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Desktop Paint ████████████████████████ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ If you like this program, please: Send us $40.00, the normal user fee for Desktop Paint. Registered users of Desktop Paint are entitled to phone support, notification of upgrades and good karma. When you register it, we'll send you a copy of the latest version. Please tell us the version number of your copy of Desktop Paint when you register. Our address can be found in the Registration section of this document. NOTE: Australian users of Desktop Paint should contact our Australian distributor, Budgetware, P.O. Box 496 Newtown NSW 2042. Phone (02) 519-4233 FAX (02) 516-4236. NOTE: British users of Desktop Paint should contact our UK distributor, The Public Domain & Shareware Library Ltd., Winscombe House, Beacon Road, Crowborough, Sussex, TN6 1UL, England, telephone 0892 663298, FAX 0892 667473, BBS 0892 661149. NOTE: Danish users of Desktop Paint should contact Prof Shareware, Benloese Skel 4 G, DK 4100, Ringsted, Denmark. NOTE: French users of Desktop Paint should contact our French distributor, DP Tool Club, 102 rue des fusilles, 59650 Villeneuve d'Ascq, France, telephone (33) 20 56 55 33, fax (33) 20 56 55 25. NOTE: German users of Desktop Paint should contact our German distributor, PD-SERVICE-LAGE, Postfach 1743, D-4937 Lage, West Germany. NOTE: We now have a bulletin board system. See the section on contacting Alchemy Mindworks for more information. ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ TABLE OF CONTENTS ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Introduction New Features of Release Three Running Desktop Paint A Word About Mice A Word About Memory and Desktop Paint File formats The Menus Desk menu File menu Edit menu Extra menu Text menu Font menu Tools menu Fill menu The Toolbox Configuring Desktop Paint Command Line Switches Fonts Managing Resources Contacting Alchemy Mindworks Inc. Registration Paying by credit card Source code availability and books Bundling Desktop Paint Shareware distributors Other Alchemy Mindworks shareware Revision History Legal Dogma INTRODUCTION ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Desktop Paint is a powerful, easy to use monochrome paint program. It's suitable for drawing original pictures and for editing previously scanned images. It will read and write files in most of the popular bitmapped image formats, including PCX, IMG, GIF, TIF and WPG, among others. Desktop Paint will prove especially useful for people who run desktop publishing software such as Ventura Publisher, PageMaker, Publish It and so on. It's equally applicable for users of high end word processors, such as WordPerfect. Unlike some commercial paint applications, Desktop Paint does not include every feature imaginable, and it won't occupy several megabytes of hard drive space. It also won't take you an eternity to learn. Its intuitive user interface makes it all but self- explanitory, and its on line help will let you get over rough spots quickly. Note that Desktop Paint will only create and work with monochrome files. Note also that it will only work with WPG files which contain bitmapped images. Desktop Paint is a paint program, rather than a drawing program. It does not support GEM, Corel Draw, Designer, DXF or EPS files. Unlike many other paint programs, Desktop Paint features complete XMS and EMS support. It will handle enormous images... pictures which unpack into several megabytes... if you have sufficient extended or expanded memory in your system. Desktop Paint requires a Microsoft compatible mouse and driver and one of the following display adapters: - Hercules - EGA - VGA You can run Desktop Paint on any PC, even really old 8088-based systems. It will prove a bit slow on very low end systems. Desktop Paint requires 640 kilobytes of memory, and two megabytes of XMS or EMS is desirable if you plan to work with large pictures. NEW FEATURES OF RELEASE THREE ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ This version of Desktop Paint has been completely rewritten, and now offers a whole bucketful of powerful new features and tools. Here's a quick overview. NEW AND IMPROVED TOOLS ───────────────────────────── Desktop Paint now offers a Lasso tool to select non-rectangular areas. This will allow you to crop irregular bits from your drawings, move them around, cut and paste them and so on. The Local Undo tool will allow you to selectively undo changes to a drawing. The Brush tool now uses user-defineable brushes. The Ellipse tool draws a rubberband ellipse as you move your mouse... it used to use a rubberband rectangle. The Text tool now draws text in black or white. The Fill tool can now reliably handle light fills. The Airbrush tool has better control and a variable size spray. It can spray in black and white. ON LINE HELP ─────────────────── If you get lost in Desktop Paint, open the Help section of the Desk menu... or just hit Alt H. Detailed heirarchical help is available on all aspects of using Desktop Paint. FULL SCREEN MODE ─────────────────────── Banish the tool box and use the full drawing area of your screen whenever you want to work on large areas of an image. You can flip between view modes instantly with the Full Screen item of the Extra menu... or just hit Alt F. QUICKER FONT SIZE SELECTION ────────────────────────────────── You won't have to open a dialog box to choose a font size in Desktop Paint three... all the font size selections can be found as items in the Text menu. QUICKER FILL SELECTION ───────────────────────────── You can choose a fill pattern instantly by pulling down the Fill menu. MORE FLEXIBLE GRID ───────────────────────── You can quickly toggle the grid on and off with Alt G. The origin of the grid is always anchored to the upper left corner of your image. You can set the grid horizontal and vertical frequency independantly. BETTER ZOOM ────────────────── The Zoom tool now allows you to pan over the working area of your picture. SELECTABLE MENU TYPE ─────────────────────────── You can choose either pull-down or drop-down menus. Pull down menus appear only as long as you hold your mouse down. Drop down menus remain until you've made a selection or clicked outside the menu to banish it. You can choose the type of menus you want through the Desktop Paint installer. NUDGE SELECTED AREAS ─────────────────────────── The cursor mover keys of your keyboard will move selected image fragments in any direction by one pixel at a time for accurate positioning. MORE FILE FORMATS ──────────────────────── Desktop Paint will now read and write files in twelve popular file formats: MacPaint, Ventura GEM/IMG, PCX, GIF, TIFF, WPG, MSP, IFF/LBM, BMP, PIC, TGA and Halo CUT. Registered users of the package can also add resources to edit self-displaying EXE pictures. FREE FONT TOOLKIT ──────────────────────── If you register Desktop Paint we'll send you the current version of the software and a copy of the Desktop Paint font toolkit. This will provide you with more fonts and some tools to help you convert fonts from other sources. RUNNING DESKTOP PAINT ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ You should place the following files in the directory you plan to keep Desktop Paint in. - DTPM.EXE The program - DTPM.RES Fonts and other resources - DTPM.DOC This document - GALLERY.RES Picture fragments - DTPINSTL.EXE The installer - EXAMPLE1.PCX A picture file - TEXTURE.PTN An alternate fill pattern set We'll discuss how to permanently configure Desktop Paint shortly using the DTPINSTL program, but for now it will run well enough right out of the box... or out of the ZIP. Type DTPM. When Desktop Paint has loaded you'll see a grey screen with a menu bar at the top. Click on one of the menu items to pull down a menu. If you have enabled pull down menus, drag the mouse pointer to the menu item you wish to select and release it. If you've enabled drop down menus, click on the item you wish to select. The function you've chosen will pop up. Chances are you already know how to work a menu bar. Desktop Paint assumes that your mouse has two buttons. In most cases, you'll be using the left one to click on things. On a two button mouse, drawing with the left button will produce black lines and drawing with the right button will produce white lines. If you have a three button mouse you might have to experiment a bit to see which button draws white lines. When you open a file under Desktop Paint, all the files in the current directory which match one of the supported file types will be visible in the file selector box. You can open any file by clicking on it and then by clicking on Ok. Note that if you attempt to open a file with more than two colours, Desktop Paint will complain. A work area will open on your screen. If the picture you want to work on is too big to fit on the screen all at once, scroll bars will appear to allow you to move the work area over your picture. If you wish to open a different picture, you must first select Close from the file menu to close your current picture and then select New or Open. You can return to DOS at any time by selecting Quit from the File menu. You can run Desktop Paint and load a file into it with one command from the DOS prompt. For example, if you wanted to edit a file called PICTURE.IMG, you could do this C>DTPM PICTURE.IMG This would run Desktop Paint and load the picture as if it had been loaded with the Open command from the File menu. Desktop Paint's dialog boxes will respond to the keyboard. If you hit the Enter key when a dialog box is visible, the box will respond as if you had clicked in the "Ok" box. If you hit Esc it will respond as if you had clicked in the "Cancel" box, assuming there is one. A WORD ABOUT MICE ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Desktop Paint is