WebDialog.write_image troubles.

bwerst

I'm trying to create web dialogs to display component information that I would like to be able to save as an image which can then be placed into a model. The purpose is to get rich text instead of the limitations of the text box or 3D text tools.

The idea was started after pondering a suggestion of ThomThom's to use WebDialogs.

So I created a really generic html file called 'wrwtools/generictest.html':


<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
	<head>
		<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
		<title>Generic HTML Test Page</title>
	</head>
	<body>
		<h1>Basic Web Dialog</h1>
		<table>
			<tr><th>&nbsp;</th><th>Value</th></tr>
			<tr><td>DMX Address</td><td>123</td></tr>
			<tr><td>Channel</td><td>101</td></tr>
			<tr><td>Fixture Number</td><td>32</td></tr>
		</table>
	</body>
</html>

Then I created a very generic test application script:


require 'sketchup.rb'

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
module WRW_textpanes
  # Global variable for where export images will go.
  # Global variable for where template files are stored.

  ### MENU & TOOLBARS ### --------------------------------------------------
  
  unless file_loaded?( File.basename(__FILE__) )
    root_menu = ($wrw_menu) ? $wrw_menu ; UI.menu('Plugins')
    root_menu.add_item('Web Dialog Write Test')  { self.webdialogwritetest }
  end
  
  def self.webdialogwritetest
    html_dialog = UI;;WebDialog.new("Web Dialog Test", true,"", 700, 600, 150, 150, true);
    path = Sketchup.find_support_file "wrwtools/generictest.html","Plugins"
    html_dialog.set_file path
    html_dialog.show
    
    # Simple html dialog shown now see if it will save.

     html_dialog.write_image "c;/production/sketchup/wrwtesting/shouldbewebdialog.jpg"
  end
    
end #module
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
file_loaded( File.basename(__FILE__) )

I was hoping shouldbewebdialog.jpg would be an image of the simple html instead I'm getting an image that is blank tan box about 300x300 in size. Its kind of like an empty messages portion of the "ruby console" dialog box.

I did have additional x,y,height,width type values after the filename, but removed them after reading this post http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=17047&start=285#p231504 but I'm still getting the same results.

I'd appreciate any help.

thomthom

I'm guessing that the Webdialog is not given time to generate the content before you try to make a screenshot of it.

I think you need to add a JS that uses the window.onload to make a callback back to your Ruby script telling you it's ready.

You could also try to provide a block with WebDialog.show - but I'm not sure if this event is triggered after the content loaded. And I've had problems with this on OSX.

TIG

Using dialog.show{###do the stuff} does run 'the stuff' after the dialog loads, you can always add a sleep(0.333) as the first thing in the {} block so that things are definitely visible...

thomthom

@tig said:

Using dialog.show{###do the stuff} does run 'the stuff' after the dialog loads, you can always add a sleep(0.333) as the first thing in the {} block so that things are definitely visible...

Won't sleeping the Ruby script prevent the webdialog from doing anything as well?

TIG

NO... the html is loaded separately and ignores the sleep().
You can see this if you have a simple html - let it set a piece if text with an id="text1" and value="cat" in the html.
Then need a ' populate()' def in your ruby script that changes that id "text" to value="dog".

def populate()
  js=("document.getElementById(\"text1\").setAttribute(\"value\",\"dog\");")
  @dlg.execute_script(js)
end

Then you use something like...
@dlg.show{sleep(5);self.populate()}
The html's web-dialog opens and it says 'cat'... then after 5 seconds it changes to say 'dog'...

AdamB

you sure, TIG?

I'm certain I tried doing a html+js progress bar and found its actually run from inside the Ruby execution loop.

Dan Rathbun

Hold everything... your all going down the wrong path.

It's a bug in the write_image method.
I detailed all the funky things that didn't work in one of the topics.. likely the API docs topic.

Ok link: UI::WebDialog.write_image (API Doc typos and questions)

TIG

@adamb said:

you sure, TIG?
I'm certain I tried doing a html+js progress bar and found its actually run from inside the Ruby execution loop.

Yes I've just done it!
Sleeping will slow the changes to the displayed dialog but it won't stop it loading as it is currently set...