abi.exdream.com - Benjamin Nitschke's Blog - Boo

DirectX June2006 and testing Vista Beta 2

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 18:23:37 GMT

The new DirectX SDK June 2006 came out a couple of days ago. It features absolutly nothing new, but is 60MB bigger than the last SDK, how is that even possible? I couldn't find any new or updated sample, the Managed DirectX documentation is still from August 2005 (but the C++ documentation is updated). As ZMan pointed out (from the SDK readme) on his site The Z-Buffer there are some News about the XNA Framework and the fact that DirectSound will be replaced by XACT and DirectInput by XInput. D3DX will also not be available in the XNA Framework because the XBox360 isn't able to provide the features, which is pretty stupid for a PC developer imo. But there is nothing new in the DirectX SDK for Managed DirectX, everything is unchanged.

The biggest news is that Direct3D 10 works now with the new Windows Vista Beta 2 preview. I tried out some older Vista builds (PDC version and some version in the beginning of 2006), but I wasn't satisfied with it. I thought: Lets give it another try, maybe play around with Direct3D 10 a little. Maybe there are also more drivers around for Vista.
In case you want to try out Vista too, you can get the Beta 2 Preview here (free for everyone):
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/default.mspx

I installed the 64-Bit version of Vista and it did take a little while (~ 1 hour) to install. My multimonitor setup worked instantly, which was pretty cool. My Nvidia card made no problems. However the sound driver could not be installed and all other devices only used some generic driver from microsoft. After a couple of hours installing and testing drivers, this is the result:

The interface and graphic effects for the windows are really good. Maybe there are similar things on Mac OS X or opensuse with xgl and compiz, but it doesn't matter if those look better or maybe have cooler features because most of the users will never use those systems (just because most of todays programs will never work on those systems). For me the instant preview is the best new feature, it doesn't matter if you press alt+tab (or windows key+tab), hover over startbar programs, use the internet explorer or use the windows explorer, there are little preview windows all over the place :-)
Realtek sound drivers just crash my system or they don't install properly. This drivers (I tried 3-4 different ones, XP 64 Bit versions and Vista ones) were really annoying, especially since Vista told me that the "Installation failed" with stupid things like "Could not copy file" like 500 times. After rebooting installing the drivers suddenly worked, but rebooting again didn't work and after restoring the system everything was messed up again (no sound). I installed another sound card (Soundblaster Audigy) and gave it up with the Realtek sound.
The second problem was getting my keyboard layout to work, which turned out to be the most annoying part of Vista for me. It is absolutly impossible to install other keyboard layouts in Vista. It is not just my keyboard driver, but every other driver I found on the internet (even marked as Vista compatible, lol) did not install. You will get always the same error message telling you "Installation failed", which will not help at all. I can still type with german or US english keyboard layout, but it is very annoying and confusing over the time. I just don't feel comfortable. I tried getting the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator to work, but only the testing mode did anything, everything else crashed the program, especially creating new installer packages. I also tried to hack into the existing layout drivers and modify one of them, but Vista always restored the original ones. In the last Vista releases (Beta 1 I guess) this seemed to work, but why not remove features?
But the problems didn't stop there, I also couldn't get my Sata Raid (silicon image) to work. Installing onto it was impossbile since Vista didn't accept any of the drivers at the installation time (I guess they don't work properly on 64 Bit), but later it was also impossible to use them. Every time I installed the XP 64 Bit drivers or drivers from the internet and restarted a black-screen (Vista doesn't seem to show bluescreens anymore) appeared telling me that the driver could not be loaded. No way to get my raid to work :(
But that's not all, most other drivers made also problems or could not be installed at all. For example even the Microsoft Keyboard driver can't be installed because Microsoft doesn't give you any vista drivers for their own hardware, wtf? Other things like my Hauppauge TV card didn't work either, but I didn't expect them to work.
To round things up, even in the little amount of programs I installed, there were some essential programs. That just will not install on Vista. Maybe they would work, but if the installation fails, you can't do much about it. Examples are some games and picture viewers like IrfanView.
Office 2007 looks really great and you should test out the Office Beta too, if you install Vista. The only annoying thing was of course my missing keyboard layout driver, but that has nothing to do with office ^^
I didn't install Visual Studio 2005, other programming tools or other big programs because of the problems above, but I don't think there are major issues with most programming tools. I heard somewere that graphic tools like Photoshop CS2 could not be installed, so maybe check that out first if you are a graphic artist.

