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____ ____ _______ ___________ __ ________ /___/\/___/\ /______/\ /___________\ /\_\ /\_______\ / __ \/ __ \ \ / _____ \ \ \ _________/ / / / / / ______/ / /\ \ /\ \ \ \ \ \/___\ \ \ \ \ /____\ / / / / / / \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ _____ \ \ \ \\__ / / / / / / /____ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \_/ / / / / / / /_____\ \_\/ \_\/ \_\/ \_\/ \_\/ \___/ \/_/ \/________/ ___ ___ ___________ /__/\ /\__\ /\__________\ \ \ \ __ / / / / / _______ \ \ \ \ /_/\ / / / / / / / / / \ \ \ / \ \ / / / / / /____/ / / \ \ \ / \ \ / / / / / /_____\/ / \ \ \/ /\ \ \/ / / / / _____ ¯__/ \ \/ / \ \ / / / / / /\ \ \ / \ \/ / / / /____/ / / \ / \ / / / /_____\/ / \/ \ / \/____________/ _______\/______________ /_______________________\ \ \ / / \ \ |\ / / \ \ | \ / / \ \ | \ / / \ \ | _\ / / \ \ |/\\¯ / / \ \ \\ / / \ \ ¯/ / \/¯¯¯¯¯\/ ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ __________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________ Documentation Welcome to MagicWB v1.0 16-Jun-1993 _____________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 1993 by Martin Huttenloher All rights reserved - Released as SHAREWARE - ________________________________________________________________________ ( TABLE OF CONTENTS ) If you want to jump to a specific chapter just PRESS `G' and enter the given line number of the chapter (table of contents = line 50). 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Short description ............................. 83 1.2 Motivation ................................... 118 1.3 System Requirements .......................... 139 1.4 Features & Information ....................... 165 2. INSTALLATION 2.1 How to install ............................... 214 2.2 What to do after the installation ............ 346 3. TIPS & TRICKS 3.1 How to preserve the Icon's TOOLTYPES ......... 401 3.2 Using the font XEN in the Shell .............. 448 4. Background & Discussion 4.1 How it all started ........................... 495 4.2 MagicWB discussion ........................... 639 5. THE GOODY `NICKPREFS' ............................. 825 6. LEGAL STUFF ....................................... 872 7. REGISTRATION 7.1 Why do I have to register? ................... 984 7.2 How to register ............................. 1038 8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................. 1090 9. SUPPORT .......................................... 1124 ________________________________________________________________________ ( 1. INTRODUCTION ) 1.1 Short description This is what YOU have always been looking for. It is NOT "just another useless Icon compilation!" It is far more different. Please, read on: This package contains ALL STANDARD SYSTEM-ICONS and more (actually 60 different Icons) painted in a new completely different style: They look VERY 3-DIMENSIONAL, have 8 COLORS, have GRADIENT fills, feature CLICK-AND-PUSH ANIMATION if being clicked onto to simulate a pushed button and even more... To sum it up: They are simply MAGIC! Second, you will find 40 Background-Patterns for your Workbench, also designed with the same 8 COLORS as the Icons. Simply MAGIC... Furthermore this package contains 4 DIFFERENT FONTS as a replacement for the most wanted WB-Fonts 'Helvetica' and 'topaz'. These new Fonts have been intensively tested to provide the BEST READABILITY for your WB and to finally make the old (horrible) fonts obsolete. The fonts are COMPLETE, i.e. ALL 256 characters are included in each font. Finally this package includes an intelligent, interactive INSTALLER with which you don't have to worry about manually installing more than 103 different files in their respective drawers. NOTE: Also more experienced users SHOULD USE THE INSTALLER because the installation of all Icons with their special tooltypes and their specific quantities is not a piece of cake! You can trust the Installer, it will NOT make any mess to your System. For more information about how the installation will work, please read the section 'Installation' in this document. IF YOU ARE STILL NOT CONVINCED TO INSTALL THIS MAGIC PACKAGE, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT THE IFF-PICTURE 'SHOW MAGICWB' IN THE MAGICWB-DRAWER...! 1.2 Motivation I simply didn't like the gray and abstract Icons provided by Commodore. Although they could use the color blue for their Icons they rarely used it. In fact, only white and black were used for these Icons. Rather boring, don't you think? Second, I wanted to see nice background patterns on my Workbench. Unfortunately there is no pattern pool existing in the AMIGA community, so I had to create them myself. Furthermore I didn't like the font topaz8 for my shell environment or for any other programs using topaz8; it was too fat. And I wanted to have a really tiny font for my Icons. Helvetica9 was just the right font and the right size. BUT it was so small that you could hardly read the text, because it was not designed well. So I decided to make replacements for topaz and helvetica. To sum it up, I wanted to polish up the outer appearance of the AMIGA Workbench to probably outdo any other "Workbenches" on other computer platforms. I hope that I achieved this goal. 1.3 System Requirements - Well, what can I say? OF COURSE you will need at least Kickstart 2.0. MagicWB is supporting all Kickstart/Workbench versions beginning from version 2.0. If you still have Kickstart 1.3 (which would be a shame!) then I guess it's time to update! - MagicWB needs a SCREENMODE with 8 COLORS! Don't be afraid if you have got a standard AMIGA with 7.14 Mhz: Practice shows that a screenmode in Hires-Interlaced with 8 colors on a standard AMIGA is still rather fast due to a really well programmed Workbench! (Thanx must go to Commodore and all the ingenious programmers!) - Beside the fact that you need at least 8 colors you should also use a 'proportional' resolution like Hires-Interlaced