DSP Robotics Support

Hello everyone!

This is my attempt at creating a virtual Tone Generator Organ, without using samples of course.

I’ve taken a more “conventional” approach to Martin Vicanek’s remarkable one here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8580&start=0

I don’t know if the world needs yet another Hammond plugin, but I did it anyway!

Download:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hrcojb7w ... ikg7k&dl=0

Video:

https://youtu.be/TlINuYqThjo

I saw the guy complaining that his 15 year old system doesn't have the font needed. While I personally wouldn't support any outdated OS, that had no support updates since 2020 and no security updates since January 2023, I made a quick litlle module. Nothing difficult or complex to create, but it allows you to enter a font name and to get a boolean (true = font is missing, false = everything is fine).

It searches the installed fonts on the system for the name entered in regexp form. That means it matches a pattern. If you enter "Segoe UI", it will find every font, that has this pattern in its name, like Segoe UI Italic or Segoe UI Display and so on. So make sure to enter as exactly as possible. For example, Segoe UI Black will find only those, who contain the additional Black.

You could use the boolean to pop up a bitmap (don't use a text, as the font is missing!) telling the user to install the font in question. Or you could set all fonts in the schematic rather than in properties. This would allow you to replace all fonts at once with a fallback font (for example, if Segoe UI is missing, then Arial is the system font).

Think about it though. You would support something that even the creators don't support anymore. For a good reason.

That’s brilliant tulamide! Thank you so much!
I’ve used it to switch to Times New Roman and to display a notice if my chosen font isn’t on the system. I checked and Times New Roman is on all Windows versions. I originally chose Arial Narrow, but that only gets installed with MS Office. Regular Arial didn’t show correctly on my TWG, due to size and formatting.
Times New Roman doesn’t look very good but at least you can read the labels!

Spogg wrote:That’s brilliant tulamide! Thank you so much!
I’ve used it to switch to Times New Roman and to display a notice if my chosen font isn’t on the system. I checked and Times New Roman is on all Windows versions. I originally chose Arial Narrow, but that only gets installed with MS Office. Regular Arial didn’t show correctly on my TWG, due to size and formatting.
Times New Roman doesn’t look very good but at least you can read the labels!

Great! This is a very fine user service. Even if for a system that most DAWs don't support anymore

I should mention, that I am so used to the flawlessly working alpha version, that I forgot about the FS 3 quirks. When opening a schematic, all inputs are string inputs. Only at the stage of 'afterload' do they get intialized correctly. In this case to an array.
This has no consequences for your plugin, but you should be aware of it, because Ruby will (rightfully so) complain that a string doesn't have the grep method that I use (only arrays have them). This is a silent error message, because right after this error, the correct array is initialized and everything works fine.
However, in the schematic, if you go inside the module it will notice the Ruby error and now give this red alert on the higher layer. Should that happen, just re-connect to the Ruby input, which solves the issue.

Needless to say, none of this happens in the alpha.

Awesome work....the Spogg "genius" seems to have no end...
must be something in the water in Birminghamshire

Oh my! I'm using Flowstone since 2013 or so. You would think, you've become an expert in over a decade. But no, instead I still learn something new every now and then.

For example, today I found out, that my solution to your problem is already built into the Font prim (should you make use of it). Just provide an alternative typeface at the appropriate input (see image below).

tulamide wrote: ... today I found out, that my solution to your problem is already built into the Font prim (should you make use of it). Just provide an alternative typeface at the appropriate input ...

I didn’t know about that either! Always something new to learn, eh?

However, your Ruby system is way better in my view. I can tell the user they don’t have the right font installed and use it to change the wireless font name string to send to all my knobs etc.
I guess you could use a “string equal” comparison, but your solution is far more elegant.