Doesn't sound too good, does it? I was really thinking possitively after my Nvidia graphic card worked so good, in the last Vista Beta it didn't work at all in 64 Bit and I had to install the 32 Bit version, which also had its problems. But without keyboard support and so many driver issues it is not fun to use Vista at all right now, let alone work with it. And you might know that I'm pretty happy with Beta software like Visual Studio 2005 last year or Atlas and LinQ right now, but the important thing is they are downward compatible and always give you both the ability to use old code and to switch back to the old versions without much hassle.

I also installed the 32-Bit version of Vista on Virtual Server 2005 RC2, which looks cool too, but just runs way to slow. Vista does too many graphic effects for the virtual graphic card, it is no fun on a virtual machine (windows server 2003 runs 100 times better).

Everything I wrote here today isn't Microsoft's fault, it is just the drivers are not ready for Vista (at least if using the 64-Bit version, the 32-Bit version might be a bit easier to use). Lets hope the device manufactures improve their drivers before Vista gets released and not afterwards. The only thing bad in Vista besides the driver installation (it just makes no sense to tell me "could not copy file" and then it works after restarting) is the missing ability to install other keyboard layouts or change them. I still think Microsoft can make it this year to finally release Vista, but it woundn't hurt if it takes longer until every single driver works perfectly.

Little Update 2006-06-22: I also tested the 32 bit version of Vista Beta 2 now and I got the exact same driver and program problems (sound card, raid, tv card all don't work, many programs don't work, my own keyboard layout can't be installed, etc.). I just wanted to check out the new cool IIS7 (check out www.IIS.net) after watching the latest DotNetShow Episode about IIS7. IIS7 is really cool, but Vista is still unuseable for me (no sound, no keyboard layout are the main issues for me). Check out the DotNetShow for more details about IIS7 and how easy it gets to create, configure and deploy web applications.

Other news about my Visual Studio Boo language addin: I decided to pause the project because I'm currently very satisfied with LinQ and it's features and how good it can be used in Visual Studio 2005 already. I'm thinking about using my Boo language addin code for another addin sometime soon. There is a cool Visual Studio Extensibility Contest, where you can win up to $5000 and you will be featured on MSDN. I read about it yesterday, the contest is already running since last month, but the deadline is the 30 July, so there are still 7 weeks left. Have to thing of something cool though.

And: I just bought Half life 2 - Epsisode one via Steam (20 bucks only for a full singleplayer game) and I like that I don't have to go anywhere, just download and play. I was a big fan of Half life 2 and I like the fact that the singleplayer story now continues. The first mission is really good and I like the commentary mode in the game.

DirectX SDK June 2006

Vista Beta 2 Preview

Office 2007 Preview

Visual Studio 2005 SDK V2 (April 2006) released

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:27:59 GMT

Microsoft released a Visual Studio 2005 SDK update this week and it contains a lof of updated features:

Updates to the IronPython sample (very useful for me because of syntax highlighting stuff for my addin)
Visual Studio Team System integration (yeah sure, like I'm will ever be able to affort VSTS)
Domain Specific Language (DSL) Tools (sounds interessting)
Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) (cool for office stuff, but not important for me)
Reference samples for C# and C++ Editors, Version control integration, XML designer, and many others! (thats always good)

Why am I telling you this? Well, I'm going to continue my Boo Language plugin for Visual Studio I started earlier this year. I never had time to continue it, but now with the new VS SDK out I will give it another try.

Other news: Steve Pavlina blogs this month about stopping polynapping. Steve was one of the most known polynappers of our time, he was polynapping (sleeping only 2 hours per day) for almost 6 months. I was polynapping in february this year too, but because of many fairs and meetings I wasn't able to keep the schedule and switched to bi-phasic sleeping and after a while I was back to monophasic sleeping (just sleeping once per day). Steve Pavlina had similar reasons and said that he had problems with social events, you can't go to sleep every 4 hours in our society that easy.