driven by the driver of a Microsoft or Microsoft-compatible mouse. The driver itself is what makes the arrow cursor appear. Most Microsoft-compatible mice, such as the Logitech mice, have complete implementations of the driver and will not prove to be a problem with Desktop Paint. Some very economical mice do not implement the graphic cursor. In these cases, Desktop Paint will appear to function but the cursor will not be visible. If this happens to you, you will probably find that getting a copy of the real Microsoft MOUSE.COM mouse driver and replacing the one for your mouse with it will solve the problem, and will make anything else you use your mouse with work a bit better as well. There are a very few clone mice which are sufficiently peculiar as to be unrecognizable by the Microsoft mouse driver. These mice will not work with Desktop Paint. You can usually find the latest version of the Microsoft mouse driver on bulletin boards. A WORD ABOUT MEMORY AND DESKTOP PAINT ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Desktop Paint is forever calling for and releasing blocks of memory. Each time it opens a window, displays a picture or an icon, responds to a mouse click and so on, it calls for at least a bit of memory. If you hear a click when you ask Desktop Paint to do something, this usually indicates that it could not find enough memory to do what you asked it. This may be because you're running it in restricted memory, or because most of your memory is occupied by a picture. If possible, you should not run Desktop Paint from a shell program, or shelled out of another application, as this will reduce the amount of memory it has available for its own use. In very cramped memory situations, you can free up a bit of memory by unselecting an area of your drawing if one is currently selected. Selecting things will be dealt with later in the discussion of the Selector tool. You can also free up any memory occupied by the clipboard by opening the Clipboard window from the Desk menu and selecting Clear. Note that if you attempt to quit Desktop Paint and there isn't enough memory to open the window that asks "Do you want to quit?", Desktop Paint will assume that you do and return you immediately to DOS. As such, you can't actually get trapped in it. FILE FORMATS ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Desktop Paint supports most of the popular image file formats. You can load an image from one format and save it to another. Note that most of these file formats can support colour images, which the monochrome version of Desktop Paint can't deal with. If you encounter an error reading a file, use the Get Info function fo the File menu to see how many colours it supports. MACPAINT FILES ───────────────────── MacPaintr files can come in two flavours. The most common one is straight ported MacPaint files, that is, files having the Macbinary header. The other is "headerless" files, these being the ones used with PFS:First Publisher. Desktop Paint reads both types, but if you convert a file from a different format to MacPaint format the file will be written in accordance with the setting of the MacBinary header field in DTPINSTL. You can override this with the appropriate command line switches. Files converted to the MacPaint format from other formats will be cropped or padded out as necessary to fit in the MacPaint format's 576 by 720 format. GEM/IMG FILES ──────────────────── There are actually quite a few variations on IMG files... they handle monochrome and grey level images. The primary application for IMG files is as the bitmapped image file format of Ventura Publisher. PCX FILES ──────────────── PCX files are used to hold images for Z-Soft's PC Paintbrush package. You can import the PCX files created by Desktop Paint into most desktop publishing and word processing packages. GIF FILES ──────────────── Desktop Paint supports both the 87a and 89a versions of the GIF standard. It will read the first image of GIF files having multiple images. By default Graphic Workshop writes GIF 89a files. If you require GIF 87a files, use the /G87 command line switch or set it up to write GIF 87a files using DTPINSTL. TIFF FILES ───────────────── The TIFF format offers lots of options to make it applicable to a wide variety of applications... which entails a certain amount of confusion, as well. You can get better control over all the nuances of TIFF files through Alchemy Mindworks' Graphic Workshop application, as discussed later in this document. Note that due to the wide variations among the programs which produce TIFF files, Desktop Paint would be lying rather badly if it claimed to be able to read all TIFF files. Specifically, it does not read Huffman or LZW compressed TIFF files as yet, as we haven't devised code to do this in a reasonable amount of space. WPG FILES ──────────────── These are the native import graphic files for WordPerfect. These files can contain both bitmaps and line art, or vector graphics. Desktop Paint can only deal with the bitmapped parts of them. WPG files which refuse to read with Desktop Paint are usually those which contain only vector elements and no bitmaps. MSP FILES ──────────────── These are the image files used by the paint program which came with Microsoft Windows version 2. Don't confuse these with PCX files... some versions of Windows 2 came with a Windows implementation of PC Paintbrush from ZSoft as well. The two programs... and the two file formats... are not compatible. MSP files are monochrome only. IFF/LBM FILES ──────────────────── These started out on the Amiga. The IFF file standard is extremely flexible, and allows all sorts of things besides images to be stored in IFF files. IFF files are found on the PC having been ported from Amiga systems. They are also created on the PC by several applications such as Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint package and Digital Vision's Computer Eyes video scanner board. In the first case they are given the extension LBM. In the second they are given the extension CE. The basic file structure is the same, however. Note that Desktop Paint only reads "pure" IFF files, and will not handle the countless variations on the format which have appeared on the Amiga. BMP FILES ──────────────── These are the files which are used as "wallpaper" under Windows 3. They can be created using the version of PC Paintbrush supplied with Windows. BMP files use no image compression, as the intention appears to be to make them fast to load. Plan on your BMP files being very large. PIC FILES ──────────────── These should not be confused with Lotus 1-2-3 PIC drawing files. PIC files are created by PC Paint (not PC Paintbrush) and are used by Grasp, among other things. They come in many flavours. Desktop Paint has been tested with the most common ones. In theory it should support them all, but that's only a theory. TGA FILES ──────────────── The Truevision Targa format is used by several high end paint programs and things like ray tracing packages. It can handle images with up to sixteen million unique colours. Very few monochrome TGA files exist. HALO CUT FILES ───────────────────── The CUT format is exceedingly awkward, and Desktop Paint makes a few assumptions about how CUT files will be used in order to make it workable. To begin with, CUT files don't know how many colours they have in them. They rely on a second file, called a PAL file, to define their colours. Desktop Paint looks for a PAL file to decide whether a CUT file has two bits or eight bits of colour. If it doesn't find a PAL file with the same name as your CUT file, it assumes that the CUT file in question only has two bits of colour. Otherwise, it assumes that there are 256 colours in the file. THE MENUS ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ The easiest way to go through the functions of Desktop Paint is to look at its menus and toolbox. Here's a quick overview of the menus, starting from the left edge of the screen. Note that many of the menu items have keyboard equivalents. This is indicated by a diamond and a letter, the diamond representing the Alt key. For example, if you wish to select the Open function, you can do so by either selecting it from the file menu or by holding down the Alt key and hitting O. Some menu items may be printed in grey type, rather than in black. These are disabled. Items are disabled because it's inappropriate to use them at the moment. For example, you would not be able to select the Print item until there was a picture in Desktop Paint to print. DESK MENU ──────────────── Clipboard --------------- The Clipboard function lets you see the most recent fragment cut or copied from a picture or copied from the Gallery. The Clipboard is a holding area for bits of images. In the Clipboard window, the current contents of the Clipboard will be displayed padded out with black if they're too small to fill the window or cropped if they're too big. This is only how the image is displayed in the window, and will not affect it when it's pasted into your picture. You can import and export small image files into and out of the Clipboard. The dimensions of imported files must be fairly modest... certainly no larger than those of your current drawing area. The Clipboard will complain if attempt to import a picture which it considers to be too large. The file type for exported image from the Clipboard will be the set in the File Type item of the File menu. Gallery ------------- The Gallery is a place to store image fragments which you might want to paste into a picture some time in the future. The Gallery is permanent... you can build up little image file fragments from day to day and access them whenever you want them. The Gallery is stored in a file called GALLERY.RES. One will be created if it can't be found. Desktop Paint comes with a version of GALLERY.RES with