

Hm, wouldn't you find it ironic: "The Microsoft Active Accessibility is really only needed for older versions of Windows" ?
We are supporting AGI from 1984., but not MAA (1997) needed for Win95. New ARMs are fast & strong enough to emulate Win95 but not Win7.
Never mind.
 Well, I tried to run it with WINE several times, no success. There are couple of .NET apps I'm running with WINE. Unfortunately, VAGI is not one of them.
I'm not sure what's wrong, because WINE has "gold"/"platinum" status for most .NET Frameworks versions.
Probably something related to this:
"Always install with recent 'winetricks' in clean 32-bit wineprefix for best results."
(64-bit environment is not supported at some things as it should be)
I did this but... didn't work. I tried also with "PlayOnLinux" (>some kind of Wine pre-set installers); here is some others example what's going on.

http://lookpic.com/O/i2/524/jmbWF1vi.png
Here is screenshot of what's going on: winetricks for .NET installer (e.g. v 2.0) claims that mono is not installed (which is), and right after that "64-bit is not supported" (it is not 64-bit). However, I have .NET 4.0 installed, some software is running flawlessly. But VAGI just won't start, no error messages.

Of course, I could run it through some virtual box, probably. But it is... humiliating.
e. g. I'm running Photoshop CS2-6 w/o problems.

[Collector]

The original program is old enough that the .NET target is probably more like 1.1. Of course there are other AGI pic editors, including Lance's JAVA PicEdit.

[Crispin]

Yep, specifications said .NET v1.1. I am using the PicEdit, java version. WinAGI is helpfull too.
I found this interesting description of VAGI at ScummVM Wiki

As interesting feature, Visual AGI Picture Editor can optimize pictures, even if the gain is only byte, preliminary testing has shown approximately 10% - 28,5% reduces in size with AGI-pictures produced by different methods, Sierra's games, Noptec Vector.

Just I didn't find the time to study Noptec Vector (DOS); I am interested specifically at vectorization algorithms. It will be fun to trace bitmap drawings or photos with modern tracers like great one (Potrace) included in Inkscape; then through Vector or similar tool (e.g. VAGI).

I forgot to mention: Visual AGI Sound Editor is working just fine at Linux, which is also .NET driven. Strange enough!

[Collector]

The Visual AGI Sound Editor is in C++.

[Crispin]

Thanks.
Maybe is something wrong with my wineprefix settings... I should try to make another one (clean, 32-bit).
I am too tired to doing it again, I tried dozen times... but there are at least two more Windows apps I can't run, one is in .NET for sure.
Oh, well.