I will give polynapping another try this weekend. I'm not expecting it to last, but maybe I will do it I month from time to time, just for the fun of it. It was also interessting to see the reactions from other people, when I tell them about polynapping.

Visual Studio SDK:

How to disable the "Loader Lock" debug window in Visual Studio 2005 when using Managed DirectX

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 16:31:39 GMT

Today I made some progress on my BooLanguage implementation in Visual Studio 2005, I hope I can release some early version later this week.

But today I will show you a important tip ZMan has already reported about here: Why do I get a 'Loader Lock' Error when debugging my Managed DirectX application

Very often when you try to debug your Managed DirectX application in Visual Studio 2005 you get this very annoying "Loader Lock" window when starting to debug your application. It is caused by the Managed DirectX for .NET 1.1 runtime while using .NET 2.0 of your project. Such a loader lock looks like this:

You can press F5 to continue, but if you get 3-4 of them every time you start your project it gets very annoying, especially because VS seems to lag very bad because of this windows.

To fix this just press Ctrl+D, +E (hold down Ctrl for both keys) and disable the LoaderLock exception to be thrown in the Managed Debugging Assistants category:

From now on enjoy your application to start immediatly instead of waiting around all day and pressing F5 like a mad man :)

CR_Commenter Update v1.5 and testing out the Boo Language

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 07:47:28 GMT

I've updated my Commenter plugin for CodeRush today. I did some refactoring and was getting annoyed that some of the .NET 2.0 features did not get commented properly yet (like generics or anoynmous delegates). I also fixed some older bugs and issues.

This is the changelist (full history can be found in the original article):

First version for VS2005 and using .NET 2.0 now for supporting generics and anoynmous delegates (more useful comments now inside of anoynmous functions and code blocks defined there).
Fixed again: No xml generation inside of methods (recent CodeRush version changed its behaviour somehow). Check is now performed inside the recursive method, this fixes all older issues too.
When commenter is disabled the globol hotkeys don't work anymore now.
Version number in options and a link to check if any new updates are available
Hotkey for generating comments and XML: Ctrl+1. Saves you typing '}' and doesn't require you to go to the last line of a block all the time.
If using defines in the using statements the surrounding region is now generated properly. Also adds automatically the #if DEBUG and #endif statements (which I use to exclude NUnit from the release build) around using NUnit.Framework, which is often generated by adding the namespace automatically or using some template.

Click here to download CR_Commenter.zip v1.5
And here is the sourcecode for CR_Commenter v1.5

I also wanted to add an embed with region feature, but it is already pretty simple with CodeRush if you know the hotkey: Select a block you want to build a region around (e.g. a method, you can press ctrl+shift+up/down quickly select the method). Then just press Ctrl+R, thats it.

If you are using CodeRush (and you need it for my Commenter) you should also check out these new CodeRush tutorial Videos from Developer Express, they are pretty cool and informative.

I've also checked out the Boo Programming Language today after playing around with IronPython the last couple of days. Boo is really cool and introduces a couple of ideas I agree 100% with. I have to try it out a bit more. One major problem is the fact there is no Visual Studio addin and typing in some editor or the console is no fun at all. A plugin for MonoDevelop and SharpDevelop does exist (and is actually implemented in the latest versions), but while these are very good open source IDEs, I'm a Visual Studio user and have a lot of addins I would miss in any other editor.

I use also use UltraEdit, which is pretty cool and can be used for all kinds of shit (not only text, hex, html, but also millions of source code formats). However, the Boo language is missing syntax highlighting support in UltraEdit (while almost 1 million other languages are supported). I just wrote this little wordfile myself for UltraEdit Boo syntax highlighting support: boo.txt, just add it to your UltraEdit wordfile.txt file.

Again: Boo is a cool language. I heard of it at the PDC, where I saw even the developer in some session, but I never checked it really out (maybe it was too Linux oriented for me). Maybe I will try to convert the SharpDevelop addin to Visual Studio if noone else does it (because I would really want that feature when coding in Boo). I still like Lua and Python too, but they don't have any intellisense support either, which is one of the main reasons I haven't switched over to writing more in those languages instead of c# right now.