several image fragments in it. You can delete this if you want to start fresh. Picture fragments get to the Gallery through the Clipboard. Assuming you have previously cut, copied or imported something to the Clipboard, open the Gallery window and select Copy. The contents of the Clipboard will be added to the Gallery. When you have several images in the Gallery, you can step through them with the Previous and Next buttons. The Clear button will delete the currently visible image from the Gallery. The Paste button will copy the currently visible image into the Clipboard, such that you can subsequently export it to a small image file or paste it into your drawing. Note that unlike image files, the pictures in the Gallery are stored uncompressed. A Gallery with several dozen images in it is undesirable because it takes a long time to step through them and because GALLERY.RES will take up a lot of disk space. As a rule, you should keep image fragments you use fairly frequently in the Gallery and others in image files on your disk which you can import into the Clipboard when they're needed. About ----------- The About box will tell you what version of Desktop Paint you're using, as well as how much memory you have free at the moment. Note that is only conventional DOS memory... it does not include any XMS or EMS you may have on hand. It will, however, tell you what type of memory is being used to store your image in if you have one loaded. The About box will also tell you what type of processor Desktop Paint believes is in your computer. This information is used to calibrate several time delays, such as the speed of the airbrush. Help ---------- The Help function will present you with detailed on-line help to assist in using Desktop Paint. You can work your way through the help by clicking on the underlined text items in the help window. Click on the Previous button to back up on level, the Index button to return to the first page and the Done button to exit Help. Note that each step down in the heirarchy of help pages requires some memory. If you're running Desktop Paint with very little free memory, you may not be able to fully access Help. Save Screen ----------------- The Save Screen function will take a "snap shot" of the Desktop Paint screen and store it in an image file. Hitting Alt 1 will also invoke this function... you can use Alt 1 if you want to capture a dialog box, for example. When you invoke the Save Screen function, a file selector dialog will appear to prompt you for a file name to save the screen image to. FILE MENU ──────────────── New --------- The New function allows you to create a blank drawing of any size... at least, of any size you have memory for. The smallest dimension a drawing can have is thirty-two pixels on a size. The largest is 32,760 pixels. Note that a drawing 32,760 pixels square would require about 131,000 megabytes of XMS or EMS to contain it. You cannot create a new drawing which occupies more memory than you have. Open ---------- The Open function will load a drawing from your disk into Desktop Paint. All the files of types which Desktop Paint can work with will appear in the Open file selector box. The same minimum and maximum file sizes apply to Open as they do to New. You can't open a file if there's one currently visible in Desktop Paint... you must close your existing file first. Note that Desktop Paint can't tell if a file is really suitable for opening until you actually try to open it. As such, it will display the names of files with too many colours for it to work with, for example, and complain if you try to open one. Close ----------- The Close function disposes of an existing drawing and prepares Desktop Paint to have a different drawing opened or created. Save ---------- The Save function will save your current drawing back to the disk under the current file name. If you have started your drawing from scratch with New, you must first select Save As to assign it a file name. Save As ------------- The Save As function allows you to save your drawing under a new file name. The file type will be the current file type, as set by the File Type function. Print ----------- The Print function will print your current drawing to a laser or dot matrix printer. Desktop Paint supports PostScript and LaserJet compatible laser printers in four resolutions. Note that even though your printer may have three hundred dot per inch resolution, you can still print to it at a lower resolution. Selecting, for example, one hundred dot per inch resolution will cause the picture to be printed larger. Desktop Paint prints to a dot matrix printer through a special driver resource called a PDRV, which lives in DTPM.RES. There is a PDRV installed in the distribution version of Desktop Paint for an Epson FX-80, which is emulated by most dot matrix printers. This option will be visible as the ninth printer in the print box list. If you don't need dot matrix support you can remove the PDRV from DTPM.RES to save a bit of disk space, memory and to shorten the time it takes Desktop Paint to boot up. Managing resources will be discussed later in this document. Reegistered users of Desktop Paint can select a different PDRV resource to support other types of printers. If there is no PDRV available, the ninth printer will be unavailable. You can select the number of copies to be printed. The number can range from 1 through 99. Note that this value only affects output to laser printers. Printing to an external printer driver will only print one copy at a time no matter how the Copies value is set. Get Info -------------- This will allow you to look at any image file of the currently selected file type and see how big it is, how much memory it will require to edit, how many colours it has for file formats which support colour and so on. You can use this function to compare the amount of memory a picture will need to load into Desktop Paint with the amount of free memory you actually have available, as displayed in the About box. As a rule, with no TSR programs installed, Desktop Paint running on a machine with 640 kilobytes will have about three hundred kilobytes free. File Type --------------- The File Type function will allow you select the file format for use in Save As and Export operations. Note that you can load a file from one format, change the file type and then save it in another. Quit ---------- The Quit function returns you to DOS. EDIT MENU ──────────────── Copy ---------- The Copy function is only active when an area of your drawing has been selected using the Select tool... the scissors. When selected, the Copy function will copy the contents of the selected area into the Clipboard. Cut --------- The Cut function behaves like Copy except that it will fill the selected area with white and unselect it. Paste ----------- The Paste tool is only active if there's something in the Clipboard. It will paste the current contents of the Clipboard into the upper left corner of the drawing window. It will be selected, and you can move it to where you want it to be. If you hold down the control key while pasting, the pasted fragment will be transparent. Clear ----------- The Clear function behaves like the Cut function except that it does not copy the selected area to the Clipboard. It just fills it with white and unselects it. Invert ------------ The Invert function is only active when an area of your drawing has been selected. It inverts all the pixels in the selected area black for white. Flip Horizontal --------------------- The Flip Horizontal function is only active when an area of your drawing has been selected. It flips the selected area right to left. Flip Vertical ------------------- The Flip Vertical function is only active when an area of your drawing has been selected. It flips the selected area top to bottom. Rotate (90, 180 and 270) ------------------------------ These three functions are only active when an area of your drawing has been selected. They rotate the selected area by the specified amounts. Scaling ------------- The Scaling function is only active when an area of your drawing has been selected. It scales the selected portion of your drawing to your choice of sizes... a dialog box will pop up asking for a scaling factor. The scale factor can range from .1 (ten percent of your original) to 10 (one thousand percent of your original) assuming that the scaled fragment will actually fit in the drawing window. You can specify different horizontal and vertical scaling factors by selecting the "Anamorphic" box. If this box is not selected, clicking in the most recently changed value will copy it to the other value. Trace Edges ----------------- The Trace Edges function is only active when an area of your drawing has been selected. It will modify the selected area so that the original image is replaced by one having lines around all the formerly black parts of the picture. Multiple tracings can look extremely slick. Fatten ------------ The Fatten function is only active when an area of your drawing has been selected. It will modify the selected area so that all the lines of the original image are fattened up. Smudge ------------ The Smudge function is only active when an area of your drawing has been selected. It will make the details of the selected area fuzzy. You can select Smudge multiple times to increase the amount of smudging. EXTRA MENU ───────────────── Gradient -------------- The Gradient function allows you set the characteristics of the gradients which are drawn by the Gradient tool, to be described shortly. Specifically, you can set the direction in which the gradient will progress and the minimum and maximum values for the extremes of the gradient. The range for the gradient values is zero through 255. Edit Fill --------------- The Set Fill function lets you edit the fill patterns for all filled