or higher! If not, the Icons will appear distorted because all Icons, Fonts and Patterns were designed in PAL Hires-Interlaced (640x512). - And you should have got a HardDisk if you want to install the whole package (is there still anyone out there without?) ;) 1.4 Features & Information - All Icons have been painted with great devotion. They have been painted in a special design-style called 'XEN'. This style features very PLASTIC/3-D ICONS. - Icons do appear to have more than 8 colors due to GRADIENT FILLS. - Icons do have the GREATEST possible DETAIL-LEVEL due to manual 'pixel by pixel' ANTI-ALIASING. - Icons are NOT abstract symbols representing their function, they are painted like PAINTINGS to fit the eyes' natural impression of an object. So the eye will no longer concentrate on the Icon-Text (because with the old Icons it was faster to search for the Icon-Text than for the Icon to find a specific file), it will concentrate on the Icon again (like it was intended to be!). - AND the Icons also do have the typical and natural CLICK-AND-PUSH animation to simulate that the Icon was pressed down. - MagicWB features the COMPLETE REPLACEMENT for the old & obsolete Commodore-Icons. - Furthermore MagicWB features several SPECIAL-Icons like RAM-Disk, HardDisk, Prefs, Syquest, Preset, ReadMe & AmigaGuide. - MagicWB features 40 Background-PATTERNS for "polishing up" your Workbench. I think that is enough to find your personal favorite Pattern... - MagicWB features 4 thoroughly tested new FONTS as a REPLACEMENT for the old imperfect fonts 'Helvetica/9', 'Helvetica/11', 'topaz/8' and 'topaz/9'. These new fonts contain all 256 ASCII-Characters which means that they are complete and all foreign characters are included. The 'XEN'-Font is the perfect replacement for a non-proportional font like 'topaz'. - MagicWB features a very flexible INSTALLER (please consult the 'Installation' chapter for full information about this feature) - MagicWB supports OS2.0, OS2.1 and OS3.x - MagicWB is just MAGIC... ;) ________________________________________________________________________ ( 2. INSTALLATION ) 2.1 How to install MagicWB is very easy to install: The installation is done via the Installer of MagicWB. Just double-click the `Install' Icon and the Installer will open a window and explain how the installation will proceed. After the information you can decide whether you want to start the installation or not. ********************************************************************* * * * NOTE: PLEASE USE THE INSTALLER TO INSTALL MAGICWB! I strongly * * recommend this! You won't regret it. If you manually install * * MagicWB you will waste much time and you will probably install * * MagicWB not correctly to your system. * * The Installer is NOT making any mess to your system. Every- * * thing is being installed very logically for your convenience. * * * * ALSO EXPERT USERS SHOULD TAKE THE INSTALLER INTO CONSIDERATION! * * * ********************************************************************* For those of you who want to know EVERYTHING I am now going to explain exactly what the Installer will install to your system: 1. The Installer will install several ICONS to replace the old Icons of your system. All Icons do have the ORIGINAL Tooltypes by Commodore. The Installer analyses your Workbench version and will only install the corresponding files. It scans your directories to look if it can find the Icons you should have for your specific Workbench version. It only replaces the EXISTING Icons with the better-looking ones. > You can for example have 10 different DOSDrivers in your DEVS: drawer. The Installer will make a new Icon for EACH one ALSO CONSIDERING the different tooltypes (because PC0 and AUX have different tooltypes, for example). The Installer also knows the difference between PC0, PC1, PC2 and so on. Hence you will get the correct Icons with the tooltypes UNIT=0, UNIT=1, UNIT=2 and so on. This also applies to different drivers like `CD0' or any other driver-name with a unit number! With this example I hope that you have realized that the Installer really IS very flexible and saves you a lot of time than if you did it by yourself... The Installer installs the new XEN-Icons to the following directories: - SYS:System - SYS:Utilities - SYS:Tools - SYS:Tools/Commodities - SYS:Devs/DataTypes (3.x only) - SYS:Devs/DOSDrivers - SYS:Devs/Keymaps - SYS:Devs/Monitors - SYS:Devs/Printers - SYS:Prefs - SYS:Prefs/Presets (PRESET Icons...) - ENVARC: (DEFAULT system Icons...) - SYS: (new DRAWER Icons...) - Furthermore a RAM-Icon is being installed to S:RAM.info - The `User-Startup' will be expanded with ONE command line. This command line takes care that after a reboot you will still have a beautiful RAM-Icon in the right place on your Workbench. - The Installer will install a nice-looking HARDDISK-Icon. - The Installer will give you the possibility to decide whether you want to install more HardDisk-Icons to other partitions. - If you have got a SYQUEST (removable disk drive) the Installer will ask you if you want to have the corresponding Icon installed to your Syquest. - You can also select between two different PREFS-Drawer-Icons! - The PALETTE.ILBM (2.x only) or the PALETTE.PREFS (3.x only) will be installed to ENVARC: This is probably the most important file of the package (without the right colors you won't have a good-looking Workbench...) ;) 2. The Installer will install 4 new Fonts to your FONTS-directory: - XHelvetica/9 - XHelvetica/11 - XEN/8 - XEN/9 These 4 fonts in are thought to replace the `Helvetica' and `topaz' font. But they have different names so that you still have got the old fonts on your harddrive. The file `font.prefs' will be installed to ENVARC: so that you can already use these better fonts the next time when you boot your system. If you should not like the new fonts (what I cannot believe ;)) then you can easily change it in the Font-Preferences. 