A stumbling block to the whiteboard
I’m getting closer to releasing the Silverlight ink-based whiteboard app. I did run into a stumbling block though. Along the way I realized a pattern with inking on UMPCs. Every now and then the ink appears to get “behind.” You don’t see a stroke until you start drawing the next stroke.
This bug appears quite often after changing a pen style or selecting the eraser tool. Or even when someone else inks something. It appears that the state of the InkPresenter is getting messed up.
I did notice that the InkPresenter on the UMPC doesn’t get a mouse down event on a mouseenter event. That’s a bummer. It impacts the state of the InkPresenter after selecting a tool in the toolbar. I’m not sure if this is a bug in the driver or not. Either way, I need to figure out a way around this.
Anyway, while trying to get the UMPCs to work better with the whiteboard, I added some nasty timing bugs. I don’t know how I did this, but I did. Now the code works fine on my test machine, but lousy on the actual server. That’s the way it goes. So now I have some more debugging to do.
I have no idea how long it’s going to take to fix the problems I’ve introduced–maybe a few days, maybe a week. I hope not too long. I’d like to get this app up and running for everyone.
It’s a blast to use. Very simple. So far I’ve been playing tic-tac-toe with family members–and despite a few hiccups–all is going well. Now if I could just fix those last couple bugs…..