drawing including the paint roller fill tool. The current pattern set will appear if you pull down the Fill menu. There are thirty-eight standard fill patterns in the Set Fill box. You can select one to be current wither by clicking in it or by selecting it from the Fill menu. You can edit the currently selected fill pattern by clicking on the Edit button. This will open a window for editing the pattern. The Paste function in the pattern edit window will copy an eight by eight pixel rectangle from the Clipboard into the pattern you're editing... assuming there's an image at least this big in the Clipboard. This allows you to capture patterns from any drawing. You can save pattern sets to disk and load them through the Set Fill box. You can also set up Desktop Paint to use a default pattern set which you've created, rather than the one it comes with. See the section on modifying DTPM.RES for more about this. If you load the TEXTURE.PTN file that comes with Desktop Paint you'll be able to use a wholly different set of fills. You can make this the default fill set by adding TEXTURE.PTN to DTPM.RES. This procedure will be discussed later in this document. Grid ---------- The Grid function allows you to turn the magnetic grid on and off, and to set its spacing. When the grid is switched on, the mouse will snap to the nearest grid point when you draw things, allowing you to accurately position lines, rectangles, ellipses and so on. The Grid item will have a check mark beside it when the Grid is active. Grid Setup ---------------- The Grid Setup function allows you to determine the frequency of the magnetic grid. The grid is always relative to the upper left corner of your picture. Line Settings ------------------- The Line Setting functions select the current drawing line width. The available choices for line width are thin, one pixel, and thick, three pixels. You can also select no thickness, which is useful if you want to draw a filled rectangle or gradient with no line around it. Note that there are some limitations to the way lines are drawn around ellipses in this version of Desktop Paint. Full Screen ----------------- The Full Screen function toggles between the windowed mode of Desktop Paint... in which the toolbox will be visible on the screen... and the full screen mode, in which pretty much the entire screen will be used as an image editing area. In this latter mode, you can access the toolbox through the Tools menu. Set Brush --------------- The Set Brush function will allow you to set and edit the current brush. You can also save and load brush sets. The brushes affect the way lines are drawn with the Brush tool and the shape of the brush used by the Local Undo tool, both of which will be discussed later in this document. Note that if you don't like the default brush set in Desktop Paint, you can create a new one, save it to a brush file and then add it to DTPM.RES to make it the default brush set. This will be discussed later in this document in the section that deals with modifying DTPM.RES. TEXT MENU ──────────────── Left, Centre and Right ---------------------------- These functions set the direction that text will be drawn. Font Size --------------- The Font Size functions select the size in which the current font will be drawn. They will also tell you what the current font is, just in case you forget... the current font will have a check mark beside it. When Desktop Paint first boots, the current font is the first one in the Font menu and the current size is the smallest size that font is available in. FONT MENU ──────────────── The Font menu will allow you to select a font to draw text with. It will display all the fonts in DTPM.RES. Selecting a font from the Font menu will make it the current text font when you next use the text tool. A check mark will appear next to the name of the current font in the font menu. If you register Desktop Paint, you'll receive the Desktop Paint font toolkit, which will provide you with a wider range of fonts, as well as tools to convert fonts from other formats for use with Desktop Paint. TOOL MENU ──────────────── The Tool menu is iconic... it duplicates the functions in the Desktop Paint toolbox. It will allow you to select tools even if you're working in full screen mode, which causes the normal toolbox to stay hidden. To use an iconic menu, drag your mouse cursor over the menu area until it rests on the icon you wish to select, and then release it. The currently selected tool will be inverted. FILL MENU ──────────────── The Fill menu is also iconic. It will allow you to select the current fill pattern for use with filled objects and flood fills, to be discussed later in this document. The currently selected fill will be inverted. THE TOOLBOX ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ The toolbox will appear at the left side of your screen when you have opened or created a drawing file if the full screen mode isn't active. The currently active tool will be inverted. You can select a new tool by clicking on it. You can also select a tool by using the Tool menu. Selector (the scissors) ----------------------------- The Selector tool allows you to select areas of your drawing. Selected areas can be transformed using the tools in the Edit menu. You can move a selected area by placing the mouse cursor in it, holding down the left button and dragging it to its new location. If you hold down the left shift key while you select an area, the original image below the selected area will be left behind, and a copy made to appear in the selected box. If you do not, the image below the selected area will be filled with white. You can cause a selected area to become a permanent part of your drawing by clicking outside it. The selection box will go away. This is called "deselecting". Normally, selected areas are opaque, that is, white areas will obscure and black areas beneath them. If you hold down the control key while you drag, transform or deselect a selected area, the selected image will become transparent. Any black pixels below it will remain visible. If you paste an image fragment into your drawing, it will appear in the upper left corner of your drawing window and behave as if it had been selected with the left shift key held down. Selected image fragments can be "nudged" one pixel at a time using the cursor mover keys of your keyboard. The four arrow keys will move a fragment horizontally and vertically. The Home, End, PgUp and PgDn keys will move it diagonally. Note that the holding down the Ctrl will make a fragment transparent when you nudge it except when you try to move it vertically. It turns out that the IBM keyboard doesn't support scan codes for Ctrl Up and Ctrl Down. Lasso (genuine polyester rope) ------------------------------------ The Lasso tool will allow you to select irregular areas of a drawing. Once selected, these areas behave just like those selected by the Scissors tool, with the following exceptions: - None of the image manipulation functions of the Edit menu will be active if a Lasso'd fragment has been selected. - Lasso'd fragments can be copied to the Gallery, but they'll become rectangular. To use the Lasso tool, click and drag your mouse cursor around the periphery of the area you want to select. Note that there's a limit to the complexity of a selected area. If the Lasso selector closes unexpectedly, you've exceeded this limit. In most applications this won't happen... the Lasso complexity limit is pretty high. The Lasso tool is a bit of a memory pig. Airbrush (ozone friendly spray paint) ------------------------------------------- The Airbrush tool will allow you to spray random areas of pixels in your drawing window. The longer you leave the mouse in one place and held down, the darker or lighter the area will become. Use the left mouse button to spray in black and the right mouse button to spray in white. The line width settings in the Extra menu will determine the spay size. Select No width or Thin Width for a small spray and Thick width for a large spray. Note that on fairly slow systems the paint might take a long time to come out of the can. The airbrush speed is adjusted based on the type of processor Desktop Paint finds in your computer. You can change the sizes of the airbrush spray using DTPINSTL, as will be discussed later in this document. Text (the big T tool) --------------------------- The Text tool will allow you to draw text in your picture using the currently selected font, font size and direction. The text will emanate from wherever you click in the drawing window. A vertical text cursor will indicate where the next character will appear. If you hit Enter when you are typing text, the cursor will move down a line. You cannot draw text if part of the text would appear outside the drawing window. Click with the left mouse button to draw back text. Click with the right mouse button to draw white text. Line ---------- The Line tool allows you to draw lines. The thickness and the colour of the lines is set by the Set Line function in the Gadgets menu. As there is no sense in drawing a line with no thickness, the line thickness will default to a thin line if you have it set to no thickness. You can constrain lines to be perfectly horizontal, vertical or diagonal by holding down the left shift, right shift or Alt keys respectively. Eraser (the pencil end) ----------------------------- The Eraser tool allows you to erase areas of your drawing. If you erase with the left button of your mouse the eraser will be small. If you erase with the right button it will be large. The eraser always erases to white. Rectangle and filled Rectangle ------------------------------------ The Rectangle tool draws rectangles... seems pretty obvious, doesn't it... Rectangles will be drawn in the current line drawing colour and thickness and will be filled with the