3. The Installer will install ONE of the 40 PATTERNS to your directory SYS:Prefs/Patterns. If you don't have this directory it will be created. Only one pattern will be installed to save diskspace! This pattern is called Marble_CLASSIC and is probably the best looking pattern of all. Anyway, if you don't like it you can test the other 39 patterns and copy the desired ones to the directory SYS:Prefs/Patterns. Finally the file `WBPattern.prefs' will be installed to ENVARC: to ensure that you will have this pattern as a background on your Workbench the next time you boot your system. So, I hope that I could take away your uncertainty and motivate you to use this save and flexible Installer. Now you know precisely what the Installer is going "to do" to your harddisk and that the whole installation is not as easy as it appears. Hence you should rely on the Installer and start the installation without doubts. 2.2 What to do after the installation 1. After the installation is done you should first activate your SCREENMODE-Preferences program and select the following: - A screenmode that is proportional, that means screenmodes like 640x400, 640x480, 640x512, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024 or anything similar. You should NOT use screenmodes like 640x256 or 1280x512 where the horizontal/vertical amount of pixels is twice as much as the vertical/horizontal amount of pixels. In this case the Icons, Fonts and Patterns will appear distorted! - Select at least 8 COLORS for your screenmode! If you have done this you should SAVE these settings! 2. You will probably have to re-snapshot your windows. Your Icons will already have good snapshot-positions as I included them in the Icons. But there is no way to maintain the old window positions as I have to replace the old drawer Icons. But this will take just a few minutes. You may want to snapshot certain Icons like the HardDisk-Icon or certain Drawer-Icons. Just do it to fit your personal taste. -> If you are going to snapshot the RAM-Icon you should bear in mind that the next time you RESET your system the snapshot-position will be lost! You will have to copy the Disk.info from your RAM Disk to the right place on the HardDisk. For your convenience I have written a small script that will exactly do this task for you: > Just double-click the `Snapshot RAM-Icon'-Icon and > follow the instructions that are given to you. -> As the main Installer only replaces the old drawers in your SYS: directory you might still find old drawers in other directories. And as you probably don't want to have several old Drawer-Icons on your HardDisk I have also included another script that will replace/update the remaining old Drawer-Icons: > Just double-click the `Update Drawers'-Icon and > follow the instructions. ________________________________________________________________________ ( 3. TIPS & TRICKS ) This part of the documentation is for all of you who might not exactly know how to solve certain problems with the Icons or the fonts. 3.1 How to preserve the Icon's TOOLTYPES If you copy an Icon to a certain path replacing an existing one, the new Icon will NOT have the tooltypes of the old Icon, it will have the tooltypes of the Icon that you copied to this path. For example: You might have got commodities in your SYS:Tools/Commodities that are not provided by Commodore (i.e. commodities from other programmers). But the Icons of these commodities do still have the old commoditiy-Icon by Commodore. Now you want to replace these old commodity- Icons with the new ones of MagicWB. BEWARE! Don't make the mistake and copy for example the Icon of the commodity 'Blanker' over the Icon of the commodity which should get the new Icon. Sure, you will then have a new Icon for this commodity being displayed on your Workbench, BUT this Icon will have the tooltypes of the commodity 'Blanker' and the original tooltypes of this commodity will be lost. Here is how to do it right: 1. Start the program 'IconEdit' in the SYS:Tools directory. 2. OPEN the old Icon of the program which should get the new Icon. (IconEdit loads the images of the Icon AND the tooltypes!) 3. LOAD the new Icon. ATTENTION: You have to load the new Icon with the function "IMAGES/LOAD/BOTH IMAGES..." from the menu or just press the shortcut "RIGHT_AMIGA I". YOU MUST *NOT* "OPEN" THE NEW ICON VIA THE PROJECT MENU. If you LOAD the new Icon with this menu function, only the Icon images will be loaded into IconEdit, the tooltypes will be the ones from the old Icon. 4. SAVE the new Icon (with the original tooltypes) with the menu function "PROJECT/SAVE". You should always use this method to ensure that no tooltypes are accidentally mixed up when you replace Icons. 3.2 Using the font XEN in the Shell You might have noticed that the font XEN in your Shell environment is touching the upper and left black border of the Shell. As the font is also black it is hard to read the font because there is no space between the font and the border of the shell (i.e. the font is merging into the border). It doesn't look good. Here is the solution: You just have to tell the Shell that it should make a space between the font and the border of the Shell. This is done via Escape Sequences. Just do the following thing... 1. Load the file 'Shell-Startup' from your SYS:S directory into an editor. 2. In this file you might see some "alias" command lines. At the end of the file you should see a line with the command "prompt" at the beginning of that line. Just place the following line BEFORE the prompt line: echo noline "*e[1;1H*e[J*e[6x*e[15y" You can copy this line from this document and insert it into the right place in your shell-startup (so you won't need to type it out) 3. Save the file 'Shell-Startup' This little escape sequence will tell the Shell to make a space of 1 pixel between the font and the left and upper border of the shell. NOTE: The coordinate '6x' in the upper escape sequence will always work ~~~~~ as the left border of the shell will never change in its size. BUT the coordinate '15y' must be changed IF you use another font than XHelvetica/11 as the SCREEN font. The coordinate 15y is only appropriate if you use XHelvetica/11. If you use another font that might be bigger or smaller the window bar of the shell window will also be bigger or smaller. Just try out several values to find the correct value that will fit to your selected screen font. You may also use this prompt line if you like, instead of the old prompt line in your shell-startup: prompt "*e[1;31;47m%n*e[0m*e[31;47m.