i3 WM: Default Workspace Settings

I've been playing around with the i3 window manager a lot lately, and I have to say I enjoy it very much! But one default setting that tripped me up (as set by i3-config-wizard) was the key bindings for workspace switching:

bindsym $mod+1 workspace 1
bindsym $mod+2 workspace 2
bindsym $mod+3 workspace 3
# ...

This works well until you start naming your workspaces. With these bindings, you will switch to workspace name "1", not number "1". So if you rename workspace 1 to "1: Firefox" and press Mod5+1, you'll end up opening a new workspace instead of going to the "1: Firefox" workspace. Not very intuitive! Luckily, we can easily get the desired behavior with a slight tweak to the config file:

bindsym $mod+1 workspace number 1
bindsym $mod+2 workspace number 2
bindsym $mod+3 workspace number 3
# ...

2012 and still no multi-monitor lovin'...

For the past week, I've been giving Windows 8 a serious try.  I've dabbled with the various preview versions, but now it's time to try the released version.  I've read the reviews, saw the mixed reactions to the new "Modern UI", and decided to see for myself how I feel about it. Generally speaking, I don't mind the new interface.  My usual method of launching a program was pressing the Win key, typing the first few letters of the application name, and then hitting Enter.  Still works in the Start Screen.  Start Menu vs. Start Screen, it doesn't bother me.  Except for one little detail...

... the complete lack of multi-monitor support in the Modern UI!

Simply put, there can only be one full-screen Modern UI app displayed at a time.  So if I open, say, Mail on one screen and attempt to open Maps on another screen, the screen showing Mail will go back to the desktop.  To make matters worse, the Start Screen counts as a Modern UI app in this regard.  If I have Mail open on one screen and try to open the Start Screen on another screen to launch an application, the screen showing Mail goes back to the desktop and I have to alt+tab back to it.  Talk about a disruption in my workflow!

Did I mention my main desktop is triple-head?  It comes in handy for coding.  All of the Windows 8 reviews I read talk about the pros and cons of the new Modern UI, but I rarely see any reference to the complete lack of multi-monitor support in it.  I'm not sure if this is just a feature oversight, or a more fundamental limitation in the model used for WinRT apps.   Is there a fundamental technical limitation in the operating system that prevents multiple Modern UI apps to be visible at the same time? If the Modern UI is the future, I sure hope they get this fixed ASAP!  For now, it's easy enough to just avoid Modern UI apps altogether, but what happens in the future when I find an app I want to keep open on one of my screens?

Perhaps more disturbing, this is becoming a trend in mainstream operating systems.  While Windows 8 has this limitation for Modern UI apps, full-screen apps in Mac OS X are not really any better.  If I full-screen an application in a multi-monitor configuration, I get that app on one monitor and a pretty background on all others.  I would much rather have the ability to put multiple apps in full-screen mode side-by-side, or perhaps have the option to have a full-screen app next to a desktop workspace on another monitor.  At least I can have multiple workspaces, though.

Perhaps I'm just too adjusted to my Linux multi-monitor configurations...

UnrealScript: Brace Placement Matters!

I was playing around with the Unreal Development Kit this evening, and discovered a rather interesting quirk in the handling of braces within UnrealScript.  All of the sample code I read use a syntax style that places opening braces on the following line:

event PostBeginPlay()
{
  // Do something
}

However, my typical style places the opening brace on the current line:

event PostBeginPlay() {
  // Do something
}

Unfortunately, this does not seem to work for defaultproperties blocks. If you place the brace on the same line, the compiler will not give you any warnings or errors, but the entire defaultproperties block is just ignored!

So this code works:

defaultproperties
{
  PlayerControllerClass=class'MyPlayerController'
}

while the following code compiles but silently just ignores all of the contained settings:

defaultproperties {
  PlayerControllerClass=class'MyPlayerController'
}

I was banging my head on the wall for at least an hour figuring this one out!

I hope this can help prevent someone else from repeating my mistake.

Space Hogs Binary Release

I've converted my old Space Hogs game project to XNA 4.0 (it was originally written in XNA 1.0). There were enough API changes to make it a pain, but I think I have everything working now.

This game was developed by myself, Jason Kim, Joseph Ahn, Vjekoslav Kovacevic, and Daniel Guinn for a computer animation class during Winter Quarter 2007.

You can find a zip file here. This requires XNA 4.0 and the February 2010 DX packages to be installed on your machine. For convenience, I've included both of the redistributable packages in the zip file.

The source can be found on BitBucket.

Enjoy!

Direct3D 11 with Qt 4

(If you're in a hurry, the full source can be found on my BitBucket account)

When it comes to GUI frameworks for C++, it's very hard to beat Qt.  It's modular, easy to use, and available on practically any desktop system (and even a few mobile systems).  The MOC'ing can get a bit annoying, but IDE and command-line support is very mature at this point.  However, only OpenGL is supported currently for real-time 3D rendering. If you want to render to a Qt widget from a Direct3D 11 device, you end up having to do a lot of setup yourself.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of information out on the internet about setting up Direct3D to play nice with Qt.  Most of the information is either out-dated, or only applies to Direct3D 9.  Lately, I've been playing around with this and I want to share my method for combining Direct3D 11 and Qt.

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class D3DRenderWidget : public QWidget {
  Q_OBJECT
  Q_DISABLE_COPY(D3DRenderWidget)
public:
  D3DRenderWidget(QWidget* parent = NULL);
  virtual ~D3DRenderWidget();
  virtual QPaintEngine* paintEngine() const { return NULL; }
protected:
  virtual void resizeEvent(QResizeEvent* evt);
  virtual void paintEvent(QPaintEvent* evt);
};

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D3DRenderWidget::D3DRenderWidget(QWidget* parent)
  : QWidget(parent) {
  setAttribute(Qt::WA_PaintOnScreen, true);
  setAttribute(Qt::WA_NativeWindow, true);

  // Create Device
  createDevice();
}

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swapChainDesc_.BufferCount = 1;
swapChainDesc_.BufferDesc.Width = width();
swapChainDesc_.BufferDesc.Height = height();
swapChainDesc_.BufferDesc.Format = DXGI_FORMAT_R8G8B8A8_UNORM;
swapChainDesc_.BufferUsage = DXGI_USAGE_RENDER_TARGET_OUTPUT;
swapChainDesc_.SampleDesc.Count = 4;
swapChainDesc_.SampleDesc.Quality = 0;
swapChainDesc_.Windowed = true;
swapChainDesc_.OutputWindow = winId();
swapChainDesc_.BufferDesc.RefreshRate.Numerator = 60;
swapChainDesc_.BufferDesc.RefreshRate.Denominator = 1;

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void D3DRenderWidget::paintEvent(QPaintEvent* evt) {
  render();
}

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void D3DRenderWidget::resizeEvent(QResizeEvent* evt) {
  releaseBuffers();
  swapChain_->ResizeBuffers(1, width(), height(), swapChainDesc_.BufferDesc.Format, 0);
  swapChain_->GetDesc(&swapChainDesc_);
  viewport_.Width = width();
  viewport_.Height = height();
  createBuffers();
}