current fill pattern if you've selected the filled rectangle tool. You can constrain rectangles to be perfect squares by holding down the Alt key. Fill (paint roller) ------------------------- The Fill tool performs a "flood" or "bucket" fill using the currently selected fill pattern. Having selected the fill tool, click in a solid black or white area of your drawing. It will be filled with the current fill pattern. The fill tool likes to fill closed areas. If the area you attempt to fill has a hole in its periphery, the paint will leak out and fill the area outside it, too. The Undo tool is very useful when you're using the Fill tool. If you attempt to fill an extremely complex area, it's just possible that Desktop Paint will run out of fill memory. If this happens, some areas of your drawing may not be filled. In this case, simply click in the unfilled area to continue filling. The Fill tool actually handles its filling in memory, rather than on the screen. It does this in order to properly handle largely white fill patterns. As such, it may go away and think for a few seconds after you click with the foll tool. This is perfectly normal. More complex areas will take longer to fill. The Fill tool is also a bit of a memory pig. Ellipse and Filled Ellipse -------------------------------- The ellipse tool draws ellipses. Ellipses will be drawn in the current line drawing colour and thickness and will be filled with the current fill pattern if you've selected the filled ellipse tool. However, due to a software limitation, you can't draw filled ellipses with no line around them. You can constrain ellipses to be perfect circles by holding down the Alt key. Undo ---------- The Undo tool will undo the last thing you did and then select whatever tool you were using before you selected undo. Changes to your drawing cease to be undo-able after you save the drawing, scroll the drawing or draw something else. Local Undo (the bottle of typewriter correction fluid) ------------------------------------------------------------ The Local Undo tool is a brush, the size and shape of which can be selected using the Set Brush item of the Extra menu. It will allow you to undo selected areas of your drawing by painting over them. You can use the Local Undo brush to etch away bits of the most recent thing you've drawn. Brush (the paintbrush) ---------------------------- The Brush tool allows you to draw freeform lines using the current brush, as set by the Set Brush item of the Extra menu. The left mouse button draws black lines and the right mouse button draws white lines. Zoom (the magnifying glass) --------------------------------- The Zoom tool allows you to zoom in on a section of your drawing and make pixel by pixel changes to it. When the zoom window is open, clicking in the enlarged area will set pixels to black and white... the left mouse button sets them to black and the right one to white. If you select Ok, the modified area will be pasted into your picture. You can Undo zoomed changes if you don't like them after you've closed the Zoom box. The scroll bars in the Zoom window will allow you to pan around the visible part of your drawing. Gradient -------------- The Gradient tool draws rectangles which will be filled with a graduated grey tone, the details of which are defined in the Set Gradient function of the Extra menu. The area will be surrounded by a line as defined in the Line functions of the extra menu. You can have a no thickness line if you like. If you hold down the control key while you draw a gradient, it will be transparent. Gradients are useful for giving areas a three dimensional appearance. CONFIGURING DESKTOP PAINT ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ You should find that Desktop Paint will run without any need to configure it. However, you can fine tune it for your needs with the DTPINSTL.EXE program once you've had an initial play with it. The DTPINSTL program must reside in the same subdirectory as DTPM.EXE. To run it type DTPINSTL A screen like this one will appear. Desktop Paint installer version 3.0 RUN TIME DEFAULTS Default printer: PostScript 100 DPI Printer port: LPT1 Default new width: 640 Default new depth: 480 Macbinary header: YES Compress IFF/LBM files: YES Compress TIFF files: YES Create GIF 87a files: NO Default to full screen: NO Startup function: NONE Default file type: PCX File type for save screen: PCX Pattern file extension: PTN Brush file extension: BRS Image memory: DOS Small airbrush size: 6 Large airbrush size: 12 Menu type: DROP DOWN Drive map: ABCDEFGHIJ Path to DTPM.RES: C:\PAINT\ Registered name: [ Unregistered ] Registration code: 00000 You can change the values in any field by cursoring down to it and hitting Enter. Here's a quick overview of what the fields in the installer do. Default printer --------------------- This line sets the default printer. Do not set it to "Dot matrix" unless you will have a PDRV resource loaded into DTPM.RES, as described later in this document. Printer port ------------------ This line selects the port to which your printer is connected. Default New width ----------------------- This line sets the default width value which appears in the New box in Desktop Paint. Default New depth ----------------------- This line sets the default depth value which appears in the New box in Desktop Paint. Macbinary Header ---------------------- This line defines whether MacPaint files will be written with or without Macbinary headers. If you're using PFS:First Publisher, select NO. Compress IFF/LBM files ---------------------------- This line defines whether LBM files will be written with or without compression. Compress TIFF files ------------------------- This line defines whether TIFF files will be written with or without compression. Create GIF 87a files -------------------------- This line defines whether GIF files will be written using the old GIF 87a standard or the newer GIF 89a format. Default to full screen ---------------------------- This line defines whether Desktop Paint will come up in full screen or windowed mode. You can, of course, toggle between these modes once you get going. Startup function ---------------------- This line will allow you to define what Desktop Paint will do if you run it without a command line file name. The options are: - NONE: Do nothing. - NEW: Open the New dialog box. - OPEN: Open the File Open dialog box. - ABOUT: Open the About dialog box. Default file type ----------------------- This line sets the default file type which Desktop Paint will initially use to save files with. File type for save screen ------------------------------- This line defines which file format to use for saving screens. Pattern file extension ---------------------------- This line defines the file extension for saved fill pattern resource files. Brush file extension -------------------------- This line defines the file extension for saved brush definition resource files. Airbrush size ------------------- These two lines allow you to define the maximum diameter of the airbrush for the small and large spray modes. These values must be in the range of 2 to 48. Menu type --------------- This line defines the way the menus in Desktop Paint will behave. Drop down menus behave like the menus in Microsoft Windows. Once you select one, it will stay visible until you have selected an item from it or clicked outside it. Pull down menus require that you keep your mouse button held down until you have made a selection. Image memory ------------------ Set this line to tell Desktop Paint whether you have EMS or XMS memory available. Make sure you set this to EMS or XMS if you have extra memory and want to work with large pictures. Make sure you choose the appropriate type of extra memory for your system or Desktop Paint may crash. If you're running Desktop Paint under Windows 3, use XMS. Drive map --------------- This is a string which should contain all the letters of the legal hard and floppy drives on your system. It should have no spaces or extraneous characters. This string is not checked for validity. Path to DTPM.RES ---------------------- This should be the complete DOS path to the directory where DTPM.RES will be located on your system. It should include the drive letter and a trailing backslash. For example, C:\PAINT\ With this string set correctly, you can run Desktop Paint from anywhere on your hard drive and still have it find its resource file. This field will default to the current drive and directory the first time you run DTPINSTL. Registration name and number ---------------------------------- When you register Desktop Paint, we'll send you back a number. Enter your name in the registration name field exactly as it was when you registered Desktop Paint and your registration number in the next field. Upper and lower case matter. This will disable the beg notice at the end of Desktop Paint. If your name contains characters with accents or other non-English characters, please read ACCENT.DOC for instructions for entering them into the Registration name field. COMMAND LINE SWITCHES ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ You can use command line switches when you run Desktop Paint to temporarily adjust the settings which DTPINSTL configures. Each command line switch is of the form /XXX, a slash and three letters. Multiple switches should be separated by spaces. These are the current command line switches. /DOS - use conventional memory for an image buffer /EMS - use expanded memory for an image buffer /XMS - use extended memory for an image buffer /LP1 - print to LPT1 /LP2 - print to LPT2 /LP3 - print to LPT3 /MBH - write MacPaint files with MacBinary headers /MBN - write MacPaint files without MacBinary headers /IFN - don't compress IFF/LBM files /IFC - compress IFF/LBM files /TGN - don't compress TIFF files /TGC - compress TIFF files /G87 - write GIF 87a files /G89 - write GIF 89a files /FUL - default to full screen mode /WND - default to windowed mode /NEW - start with the New dialog box /OPN - start with the File Open dialog box /ABT - start with the About dialog box /NON - start with no dialog boxes /DDM - use drop down menus /PDM - use pull down menus FONTS ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Assuming that you have fonts installed in DTPM.RES, the Font menu will appear in Desktop Paint and you'll be able to type text into your pictures. Desktop Paint comes with a basic selection of fonts, and you can add more to it. Fonts are large, and a whole family of fonts can easily cause DTPM.RES to swell by a few hundred kilobytes. There is no commercial source of proportional bitmapped fonts for PC applications per se. Instead, Desktop Paint allows you to utilize fonts from other sources. Specifically, you can convert bitmapped fonts from GEM applications such as Ventura Publisher, from Microsoft Windows 3 FNT files and from Macintosh FONT and NFNT resource files. Once converted, these fonts can be added to Desktop Paint. The font conversion tools for Desktop Paint are included with the font toolkit, which is part of the registered version of the software. If you downloaded Desktop Paint from a bulletin board, you'll probably be able to find a wealth of suitable fonts there too. There are three separate programs to do these conversions, GEM2FONT, MAC2FONT and WIN2FONT respectively. There is also a program called SEEFONT which will allow you to look at samples of the fonts you've converted to see what they're like. The font toolkit also includes the source code and instructions to write your own assembly language dot matrix printer driver PDRV resource, should you feel like doing so. MANAGING RESOURCES ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ NOTE: The RMOVER utility, to be discussed in this section, is only provided with the registered version of Desktop Paint. The DTPM.RES file is a list of resources. Resources are unrelated bits of data and code which Desktop Paint might need. These could have been kept as separate files, but keeping them all in DTPM.RES makes them easier to manage, requires less space on your hard drive and allows Desktop Paint to get at them more rapidly. Desktop Paint looks at DTPM.RES when it first boots up. It relies on DTPM.RES for its icons, file format resources, fonts and a number of internal data blocks it requires. If you don't want to deal with resources or you like Desktop Paint as it is, just skip this section. These are the resource types which Desktop Paint will recognize in DTPM.RES. IFMT - Image format reader / writer resource BTMP - Image fragment - the startup unicorn PDRV - Dot matrix printer driver REGN - The beg notice EXIT - The exit notice ICON - An icon FONT - A font HELP - One page of help BRSH - A brush set PTRN - A pattern set Some or all of these may be present in DTPM.RES, depending on how you want to configure Desktop Paint. USING RMOVER ─────────────────── In order to work with resources you'll need RMOVER.EXE, which is included with the registered version of the package. RMOVER allows you to add resource files together, to extract resources from a file, to delete resources from a file and to list all the resources in a file. Listing resources ----------------------- Let's begin with the simplest function of RMOVER, listing the resources in a resource file. DTPM.RES is a resource file. To see what was in it, you would do this. RMOVER DTP /L You would see something like the following list for the DTPM.RES file which comes with the distribution version of Desktop Paint. Resource mover version 1.5 - copyright (c) 1990 Alchemy Mindworks Inc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Description: Resource file created by RMOVER 131 resource(s) _____________________ Rsrc 0000 - type:IFMT - nmbr:000000000 - 03281 bytes MAC (MacPaint) Rsrc 0001 - type:IFMT - nmbr:000000001 - 04572 bytes GEM/IMG (Ventura) Rsrc 0002 - type:IFMT - nmbr:000000002 - 06114 bytes PCX (PC Paintbrush) . . . Rsrc 0128 - type:HELP - nmbr:000000065 - 00689 bytes Print Rsrc 0129 - type:HELP - nmbr:000000066 - 00249 bytes Get Info Rsrc 0130 - type:HELP - nmbr:000000067 - 00537 bytes File Type Deleting resources ------------------------ This is how you would delete a resource from DTPM.RES with RMOVER. Let's delete the PDRV resource. This has resource number zero. RMOVER DTP /D /TPDRV /N0 The /D switch tells RMOVER to delete a resource, /T switch tells it the type of the resource to delete and the /N switch tells it the number of the resource to delete. Do not delete the REGN or EXIT resources. You should also avoid meddling with the ICON and HELP resources. You can delete those IFMT resources which correspond to image file formats you'll never need if you're trying to free up some space. Extracting resources -------------------------- This is how you would extract a resource from DTPM.RES, that is, to copy it from DTPM.RES to a separate resource file of its own. Extracted resources live in resource files having one resource. You could later add such a resource to another resource file. In this example, we'll extract the PDRV resource. Note that this will not delete it from DTPM.RES. RMOVER DTP /E /TPDRV /N0 /FEPSNFX80.RES The /T and /N switches work as before. The /E switch tells RMOVER to extract a resource. The /F switch tells it the name of the file to put the extracted resource in. This file... EPSNFX80.RES... will be deleted if it exists and a new one created. Adding resources ---------------------- This is how you would add a resource to DTPM.RES. In this example we'll add TEXTURE.PTN to DTPM.RES. This is an alternate set of pattern blocks which comes with the Desktop Paint package. RMOVER DTP /A /FTEXTURE.PTN The /A switch tells RMOVER to add a resource. Note that all the resources in the file indicated by the /F switch will be added to DTPM.RES. NOTE: RMOVER can quite easily delete resources you might want to keep if you give it erroneous instructions. Keep a backup copy of your resource files while you're working with it. COMMON RESOURCE TYPES ──────────────────────────── Here's what each of the resources you might want to meddle with does and how to work with them. Make sure as you work with DTPM.RES that you keep a copy of the original DTPM.RES file which comes with Desktop Paint so you can start over if you find you've deleted something you might want. The BTMP Resource ----------------------- Including a BTMP resource in DTPM.RES is purely cosmetic. It will give you something to look at while the rest of the DTPM.RES file is being read. A BTMP is simply a monochrome bitmapped picture fragment. There's one in the default DTPM.RES file which comes with Desktop Paint. You can change this to one which you create if you like. The resources in DTPM.RES are read in the order they appear in the file. If a BTMP resource is located as the file is initially read, Desktop Paint will display it in the middle of the screen and leave it there while it's reading the rest of the file. For the best effect, the BTMP resource should be the first one in DTPM.RES. You might well be wondering how to create a BTMP resource. It's quite easy. When image fragments are saved to the Gallery in Desktop Paint, they're stored as BTMP resources. To make a BTMP resource for your DTPM.RES file, generate the picture you want in Desktop Paint, select it, copy it to the Clipboard, paste the Clipboard into the Gallery, quit Desktop Paint and extract the last BTMP resource from the Gallery to a separate file. A less complex way... especially if you have a rather full GALLERY.RES file... is to rename GALLERY.RES to something else and follow the above procedure. Desktop Paint will create a new GALLERY.RES with only one BTMP resource in it. Rename this GALLERY.RES to something else and your original Gallery file back to GALLERY.RES. When you add resources to a resource file, they're always added to the end of the file. You'll want to have your new BTMP at the beginning of the file. To make this happen, begin by deleting the existing BTMP resource from DTPM.RES. Then, add all of DTPM.RES to the file with your new BTMP resource in it. Finally, delete your old DTPM.RES and rename your new file to DTPM.RES. Clear as mud, this. It might take a few tries to get it right. The BTMP resource you use for a sign-on message should have a horizontal dimension which is an even multiple of eight. You can handle this easily by using the New function in Desktop Paint to create a picture the size you want your sign on image to be... 320 by 200 pixels is a good size... and then selecting the whole drawing when it's completed. If you want to make Desktop Paint boot as quickly as possible... especially on a fairly slow system... you can delete the BTMP resource from DTPM.RES entirely. The FONT Resources ------------------------ Each font which will be available in Desktop Paint must have a separate resource. Thus, if you have Dutch in seven sizes, there will be seven FONT resources for Dutch. A complete discussion of fonts is available in FONTS.DOC, which comes with the font toolkit discussed above. Note that Desktop Paint can function without any fonts in DTPM.RES at all. If you have no need of the text capabilities in Desktop Paint and you want it to boot up more rapidly, remove all the fonts from DTPM.RES. The PTRN Resource ----------------------- If you don't like the default set of fill patterns which comes with Desktop Paint, you can replace them with one of your own devising by including a PTRN resource in DTPM.RES. To create a PTRN resource, use the edit function of the Fill box in Desktop Paint to create the pattern set you want and save it. The file you save it to will be a PTRN resource. Add it to DTPM.RES. Desktop Paint defaults to using dithered grey level fill patterns. However, it comes with a set of more interesting fill patterns in TEXTURE.PTN. You can load these in when you want to use them, or you can make them the default pattern set by adding TEXTURE.PTN to DTPM.RES, as discussed previously. The BRSH resource ----------------------- If you don't like the default brush set in Desktop Paint, you can add a new brush set to DTPM.RES to change it. Create the brush set you want to use as a default and save it to a BRS file. Use RMOVER to add this file to DTPM.RES. Make sure that you delete any old BRSH resources from DTPM.RES if you change default brush sets from time to time. The PDRV Resource ----------------------- If you want to be able to print to a dot matrix printer you'll need a PRDV resource in your DTPM.RES file. There's one in the default DTPM.RES to support the Epson FX-80, which is emulated by most other dot matrix printers. If you want to drive a printer which does not emulate the Epson FX-80, or you wish to use a higher resolution mode of a more sophisticated printer, you must create a new PDRV resource for your printer, delete the existing PRDV resource from DTPM.RES and put your PRVR in its place. A discussion of printer drivers and the creation thereof can be found in the Desktop Paint font toolkit, described earlier. CONTACTING ALCHEMY MINDWORKS INC. ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ We hope you'll contact us to register Desktop Paint... see the section about registering your software elsewhere in this document. You can contact us by mail by writing to us at: Alchemy Mindworks Inc. P.O. Box 500 Beeton, Ontario L0G 1A0 Canada We will attempt to answer questions from unregistered users who write to us to the extent that their answers are needed for you to fully determine whether this software will suit your requirements. We can also be reached through the Alchemy Mindworks bulletin board. It's available twenty-four hours a day at (416) 729-4609. As of this writing, the protocol was 300, 1200 or 2400 baud, or 9600 baud v.32bis, eight data bits, no parity and one stop bit. The bulletin board always has the most recent versions of all our shareware on it, plus bug fixes, drivers and other relevant information. It only exists to support Alchemy Mindworks' shareware... it does not have a general file area. If you encounter problems with a file, you're welcome to upload the errant file to our bulletin board. Actually, you can upload any picture files you like to the board... we enjoy getting pictures. If you have a question about Desktop Paint, feel free to leave it on the bulletin board. We try to answer all questions within twenty-four hours. Note that you must call back to retrieve your answer... please don't ask us to phone you or to leave the answer on another bulletin board. Registered users of Desktop Paint will receive our voice number for immediate technical support. The voice number is only available for use from 10:00am to 5:00pm EST. If you call and get our answering machine... it does happen... please leave us a message or call back later. We are only able to return long distance calls if we can call you collect. In this regard, please note that as of this writing Canada has a very peculiar electronic voice mail collect call system... if the phone company's computer starts talking when you pick up the phone, it's probably us returning your call. We ask that in contacting us you appreciate that we are a small company with limited resources. If you have not registered this software we will not tell you to go to hell, but please don't ask us for half an hour of free technical support. REGISTRATION ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ If you like Desktop Paint and find it useful, you are requested to support it by sending us $40.00. This will entitle you to telephone support, notification of updates, a free copy of the latest version of this software and other worthwhile things. It will also avail you of a registration number to shut off the closing beg notice. More to the point, though, it'll make you feel good. We've not infested Desktop Paint with excessive beg notices, crippled it or had it verbally insult you after ten days. We trust you to support this software if you like it. If you want to see additional features in Desktop Paint, register it. If we had an Arcturian mega-dollar for everyone who has said they'd most certainly register their copy if we'd add just one more thing to it, we could buy ourselves a universe and retire. Oh yes, should you fail to support this program and continue to use it, a leather winged demon of the night will tear itself, shrieking blood and fury, from the endless caverns of the nether world, hurl itself into the darkness with a thirst for blood on its slavering fangs and search the very threads of time for the throbbing of your heartbeat. Just thought you'd want to know that. Our address is: Alchemy Mindworks Inc. P.O. Box 500 Beeton, Ontario L0G 1A0 Canada If you have previously registered Desktop Paint, you can update your copy to the current release for $20.00. If you have a FAX number, please include it in your registration. We're hoping to be able to handle notification of future updates of this software by FAX where we can. This is both considerably faster and a lot cheaper than mail. You can FAX your order to us at (416) 729-4156. You'll find an order form in this ZIP to make this easier. When you register Desktop Paint, please specify the disk size you require. In additon, please state whether you require dual density disks... some of our packages normally ship on quad density disks. You should only require dual density disks if you're using an old-style 8088-based XT system. Please note that we are not able to accept purchase orders for fewer than six copies of Desktop Paint at a time. We cannot ship software COD. CANADIAN USERS ───────────────────── The registration fee for Desktop Paint is $40.00 (CDN) plus seven percent GST, or $42.80. We sincerely regret collecting this tax on behalf of several levels of government which will only squander it. If you sincerely regret having to pay it, we urge you to express your regret by voting in the next federal and provincial elections. AMERICAN USERS ───────────────────── The registration fee for Desktop Paint is $40.00 (US). The exchange on US funds pretty well covers the extra postage to the States. Please note that when you send us your order... and then when we send you your update back... two distinct post offices get to deal with the ensuing mail. It can take a few weeks for things to get through this system... we ask that you be patient. We don't fully understand why it takes less time for a package to get to Australia than it does to send one to Cleveland... some things are best left as mysteries. OTHER USERS ────────────────── The registration fee for Desktop Paint is $40.00 (US). If you pay us by cheque, please make sure that it's a cheque drawn on an international bank, and that it will be negotiable in Canada. If there's no bank clearance number along the bottom of the cheque, it will not clear. Please don't send us Eurocheques... they are not accepted outside Europe. Payment from countries outside Canada must be in US dollars. PAYING BY CREDIT CARD ──────────────────────────── We can accept payment by Visa only. We need your Visa card number and expiry date and the name which appears on your card. We also need written authorization to debit your Visa account for the specific amount you're sending us. We cannot accept MasterCard, American Express or other credit cards. SOURCE CODE AVAILABILITY AND BOOKS ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ It isn't. After considerable meditation and several bad experiences, we have decided not to release the source code for Desktop Paint. We do license parts of them for specific applications... if you want more information about using some of the functions of this package in your software, please contact us. If you're interested in writing programs which use graphics, you'll find everything you need to know in Bitmapped Graphics, second edition, by Steven William Rimmer. It's published by TAB Books, (TAB book 3558). It features code to pack and unpack MacPaint, IMG, PCX, GIF and TIFF files, as well as chapters on screen drivers, dithering and printing. An additional book on this subject, Supercharged Bitmapped Graphics, (TAB Book 4102), discusses the GIF 89a, WordPerfect, BMP, IFF/LBM, TGA, MSP, 24-bit PCX and colour TIFF file formats, as well as such subjects as colour dithering and colour printing. If you'd like to write applications which use menus, icons, windows and all the other paraphernalia of a graphical user interface, you might find the book PC Graphical User Interfaces handy. It's published by TAB Books (TAB Book 3875). It includes the C source for a complete graphical user interface library, related code to manage fonts and bitmaps and a tiny paint program. Bitmapped Graphics for Windows, by Steven William Rimmer, published by TAB Windcrest, will be available at the end of 1992. It deals with the most popular image file formats in a Windows environment. A complete discussion of graphic file formats for use in word processing documents and desktop publishing chapters can be found in The Graphic File Toolkit, by Steven William Rimmer, published by Addison-Wesley. This is an invaluable reference for anyone who wants to use graphic files but does not want to become a programmer in the process. If your local bookstore doesn't have these books, they can be mail or phone ordered from Christies of Cookstown, P.O. Box 392, Cookstown, Ontario L0L 1L0, Canada. Their phone number is (705) 458-1562. It has a FAX machine on it after hours. As of this writing, they're open seven days a week. BUNDLING DESKTOP PAINT ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ If you'd like to