%s*e[0;31;40m>*e[0m " This is the prompt I am using in my Shell environment. ________________________________________________________________________ ( 4. BACKGROUND & DISCUSSION ) 4.1 How it all started It all started more than one year ago when I first began to design my own HardDisk-Icon. It looked very simple, in fact it was just a white rectangle (should symbolize the external HardDisk) and a black pixel in the upper-left corner (the LED!). It was really ugly, BUT it was something different (compared to the horrible Disk-Icon by Commo ;)). Well, I started to enhance it, started to design an Icon for my Syquest and for the RAM Drive. That was all! Just three lousy Icons. Weeks later, I came up with the idea: Why not take the advantage to define my personal def_Icons, a feature available since Workbench 2.0. So I started to paint a def_Drawer, def_Disk, def_Tool and a def_Project. They were all really simple compared to those of this package. I made my own Background-Pattern (just diagonal lines) and was HAPPY... Until a good friend of mine (thanx Robert!) "inspected" my Workbench and forced me to carry on with my idea of making new Icons: "Enhance them, make more, and more...". So I did. Before I started to make more Icons, I wanted to "standardize" the whole idea: A compromise should be made between the amount of colors and the speed of the Workbench. I realized that 16 colors are slowing down a standard 7Mhz AMIGA too much but was astonished that the step from 4 colors to 8 colors is not slowing down the AMIGA as much as the step from 8 colors to 16 colors. So one thing was clear: 4 colors are not enough for making good-looking Icons. 16 colors are too much (you won't need all of them for making good Icons) and slowing down the Workbench. So it had to be 8 COLORS! BUT: As my intention was to standardize the Icons, I could not take ALL of the 8 colors and redefine new values for all of them. I had to preserve the first 4 standard colors (Gray, Black, White & Blue). Even now I think that this color standard by Commodore is the best color selection ever made for the AMIGA Workbench. Hence, I just had the remaining 4 colors (color 5-8) available for my own color selection. You might agree: Somehow not too much for making good-looking Icons!? Because of this self-made restriction I had to wisely and carefully choose the right RGB values for these 4 colors! And indeed, choosing the right palette was probably the most difficult and important step in creating MagicWB. But as this task was finished, for the first time I had a basis for my work. Then I just had to standardize the size for each Icon-Type and it could all begin... I experimented with 'dithering' and 'gradients' to simulate more than 8 colors and developed my personal style taking all the things into account like 'light direction' and 'shadow direction'. I had the ambition to create little drawings and not just abstract Icons! The Icons should be highly detailed (as much as is possible within this little size of an Icon) but nevertheless be rather small (bulky Icons are really horrible, aren't they?) To make high-detailed Icons I developed my own manual technique of 'anti-aliasing' (with just 8 rigid colors!?). And finally, I wanted to give a certain animation to the Icons: Beside the normal animation within the Icon-Border I wanted to give a feature to the Icons which lets them appear "pushed" if being clicked onto. Commodore wanted to simulate this by inverting the surrounding frame of the Icon. It was not a bad idea, but the real 'click-and-push' feeling was not achieved. So I investigated how this effect could be achieved with the given opportunities. With all this experience I started to design just the System-Icons (def_Icons) and HardDisk and RAM-Disk Icons. As they were finished, I was happy and thought: "That's enough Icons for the Workbench". Well, as you might have guessed, my friend Robert came again to inspect my Workbench (again! ;) ). He was somehow fascinated by these Icons and wanted to SEE MORE OF THEM. And so: I decided, that the next important and mostly used Icons are the Preferences-Icons in the Prefs-Drawer. My God! 15 Icons to be painted!!! And I did so... The more Icons I designed, the faster I could paint them. But never- theless it took me 3 to 6 hours to create an Icon in the "raw state". Raw state means that this Icon surely was not the final Icon (after all Icons were done for this package in April 1993, I made countless changes to these Icons, even in the last few days before MagicWB was released). At this point (where all of the 15 Prefs-Icons were created) I really wanted to stop this time-consuming work. Really! ;) Several friends and acquaintances wanted to have these Icons and I gave a bunch of Icons to them. The last thing I wanted to do was a Background-Pattern for my personal use. I thought that a Marble-Pattern would be a good idea but had NO IDEA how to paint it! Well, I finally managed to paint one (it was exactly the same pattern as the one called 'Marble_CLASSIC' in this package) and it should be the one and only pattern I wanted to paint (because it really is a time-consuming task to paint a good pattern). Time passed.... As time passed my Icons spreaded and spreaded (well, just a few of them). But how could I know that this was the beginning of my doom! A completely unexpected feedback broke into my house: All those people who have seen a few of my