Day 37: Polishing ExportJPEGs

Added lots of exception handling to ExportJPEGs, now it will rarely crash from I/O file and directory issues, but rather print a hopefully useful error message (see below) and continue provided the problem isn't fatal.

Added a bunch of methods for handling the red label text and using it to show errors and messages when the program is running:
setLabel(String text)
setPersistentLabel(String text, int time) <- time is how long the label persists
setPersistentLabel(String text) <- time defaults to 5 seconds if not present
renderLabel()

This affects the large red text at the top of the screen, which prints useful messages and prompts when necessary. Via these methods you can set the text to anything you like, normally once it is set to something the label stays like that until something else sets it to something different. Now you can set a persistent label where it will not allow anything to change it until a certain time has passed (except another persistent label call). This is useful for e.g. printing error messages that you want to make absolutely sure will stay on the screen for a number of seconds.

Also the render label method splits long text over multiple lines and renders it. Previously if the label was too long it simply went off the end of the screen, now you can actually see the whole message.

Also added functionality to load all existing models at startup. If when the program starts up, the incoming folder has any models in it then the program will prompt the user whether to load existing models or ignore them. The user can then choose to load the existing models or ignore them. It's all done quite nicely and intuitively in the GUI. So now if there are a bunch of heads we want to show up from the get go, or if the program shuts down and has to restart, you can safely get all the heads back as long as you have the original models. On that train of thought, I also set ExportJPEGs to clean out the built heads folder on startup. So if heads had previously been built before starting the program now, they won't get loaded up again. This prevents LowryDemo from auto-loading old heads and from wasting storage space. Hmm actually I think I can improve this.. Okay we'll see how this goes.

Now making a separate background thread to check for files on the server every so often, this way when downloading files it won't freeze the GUI.

Also set the upload gif part of the program to always use unique gif names. In this way no gifs can possibly be overwritten.

The way the server file sync thing will work is that the push script on the 123D machine will have an exact representation of the server folder. So anything not in the folder in the push (outgoing) directory will be deleted off the server. In this way the 123D people have full control over the models that are on the server and can replace them. If a model is replaced, the AR/ExportJPEGs program will notice and build it again (it won't replace it's old model on the list though, once a model is built it's there for good). At the end of the day, if they want to clean up the server folder just empty the outgoing directory and wait for the script to update (which will probably be set to do so once a minute).

Importantly, the 123D people MUST NOT EDIT OR RENAME TEXTURES AFTER THEY HAVE BEEN EXPORTED from 123D. Just export and send them as is, if any texture is renamed after being exported then it won't work. You can rename models though but I strongly suggest just exporting and sending as is. It's best the 123D people export directly into the outgoing folder.


Anyway, all these details plus anything important will be packed into a little user manual shortly, for the future operators of the wondrous 123D-AR demo.