include Desktop Paint with your product, please get in touch with us. We have several ways to help you do this so your users get the most out of our software and we won't have to set our leather winged demon of the night on 'em. SHAREWARE DISTRIBUTORS ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ We will, at our discretion, send out disks of our shareware applications to shareware distributors. Alternately, you can download the current versions of our applications from CompuServe in the PICS forum or from our bulletin board at (416) 729-4609. We encourage you to use our bulletin board, as it will allow you to keep your copies of our applications up to date. If you obtain current copies of our shareware, you have our permission to distribute them under the following terms. No written permission from us is required if you abide by these terms. - That nothing be added to, deleted from or changed in the archive files which contain our packages. This includes adding ZIP file comments to them. - That our shareware is not included in or bundled with other hardware or software without our written permission. - That no printed documentation regarding our shareware is included with the package without our written permission. - That hard copy explaining that our packages are shareware is included with the disks. - That no more than $10.00 (US) be charged for the distribution of whatever package our applications are part of. If you will be charging more than this, please get in touch with us for bundling rates. You do have our permission to copy the ZIP files from our quad density disk to multiple lower density disks for distribution. OTHER ALCHEMY MINDWORKS SHAREWARE ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ The following are the other shareware packages we have available as of this writing. Our newsletter, available for the asking, will list all the current ones. GRAPHIC WORKSHOP ─────────────────────── This is the last word in image programs. It converts, prints, views, dithers, transforms, flips, rotates, scales, crops, colour adjusts, scans, quantizes and wreaks special effects on MacPaint, GEM/Ventura IMG, PCX, GIF, TIFF, WPG, MSP, IFF/LBM, BMP, RLE, Halo CUT, Targa, EXE, TXT and EPS files. It drives CGA, Hercules, EGA, VGA and pretty well all super VGA cards. It will drive PostScript and LaserJet Plus laser printers, colour PostScript printers, colour inkjets and most dot matrix printers. It features batch processing, extended and expanded memory support, an intuitive user interface and easy to follow menus. It allows you to convert colour image files into superb black and white clip art for desktop publishing, among other things. GRAPHIC WORKSHOP FOR WINDOWS ─────────────────────────────────── Offering the same functionality as Graphic Workshop for DOS, the Windows implementation of this package offers a traditional Windows interface, multitasking and lots of things to click on. It converts, prints, views, dithers, transforms, flips, rotates, scales, crops, colour adjusts, scans, quantizes and wreaks special effects on MacPaint, GEM/Ventura IMG, PCX, GIF, TIFF, WPG, MSP, IFF/LBM, BMP, RLE, Halo CUT, Targa and EXE picture files. Graphic Workshop for Windows will display and print on any card and printer respectively that can be driven by Windows. It features batch processing, an intuitive user interface and easy to follow menus. Includes several unicorns. IMAGE GALLERY (RELEASE 1.1) ────────────────────────────────── Image Gallery is a visual database to help you keep track of a large number of image files quickly and effectively. It will create database files... galleries... of any combination of bitmapped image files, displaying them as small ``thumbnail'' images. It works with all the file formats supported by Graphic Workshop, with the exceptions of EPS, EXE and TXT. You can search a gallery visually or by key words. Each entry in a gallery supports key word and comment fields, as well as the dimensions, location and other specifics of each image. You can also print all or part of a gallery, producing hard copy catalogs of your images when you need them. Image Gallery will run with any VGA card. It uses a Microsoft compatible mouse and will drive any PostScript or LaserJet Plus compatible laser printer, and most dot matrix printers. Release 1.1 includes a full colour view function, exporting and multiple selection. DESKTOP PAINT 256 ──────────────────────── Desktop Paint 256 is a powerful super-VGA paint program. Desktop Paint 256 will let you create and edit pictures stored in any of the formats that Graphic Workshop supports with the exception of EPS. It features a rich selection of drawing and image manipulation tools, XMS and EMS support to work on large images and a user friendly interface. Looking very much like monochrome Desktop Paint in colour, it's a powerful application which will be equally useful for picture collectors, artists and desktop publishing users... it makes a quick and easy to use editor for grey scale TIFF files, too. It supports Paradise (and compatibles), Headland Video 7, Tseng Labs 4000 series cards, Trident cards which use 8900 series chips, Oak Technologies cards and ATI VGA Wonder cards. Note that you must have one of these super-VGA cards to use Desktop Paint 256... it does not run in the standard 320 by 200 pixel "standard" VGA mode. Desktop Paint 256 requires a Microsoft-compatible mouse. DESKTOP PAINT 16 ─────────────────────── Desktop Paint 16 is a VGA paint package for use with images having up to sixteen colours. As with the monochrome implementation of Desktop Paint, it will read and write image files in the MacPaint, GEM/IMG, PCX files, GIF, TIFF, WPG, MSP, IFF/LBM, BMP and PIC formats. It has EMS and XMS support to handle images of virtually any size, an intuitive user interface and a wide selection of image creation and manipulation tools. Desktop Paint 16 can utilize fonts from many other sources, including Ventura Publisher, Macintosh FONT and NFNT resources and Windows FNT files. It requires a VGA card and a Microsoft- compatible mouse. DESKTOP PAINT (RELEASE THREE) ───────────────────────────────────── Desktop Paint is a powerful monochrome paint package fine tuned for use with desktop publishing applications. It will read and write image files in all the formats Graphic Workshop supports with the exceptions of EPS and RLE. It has EMS and XMS support to handle images of virtually any size, an intuitive user interface and a wide selection of image creation and manipulation tools. Desktop Paint can utilize fonts from many other sources, including Ventura Publisher, Macintosh FONT and NFNT resources and Windows FNT files. Desktop Paint requires a Microsoft- compatible mouse. GRAFCAT (RELEASE THREE) ────────────────────────────── GrafCat prints a visual catalog of your image files, with fifteen or sixteen pictures to a page, depending on the image orientation you choose. It supports all the file types that Graphic Workshop handles, and will drive any PostScript or LaserJet Plus compatible laser printer, including LaserJet II and LaserJet III series printers. This is a complete re-write of GrafCat... it now supports a file finder screen like the one in Graphic Workshop and numerous print options. GIFINFO ────────────── GifInfo creates catalog files from your GIF collection, allowing you to store fifty or more miniature full colour representations of GIF files on a single quad floppy. STORYTELLER ────────────────── Storyteller is a hypertext program with a mouse driven graphical user interface which will allow you to create reports, manuals and interactive fiction, among other things, which has a tree structure. Each page of a Storyteller document can lead to related sub-pages, which can in turn have their own sub-sub pages, and so on. It looks slick and is exceedingly user friendly. Storyteller requires a Microsoft-compatible mouse. If you can't obtain them from the usual sources of shareware, they're available from us for $40.00 each preregisterd. They're also all available for downloading from our bulletin board at (416) 729-4609. REVISION HISTORY ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Version 3.0f - Sped up the user interface a bit. Version 3.0e - Fixed a bug in the full screen mode that would leave a text cursor in the picture if the view mode was changed while entering text. Version 3.0d - Fixed a bug in the zoom tool that caused some of the changes made with it to disappear. Fixed the rotate functions so fragments in the upper left corner would rotate correctly. Version 3.0c - Fixed a potential screen driver problem. No idea whether this would ever have done anything nasty. Version 3.0b - Fixed a problem with the extended memory management and added a wait box to the file load function. Version 3.0a - Pretty well rewrote the beast, adding all sorts of new features and stomping several long standing bugs. LEGAL DOGMA ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Neither the author nor Alchemy Mindworks Inc. assumes responsibility for any damage or loss caused by the use of these programs, however it comes down. If you can think of a way a picture program can cause you damage or loss you've a sneakier mind than mine. All the registered trademarks used herein are registered to whoever it is that owns them. This notification is given in lieu of any specific list of trademarks and their owners, which would not be as inclusive and would probably take a lot longer to type. If you register Desktop Paint, we will assume that you are doing so having tested the shareware version and ascertained that it's suitable for your hardware and requirements. We cannot provide refunds for shareware registration if you subsequently change your mind. Graphic Workshop, Desktop Paint, Image Gallery, GrafCat and Storyteller are trademarks of Alchemy Mindworks Inc. That's it...