What’s inside Pixopedia 2014 and “unpopular” necessary steps in further development.
Pixopedia 2014 is build with Borland Builder 6 (C++), which is quite outdated (released in 2002). Besides that, I’m extensively using ImageEn comonents (www.imageen.com), Intel Image Processing Library (which is outdated and replaced by IPP) and SciTech MGL library, used for drawing graphics primitives (fast, but totaly outdated).
ImageEn component I’m currently using is version 3.0.6. I have a new version 5.0.6, but I’m waiting for version 5.0.7. (some bugs will be fixed) and then I’ll move to version 5.0.7. New version will give much more control and possibilites (especially with undo buffer options, as I can check if memory is fragmented or not).
Regarding IPL, I’ll stick to this one for a while, as it’s subsidary IPP is not free and moving to IPP depends mostly on donations.
Also, I’ll stick to MGL until I find appropriate substitution or write my own low-level drawing routines. In order to open the door to 64-bit Pixopedia version, I’ll have to get rid ogf MGL, as it supports only 32-bit processors.
And now, the “unpopular” option: moving to new C++ platform, i.e. to Embarcadero C++ XE5. Why unpopular? Because, it creates exe that’s almost 3 times bigger then current one and I’m not particulary fond of bloated exes that are usual these days: a program with installation around 500MB and up? What does it contain? It comes bundled with cappuccion machine, or what?
Neverthelles, it seems I’m foreced to take that “fat exe” path, as Unicode is now standard and some GUI components I use are not any more supported for BCB6. Also, any 64-bit version of Pixopedia, will not be possible without porting code to XE5.
So, few more versions in BCB6 and I’ll move to XE5. Of course, I’ll try to shrink exe as much as possible.