Icons wanted to have all. And even worse: They wanted to have ALL old Icons of their Workbench being replaced by Icons painted with my style! Gee! It finally culminated in the fact that even an AMIGA-Trader in Munich (the Firm 'Computer Corner' with its owner Micky Wenngatz) wanted to have these Icons to be commercially distributed. That was the time where I took the decision to make a complete and professional package called MagicWB (thanx Stefan!) that would completely renew the optical appearance of the AMIGA-Workbench. As this would include more than the few Icons I created, I also decided to declare this package as SHAREWARE to have at least a financial motivation for this time-consuming task. I HATED the font 'topaz' (it was too fat and bulky) and realized that the font 'Helvetica' was rather imperfect. I decided to make a replacement for both fonts with two different sizes for each of them. So, the 'XEN' and 'XHelvetica' fonts came into being. Instead of one Pattern I created 40 Patterns and instead of 19 Icons I created 59 Icons to replace all old Icons of the Workbench. Finally, I wrote an Installer for your convenience because the installation is not as easy as it appears. The Installer (and of course the whole package) had to support the Workbench versions 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0 with their specific Icons and peculiarities. Now it's up to YOU if you like MagicWB or not. I have done my best, ....I think. ;) 4.2 MagicWB Discussion I would like to discuss certain things about MagicWB. So this chapter may be interesting for those who want to know more about this Package. The Patterns As you probably have already noticed: Not all 40 Patterns are completely different. I have taken one pattern style and painted it in different colors. I personally do not like ALL of the patterns, but I included many variations of one pattern style to satisfy your taste. The following list is a summary of all patterns where I would like to give a comment to: ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯T¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ A2, A5 : not bad | Balls1 : probably too much balls... Balls4 : nice pattern | H1-H4 : well, if you like it! K2 : not bad | K4 : not bad M1-M3 : if you like it... | Marble1: gray marble Marble3: brown marble | Marble4: like 1 but without white strokes Marble6: like 4 but brown | Marble7: very bright marmor R2 : not bad | R4 : good (rather plastic) R5 : even more plastic | R6 : plastic but finer Stone1 : gray, almost silver | Stone2 : rougher than Stone1 Stone3 : looks more stone-like | Stone4 : like Stone1 but light brown Stone5 : this one looks stony! | Stone6 : this is my favorite (stonewall) Stone8 : more intensive than 6 | --------------------------------+------------------------------------------ The Icons Ah the Icons...! I have probably repainted them a hundred of times. I am now at the point where I am almost content with their design. The most important Icons (in my opinion) are the default Icons, because they are the ones you will probably see most of the time when working on your Workbench. So I probably redesigned them a thousands of times. ;) I am very curious if YOU like them. So, if you want to say something about the Icons feel free to contact me! Just a word to the project Icon: This was probably the most difficult one to create, because it is hard to symbolize the expression "project". What should I paint to fit this expression, I wondered? The final Icon is a capital 'P' that is being constructed with geometric objects. 'P' of course stands for "project" and the whole idea was taken from the typesetter's craftsmanship to design the letters of a font. I think it perfectly visualizes the expression "project", i.e. a sort of creation. (If you think this Icon has got any similarities with the PageStream logo, well, it should not... ;) ) I did NOT paint an Icon for the 'Trashcan' because no one uses it (better kill this Icon, you really won't need it, my opinion: redundant!) The Prefs-Icon should be an AMIGA 4000. I hope you recognized it... ;) The PRESET-Icon is a problem: Commodore did never include a def_preset Icon in the AMIGA OS. If a program generates a Preset-Icon it will always take the old standard Preset-Icon. So you can not tell the system to use your personal Preset-Icon. I hope that Commodore will fix this in the future! Anyway, if you want to have a Preset-Icon in the XEN style you can find it in your SYS:Prefs/Presets directory. It is called 'Preset.info'. If you want to replace the old Preset-Icon with this one, please follow the instructions explained in the chapter 3.1 (How to preserve the Icon's tooltypes) of this documentation. This chapter explains how to replace Icons with the help of the program 'IconEdit'. If you are going to do it without IconEdit via the Shell ('copy' and 'rename'), please remember that these Preset-Icons do have a DEFAULT TOOL included in the Icon, that will be overwritten if you just copy and rename the Preset-Icon! The Multiview-Icon really IS quite big, but please take a look at the original Icon from Commo; it is also larger than all the other Icons! And I think that the greatness of this brilliant utility should also be expressed in its Icon... ;) You have probably noticed that the Icons' file sizes are rather big. This is another thing for which you must not blame me! I had to generate the Icons with 'IconEdit' from WB3.0. I tried to generate them with IconEdit 2.0, but these Icons only worked fine if you used an 8 color Workbench. This restriction was very annoying especially considering the future (AGA, RTG etc.) where a restriction to an 8 color WB would be intolerable! So I had to generate the Icons with the new IconEdit from WB3.0. These Icons worked fine on any screen depth and on any Operating System. BUT THE SIDE EFFECT IS: IconEdit3.0 generates 8 bit Icons (Icons with a color palette of 256 colors), regardless whether you have painted