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Upgrade of .NET version of tools

arno

arno

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As I already mentioned in this blog post from the end of last year, I am going to upgrade the .NET version that the tool use. Currently the tool use .NET Framework 4.8, but while developing I notice that a lot of third party library are nowadays only available for more recent .NET version. For example the latest version of the Assimp library that is used to read various 3D formats (like COLLADA, FBX) is not available as an easy package for the .NET version I use now. And also when working on the mesh optimization compression of glTF file I noticed that libraries to support this compression are only available for recent .NET versions.

Therefore I have decided that I will upgrade my tools to the current long term support (LTS) version of .NET. At the moment .NET 8.0 is the LTS version. Every two years Microsoft releases a new LTS version, so my intend is to keep track with that. That means every two years the tool will update the .NET version they use to the current LTS version.

I do realize that this change does affect certain users, as has been discussed on the forum already. .NET 8.0 is only available for Windows 10 and Windows 11. So this means that users still running older Windows versions will have to use the older (stable) releases that still target the older .NET version. But given that Microsoft is no longer supporting these old OS versions (even Windows 10 will be end of life later this year), I think the right decision is to switch to an actively supported .NET version now.

The last two weeks I have been working on the migration to .NET 8.0 already and I have all applications and the unit tests running in the new version now. I need to do some more testing to ensure that the functionality is working correctly, but I hope to release the update in a week or two from now. I will post another announcement when the release is imminent, but I wanted to inform all of you now already about the upcoming change.

Continue reading...
 
I did not really change the interface, the only difference is that it was compiled with a different .NET version. But I agree it looks better this way.
 
I have a problem opening the tool. Is this normal or what ?

thanks arno In your work

Screenshot_1.jpg
 
The first time you start the tool this window is normal, but you should have some buttons to continue and accept the license.

Let me check if I can reproduce this. Do you use a scaling in your display settings?
 
Hello Arno

The screen was 175 scaling wide and when I set it to 100 scaling everything appeared and now it works
 
Let me check how I can make MCX respect that scaling correctly.
 
I can confirm Sami AL's problem, but I had just enough of the buttons visible to click past it.

Arno: not to preempt you, but I do have a chunk of vb.Net code that figures out both screen resolution and the screen the application is running on if the user has multiple monitors. If you're working in C# it's an easy conversion. Any use?
 
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I would suspect that .NET can take care of the scaling by itself, I need to check why for this form that doesn't work as desired.
 
Just a thought; if you were developing on a monitor where Windows resolution is set to (say) 125% and you have not restarted Visual Studio with 100% (no typo) scaling, that's the sort of result you will get. Been there... oops! :)
 
I did come along this interesting post and I'm not following that advice in all of my forms. So I'm going to check them all at let's say 150% to see which ones have issues. I usually work at 100% myself, so that's why I didn't see it.

stackoverflow.com

How to write WinForms code that auto-scales to system font and dpi settings?

Intro: There's a lot of comments out there that say "WinForms doesn't auto-scale to DPI/font settings well; switch to WPF." However, I think that is based on .NET 1.1; it appears they act...
stackoverflow.com stackoverflow.com
 
The new version of MCX has beeen installed without the need of .NET 8.0 but to be compliant in the future, I search .NET 8.0 to install it on my Windows 10 64bits.
I just find it here: [EDITED] https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../runtime-desktop-8.0.14-windows-x64-installer and it was installed with administrator rights, of course !

By testing MCX following these 2 installations, I could see a new version this morning so I re-downloaded this one. When launching the latest version of MCX (1.8.250321-devel) the screens describing the new version reappeared and the MCX screen had the same problem as that described by SAMI #4 (my screen is confgured at 125%). This said the last version is perfectly functional.

My two cents.
 
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This is the official download page from Microsoft:

dotnet.microsoft.com

Download .NET 8.0 (Linux, macOS, and Windows) | .NET

.NET 8.0 downloads for Linux, macOS, and Windows. .NET is a free, cross-platform, open-source developer platform for building many different types of applications.
dotnet.microsoft.com dotnet.microsoft.com

The latest version of the runtime installer is 8.0.14, not 8.0.8 like you linked to above.
 
arno said:
I did come along this interesting post and I'm not following that advice in all of my forms. So I'm going to check them all at let's say 150% to see which ones have issues. I usually work at 100% myself, so that's why I didn't see it.

stackoverflow.com

How to write WinForms code that auto-scales to system font and dpi settings?

Intro: There's a lot of comments out there that say "WinForms doesn't auto-scale to DPI/font settings well; switch to WPF." However, I think that is based on .NET 1.1; it appears they act...
stackoverflow.com stackoverflow.com
Click to expand...
Be somewhat careful following that advice. The post is nine years old and a lot has changed since then.
 
True, but a lot of my code is 15 years old and I do mainly see issue on forms where i did set a minimum and maximum size to prevent resizing and other related things that are not recommended.
 
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I'm working on this issue now. By removing the maximum form size that is hard coded and adjusting the auto scaling mode it works a lot better in most forms already. On some I had to redesign them a bit more. But it is coming along nicely, so should be done in not that long from now.
 
Hello All ..

The issue still persists when the screen is set to 175%.
I downloaded the latest MCX 1.8.250321 release, but this problem only occurred during installation. After that everything was fine. I'm using Windows 11 Pro 64-bit, with a screen resolution of 3200 x 2000. My device also has NET 8.0.14 and 9 installed.
I have a question Arno regarding the attached object editor light spot Why isn't the light moving by dragging with the mouse better than by directing with numbers ? his is an old method
This would make the process faster.
I hope you pay attention to this and develop it. Thank you for the work you do arno
 
I have only finished the fix to check all forms at a display scaling greater than 100% today, so it's not yet in the development release. It will be in the next one. There were more forms affected than the license form.

As for editing the spot light with the mouse. The MCX preview never has been designed for interactive editing. It's on the wishlist to add it, but I don't think it will be that easy.

And I guess it's also my personal preference, I usually prefer precise control by entering numbers instead of less precise WYSIWYG editing.
 
And it’s very difficult to drag with a mouse when you’re in three dimensions.
 
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