Timothy’s Brainwaves!

After much toying around with it today, I learned that FMOD’s WINCE API does not support MIDI or WMA.  I should have read the documentation.  WMA it was said to support on their website, but the documentation that came with the API’s were correct in saying they won’t work.  As the use of MP3 files for a program require a license (from my understanding including free projects), I have opted to use Ogg Vorbis for my sound format.

Freetip is a clone of Iambic’s tipper.  It was an excellent start for a first C# .NET CF project.  I learned the basics of Windows form programming – never did that before.  In the past I only used C++ and programmed console apps.  I’m still struggling with some of the basics such as classes.  But I know I’ll make it through.  Initially I was trying all sorts of methods to create an “Exit” button.  Took me about 3 hours just to find out that all I needed was 1 line of code “Close();”.  That was disheartening.  Also I didn’t know that there was a control called “numericupdown”.  I was using “domainupdown” and using it with an array in an attempt to do the same thing as a numericupdown.

So overall, the things I learned from this project are:

• How to close an application:  Close();
• How to round up:  System.Math.Ceiling(str);
• How to create a SmartDevice CAB installer.
• How to make menus.
• How to convert strings to another data type such as double or decimal.
• How to limit the number of decimal places: str.ToString(“F2″);
• How to create a dialog box: DialogResult result= MessageBox.Show(“Message”);
• How to use textbox, numericupdown, and checkbox controls as well as modifying properties of each such as “.text” or “.increment”.

As for today, I started work on Pocket Hymnal.  With the LORD’s help today I learn a bit on how Microsoft SQL 2005 mobile worked as well as how to interface with FMOD for audio playback.  Man that was confusing – took me about 6 hours to finally get it to work.  When using the wrapper class, make sure you use:

byte[] filenameBytes = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(filename + ‘\0′);

rather then:

byte[] filenameBytes = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(filename+null);

Also note that objects in C# seem to be casesensitive so “filenameBytes” is different from ”
“filenamebytes”.A tutorial on audio playback using C# with a FMOD wrapper class can be found here:
http://www.fmod.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4874&highlight=visual+studio+2005