them with 8 colors or with 256 colors. This behaviour ensures that the generated Icons work under any screen depth (due to Commodores "first 4 colors, last 4 colors system"). And 8 bit Icons truly are bigger than 3 bit Icons! Just an example: The DRAWER Icon would just need 1138 bytes (this is the real size it would need because of the amount of pixels and the 8 colors). As I processed it with IconEdit3.0 it finally was 2657 bytes big! But I had to do this otherwise the Icons would not have worked with screen depths bigger than 8 colors. So again, this is NOT my fault... FOR THE FIRST TIME you can use a feature that should not be officially available for the AMIGA users: If you have ever tried to paint your own Disk-Icon and wanted to define it as a default Icon, you have probably noticed that the Workbench still was going to use the old and ugly Disk Icon if you had inserted a 'NO DOS Disk'. Only if you had inserted a DOS Disk you would be able to see your personal Disk-Icon. This is rather inconsequent and annoying! BUT: There is an undocumented feature available already since OS 2.0 that unofficially allows you to use a different Icon for NO DOS Disks: Each time you insert a NO DOS Disk the system looks for an Icon called def_Kick.info in ENV:Sys (don't ask ME why they called it KICK!!?). This Icon must be a special Icon (it must NOT be generated with 'IconEdit' because it is not a normal Icon with one of the available Icon-Types). Well, MagicWB is making this feature available to you for the first time. Now, if you insert a NO DOS Disk you will be presented with a special NO DOS Disk-Icon that is painted in the same style as the normal Disk-Icon. The only difference: The normal Disk-Icon has got a disk label and the new NO DOS Disk-Icon is just a blue disk without a disk label. So you can visually see which kind of disk has been inserted. Nice feature, eh...?! Well, it's a kind of magic... ;) The Fonts I worked hard to design all the numerals, letters and special letters in each font. I wanted to either make the COMPLETE font or no font. As already mentioned the XEN-Font is the replacement for topaz. This font exists in two sizes: 8 point and 9 point. You will probably notice that the two fonts are not very different in their sizes. XEN/9 is almost the same as XEN/8. The only difference: It is 1 pixel larger and therefore certain letters that reach below the baseline (like p,q,y,j,g) are looking better with XEN/9. Another advantage: The line spacing is bigger and so the font XEN/9 is very convenient for the Shell or for displaying texts because of its good readability! The font XEN/8 is perfect for user interfaces with buttons, because it perfectly fits into buttons without needing too much space. The XEN/8 is for example very useful in DirOpus for the 'Requesters', as a 'General' font, for the 'Clock/Memory' bar and for the path names, while the font XEN/9 will magically work in the 'Text viewer' and the 'Directory window' of DirOpus. Try it out and you will never want to miss it again! DirOpus is just an example of a program which supports the user in defining his desired fonts for the program. You can of course define the XEN-Font in any other program that supports font definition. The font XEN is the result of my goal to make the smallest possible non-proportional font for the Workbench. It is NOT possible to make this font smaller without destroying its readability. It is highly elaborated and each pixel has its function in this small and thin font. I hope you like it... Known problem: As you will probably install the XEN-Font as the SYSTEM DEFAULT font, some programs (that are not programmed well, i.e. programs that are not font sensitive) will display their interfaces a little bit strange, because they expected the font topaz and programmed their interfaces to only work with the dimensions of the topaz font. A program that was programmed like this is for example PageStream. Anyway, the XEN-Font will be displayed properly and you can still work with the program's interface (only some spaces are not looking good). This is not the fault of the XEN-Font, it is the fault of the program! The fonts XHelvetica/9 and XHelvetica/11 are the result of my annoyance at the corresponding Helvetica fonts from Commo. As these two fonts both are very small, every pixel counts (as I mentioned above)! If one pixel is set at the wrong position in the font-grid it may destroy the optical appearance of the font. I designed both fonts with the same kind of perfection as the XEN-Font. Especially the XHelvetica/9 is now readable. Its use is clear: This is the perfect font for the Icons on the Workbench. I had to fight with the small letters a,s,e,x and y because they were too small to make them readable, but I finally managed it. Because the Icon itself is more important than its text, the Icon-Text should be as small as possible. With the XHelvetica/9 you are using the smallest (and still readable) PROPORTIONAL font on your Workbench. (NOTE: Try it as the 'Buttons' font in DirOpus...) The XHelvetica/11 was designed because the original Helvetica/11 was still not perfect. All other sizes bigger than 11 points are rather usable, so I didn't see the need to redesign them. XHelvetica/11 is the perfect SCREEN-FONT for the menus, requesters and user interfaces. Enjoy it... If you would like to express anything about the Icons, Patterns and Fonts of MagicWB, please contact me! I am very interested in your opinion. Please contact me at the address given in chapter 9 (Support). ________________________________________________________________________ ( 5. THE GOODY `NICKPREFS' ) The following is only interesting for OS2.x users: If you want to use the patterns of MagicWB you will have to install the package `NickPrefs' (by Nicola Salmoria) to your system, because Workbench 2.x does not support to load patterns with different and bigger sizes. You can find NickPrefs in the MagicWB/Patterns/NickPrefs Directory. It