Q: skinning V4.

I doubt it Robert,

By all appearances Logos is drawing on the screen through some unusual ways; and I'm rather certain that part of that completely bypasses the methods "normal" windows programs use to draw themselves.  Already it does not look and act like a standard windows app.  The title bar for instance doesn't extend as an upper frame around the window but instead terminates at the search button. 

I use a program called Ultra-VNC for remote controlling other computers in my house, including my (headless) beta laptop.  VNC works with pretty much every windows program I own, except for L4.

I can see L4 in VNC but I cannot see any of the menus or dialogs.  I reported it somewhere here, but I don't think it's really a bug so much as a function of the way windows are drawn.  I suspect the dialogs at least are drawn on the same kind of screen buffer that some media programs use to draw video, and in a sense circumventing normal draw routines.

Thanks Bob,

I'll look into what it takes for VNC to work with WPF then.

Ah, very cool.  After a bit of time devoted to reading on WPF and VNC I can see why WPF really is a much better way of drawing windows, especially in terms of remoting.  The issue is that right now very few remoting protocols take advantage of either the DirectX foundation of WPF or XAML for transmitting UI data.  They all still rely upon some form of bitmap rendering and distribution.

Ultra-VNC does work (and quite faster than Microsofts built in RDP) if you make sure the server is set to "enable alpha blending".

 

No clue what you just said...but I'm glad you understand it :-)

No clue what you just said...but I'm glad you understand it :-)

Me too [:)]

Ah, very cool.  After a bit of time devoted to reading on WPF and VNC I can see why WPF really is a much better way of drawing windows, especially in terms of remoting.  The issue is that right now very few remoting protocols take advantage of either the DirectX foundation of WPF or XAML for transmitting UI data.  They all still rely upon some form of bitmap rendering and distribution.

Ultra-VNC does work (and quite faster than Microsofts built in RDP) if you make sure the server is set to "enable alpha blending".

Shall I attempt to clarify or not? [:)] 

Well here's my attempt to clarify the "blah blah Logos blah."  It probably won't be very helpful though.

WPF is "the way windows are drawn" in particular as Bob revealed Logos4 uses WPF draw itself onto the screen.  The letters mean "Windows presentation foundation." 

As I understand what I've read, WPF is built on top of DirectX which I've only ever experienced in connection with games but which is again a way of drawing graphics on the screen.  Everything you see in any program is in one way or another a graphic that must be drawn on your screen.

Think of it in layers.  The foundation layer is DirectX > the next layer is WPF> and WPF uses a language called XAML to communicate what should appear on screen.

When I mention "Remoting" I mean "seeing and running a computer remotely through the network on another machine."  To accomplish this you need special software.

VNC is "Virtual Network Computing".  VNC basically allows me to run another computer visually across the network.  In other words I have a VNC window on my desktop that let's me see and work at my laptop as if I were sitting at it. 

VNC is a free and opensource alternative to RDP which is microsoft's "Remote Desktop Protocol".  If you've ever used terminal services with windows to either ask for help, or let someone help you at your computer remotely than you've seen it at work.  Again VNC and RDP are competing ways of seeing another computer from the computer you are at.

In the above picture you can see in the lower right corner I'm running windows 7.  I have a few windows open including this one. 

In the main window you can see a windowsXP desktop, that is my laptop running windows XP but visible on my main computer through VNC.

My laptop has no screen (it broke) so everything I do with it, I have to do through VNC.

In particular I use a program called "ultraVNC".  There are several VNC programs out there, this is one of them.

The key to getting Ultra VNC to work with Logos4 which uses WPF is to enable "alpha-blending" which is another way of saying "transparency".  With Blending enabled, the pictures drawn by WPF (Logos menus etc) are now visible through UVNC. 

Unfortunately it doesn't seem that either RDP or VNC make the best use of WPF because they still use some kind of picture (bitmap) instead of just information.  XAML is the text based language used by WPF to communicate what get's drawn on the screen and where.

Think about a web page that was only one large picture file.  Every word, every color, everything you click all of it.  That site would SLOW to load.  But websites are not exclusively graphics.  They are also text.  XAML is essentially the text.  Since it's faster to send text over a network than it is a picture, RDP and VNC would both benefit greatly from WPF if they could understand the the XAML language that it uses.  Instead they just send pictures over the network. 

UltraVNC at least overcomes the lack of understanding XAML by interpreting WPF as transparency drawn on the screen and is able to capture it.

I don't know if my description helps but it's the best I can manage with my own quite limited knowledge of the topic.