Tuesday, March 21, 2006

KMLImporter and PlaneTracker fixed

KMLImporter fixed
Version 28 of KMLImporter (finally) fixes periodic update support for NetworkLinks.
Thanks to James for putting me on the right path!

PlaneTracker fixed
Thanks to Anonymous poster for noticing the incompatibility with other plugins like the measure tool
Version 0.29 fixes this minor bug

Friday, March 17, 2006

PlaneTracker updated with new airports

MIA (Miami) and SEA (Seattle) have been added to PlaneTracker to bring you even more planes
Version 0.28 is available here

Friday, March 10, 2006

Advanced WorldWind plugin file support

Recently I got the need for more ways to load files from a WorldWind plugin. Which is why I added both Drag&Drop and command line support for plugins. Note that you’ll need the latest version of WorldWind to get these features to work right. Command line support doesn’t work in 1.3.3 at all, but I’ll provide a compatible way that will at least allow the plugin to load in older versions. It’s possible to have 1.3.3 support Drag&Drop but the experience will likely be flaky.

So lets start off with some code to handle files that are passed in from the command line. This is useful if you want to make WorldWind the primary or alternative file handler for a specific type of file in windows explorer. This will automatically work if you’re using a version that has the correct property, and otherwise skip over the argument handling code. You’d generally use this code in the Load method of your plugin, though it could be used just about anywhere.

// Some magic to provide backward compatibility
Type typecontroller = typeof(MainApplication);
System.Reflection.PropertyInfo finfo = typecontroller.GetProperty("CmdArgs", BindingFlags.Static|BindingFlags.Public|BindingFlags.GetProperty);
string[] args = null;
if
(finfo != null)
args = (string[])finfo.GetValue(null, null);
if (args != null)
{
// use args here (args is a string array containing all command line arguments)
}

Drag&Drop support is slightly more complicated. I’ve made a simple demonstration plugin that handles dropping a .jpg file by showing a simple MessageBox for which the source code is available here. I also updated KMLImporter to go hand in hand with this great new functionality.

WorldWind source repository switched from CVS to SVN

The WorldWind source code versioning is now powered by SVN
To checkout point your favorite SVN client to https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/nasa-exp
If you experience difficulties there’s some clues in the SVN mailing list post

Thursday, March 02, 2006

KMLImporter development continues

I know I've been silent, but KMLImporter development hasn't stopped
In fact, the version number has gone up to 23 already!
Even worse, I can't even remember what changed and I didn't keep a log
So changes to the plugin are:
  • Internal icons are fixed
  • Awsome new internal icons are used (and included)
  • NetworkLinks (non-updating for now)
  • Stuff (and LOTS of it)
Get it at http://www.twobeds.com/shockfire/WW-Rel/KMLImporter23.zip

Monday, February 06, 2006

KMLImporter progress

Even though I didn't entirely fix the problem that was keeping me from adding KMZ support,
I'm still going to give you version 9 which has KMZ support after a small workaround
Major new features are 'native' KMZ support and icon scaling
To get this plugin to work on anything older than the latest WorldWind build:
Extract the plugin as usual, then copy ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib.dll to your main WW directory
Plugin available at: http://www.twobeds.com/shockfire/WW-Rel/KMLImporter9.zip

Saturday, February 04, 2006

KMLImporter support extended

KMLImporter support extended
I've extended KMLImporter placemark with lots of small and not so small features
Most notable are support for folders and icons from disk
This means that you can now simply extract a KMZ file with a tool like WinRAR,
KMLImporter will then be able to find the extracted icons when you load the extracted KML
There have been lots of small fixes regarding styles, so just about any KML with icons should load now
A new version is available at http://www.twobeds.com/shockfire/WW-Rel/KMLImporter7.zip

SideWind progress
First of all I have to 'correct' myself:
SideWind is not being developed by them but by us, meaning me and a friend
(we will also be joined by various others, but we form the main development team)
I admit the posts on this subject were rather inconclusive on this part
There is certainly progress on SW, there's just no coding going on just yet
We are busy planning and investigating though, and I hope there's something to post sometime soon