is very easy to install. Please follow the instructions of the NickPrefs documentation to know how to install NickPrefs correctly. By default the MagicWB Installer installs only ONE pattern to the SYS:Prefs/Patterns directory. You can find the pattern MARBLE_CLASSIC there. You may configure NickPrefs' WBPicture program in the way that it uses this pattern every time you boot your system. Read the documentation. If you want to use the other 39 patterns of MagicWB you will have to follow this instruction: As OS3.0 uses a new (and flexible) color handling, the patterns done for 3.0 (found in the `patterns' drawer) are *NOT* compatible with 2.x anymore. I decided to only include the pattern MARBLE_CLASSIC for 2.x users so that this package is not going to explode in its size. This pattern can be found in the MagicWB/Patterns/Patterns2.0 directory and has already been remapped for the use with NickPrefs. You can NOT use the patterns found in the MagicWB/Patterns directory directly with NickPrefs under OS2.x! I am sorry for this inconvenience. But: If you want to use ALL patterns with NickPrefs under OS2.x, you just have to convert them with a paint program (e.g. DPaint). To achieve this you must do the following: First, select the screenmode Hires Interlaced (640x512) with 8 COLORS! Second, load the Workbench palette from `ENV:Sys/palette.ilbm' into DPaint (COLOR/PALETTE/LOAD). Third, load the pattern you wish to convert AS BRUSH. Next you must select the function COLOR/BRUSH/REMAP and save the brush AS BRUSH to your directory SYS:Prefs/Patterns. That's it! Now you can use the pattern with NickPrefs under OS2.x without having the wrong colors! ________________________________________________________________________ ( 6. LEGAL STUFF ) The package "MagicWB" is: Created by Martin Huttenloher Copyright © 1993 Martin Huttenloher - All rights reserved - DISCLAIMER This software is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. By using MagicWB, you agree to accept the entire risk as to the quality and performance of this package. In no event (unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing) will any copyright holder, or any other party who may redistribute this package as permitted below, be liable to you for damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use this package (including but not limited to loss of data or data being rendered inaccurate or losses sustained by you or third parties), even if such holder or other party has been advised of the possibility of such damages. Of course, MagicWB was tested rather extensively before it was released... LICENSE 1. This license applies to the product called "MagicWB", a package for the AMIGA computer, published by Martin Huttenloher under the concepts of SHAREWARE. The terms "Package", "MagicWB" and "Archive", refer to this product. The licensee is addressed as "you". This license does not apply to third party supplied programs, found in the "Goody" Drawer of the original distribution archive. 2. You may use MagicWB for a period of up to 14 days for evaluation. After that, you have to register. 3. This archive may be freely redistributed, but only in totally unchanged state: No files must be added, deleted, modified. Compression with common archivers like zoo or lharc is allowed. You are only allowed to redistribute the WHOLE original archive, NOT ANY SINGLE FILE MUST BE DISTRIBUTED SEPARATELY, except stated below under condition #4. This condition applies to ALL forms of distribution, be it via floppy disks, BBS'es, electronic networks (FTP sites), or any other means. 4. Programmers and creators OF FD-SOFTWARE (freely distributable) are allowed EXCLUSIVELY to include single ICONS of this package in THEIR OWN package-distributions. This DOES NOT apply to the PATTERNS or FONTS included in this archive. The only conditions: - Be so kind and send the author of MagicWB a copy of your creation where his Icons are included. - Do not remove any copyright notices when distributing these Icons and do not forget to mention the author of MagicWB in the accompanying documentation of your creation/package/program. - AND: Do not forget to include the Palette files for OS2.x AND OS3.x in your package ;) (found in Prefs/env-archive/sys of this archive) Any other conditions (except the conditions that are excluded by this condition) stated within this license do still apply to programmers and creators OF FD-SOFTWARE. 4. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DRAW COMMERCIAL PROFIT OUT OF DISTRIBUTING THIS PACKAGE. You may charge a fee to recover distribution costs. The fee for diskette distribution may NOT BE MORE than the cost to obtain a public domain diskette from Fred Fish. 5. You are NOT allowed to manipulate any file of MagicWB and distribute it under any or no name. If you manipulate any part of this package (for example take an Icon from MagicWB and change/repaint it) you may do this for your private use BUT you may NOT distribute this modified file! (Nevertheless the author would be happy if you sent him your modified file, so that it may serve as a basis for an inclusion in MagicWB) 6. If developers of commercial software would like to include certain parts of MagicWB in their commercial programs, they will have to contact the author of MagicWB first to ask for permission. 7. You agree to cease distributing MagicWB if requested to do so by the author. 8. By copying, distributing and/or using MagicWB you indicate your acceptance of this license to do so, and all its terms and conditions. 9. Each time you redistribute this package, the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute and/or use this package subject to these terms and conditions. YOU MAY NOT IMPOSE ANY FURTHER RESTRICTIONS ON THE RECIPIENTS' EXERCISE OF THE RIGHTS GRANTED HEREIN. Finally: As always, Fred Fish has got explicit permission to include this package in his wonderful "Fish Disk"-Collection! NOTE: If you have bought MagicWB by ordering it from the firm ~~~~> "Computer Corner" in Munich (Germany), you do not need to > pay the registration fee. Nevertheless I would be really > happy if you sent me a postcard with your name & address > and comments/critics about MagicWB. Then you are accepted > as a registered user of MagicWB (see chapter 'How to > register' (7.2) for detailed information). Thank you!! ________________________________________________________________________ ( 7. REGISTRATION ) 7.1 Why do I have to register? MagicWB has been and will be a time-consuming work for me. If you like this product you should support me with the registration fee. This will enable future versions of MagicWB. There might be some people out there in the AMIGA community who think "It is absolutely ridiculous to pay for a bunch of Icons, Patterns and Fonts". Well, let me say this: MagicWB is truly not a program, that's clear. But why should a program be worth more than a package where the author probably invested the same amount of time as another author with his program. Anyway, MagicWB IS software. But in this whole discussion there is one thing being neglected that finally counts: Do I (the user) like this software or not? And if I (the user) USE it and ENJOY it, it surely IS worth the price. There is another attitude in the AMIGA community: "Why should I pay for a software I already have?!" Well, let me just say a few words about this: At the beginning of this project I was playing with the idea of making a "cripple version" of MagicWB (this concept is probably known to you as CrippleWare or TryWare). Somehow this had become a fashion under the AMIGA FD-Community. This Cripple-version of MagicWB should only include a limited selection of the complete package (just for the user to see if he liked the software or not). I decided NOT to do this, because I personally do not like this "fashion" and second, I noticed that most of the users would not even try to test the software because it was "CippleWare" (they just deleted the archive). Somehow, users developed an "anti-crippleware-attitude"... Therefore I decided to release the FULL version of MagicWB. This is my first Shareware product and your attitude towards this concept will strongly influence the future of MagicWB. I really hope that especially the german users (who are known for their strange attitude towards the Shareware concept as described above) will not let me down. Your feedback will definitely affect further development of MagicWB. I know that I took a great risk into consideration as I decided to release the full version of MagicWB, because I knew that I probably would not get much response. But I really do not want to force you to anything or shake a warning finger at you! It should be as simple as this: If you like it and use it, you will have to register. If you don't like it, well, that's ok. Then you will not register yourself and are not allowed to use it. Anything else is a matter of good conscience. Thank you for your insight. 7.2 How to register No person(s) or businesses other than the author are authorized to accept any registration or distribution fees in any form whatsoever, except as specified above in the LICENSE agreement. The only people who will be regarded as registered users are those who have sent their registration information (name, address & and phonenumber) and DM 20.- or US $ 20.- to Martin Huttenloher Parkstr. 11 D-87645 Schwangau Germany/Europe or those who have bought this package from "Computer Corner" in Munich and have sent a postcard with their registration info (see below) to the author of MagicWB. For residents in Germany, the easiest and cheapest way of transferring money to the author is by a bank transfer to Raiffeisenbank Füssen, BLZ 733 698 78, Konto 2868 1 In this case, you can write your registration info on the giro-form. The cheapest and easiest (and quite safe) way for foreign residents is probably to send DM 20.- or US $ 20.- in a letter together with the registration info. Note that I won't accept foreign currencies except US Dollar. If you don't want to do this, you can also use a postal money order (PMO), about which your local post office can provide you with details about. Beware that this can be quite expensive depending on where you live. Or you can send a EuroCheque payable to Martin Huttenloher in DM. Bank drafts can *NOT* be accepted as payment since the bank charges outrageous fees from both the sender and the receiver. The same applies to private cheques. IN ANY CASE, BE SURE TO PROVIDE ME WITH YOUR REGISTRATION INFO: -----> Your name, address & phone number <----- ________________________________________________________________________ ( 8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ) I would like to thank the following persons for their invaluable help: - Robert Wagner (Motivator, critic, beta tester and high-speed pattern converter ;) ) - Gerri Körner (A4000 beta tester, great help) - Martin Korndörfer (for your ingenious suggestions) -> look out for the probably best backup program for the AMIGA computer: DIAVOLO BACKUP (by Martin Korndörfer) ;) - Angelika Nadler (for some really good suggestions) - Stefan Stuntz (for those endless phonechats and help) -> look out for the probably best user interface for the AMIGA computer: MUI (Magic User Interface) (by Stefan Stuntz) ;) - Andreas Schildbach (for the help with the color system of OS 3.x) ...and to Commodore for the brilliant Operating System! ________________________________________________________________________ ( 9. SUPPORT ) If you have any suggestions, critics, bug reports or questions, please contact the author of MagicWB at the following addresses: Mail: Martin Huttenloher ~~~~~ Parkstr. 11 87645 Schwangau Germany EMail: Z-Netz : XEN@NATHAN.ZER ~~~~~~ Internet: xen@nathan.zer.sub.org Voice: ++49-(0)8362-81104 ~~~~~~ __ /// /// /¯¯| |\ /| | /¯¯¯\ |¯¯\ __ /// / | | \/ | | / ___ | \ \\\/// /¯¯¯¯| | | | \ | |¯¯¯¯\ Thanx to Commodore for \X// / | | | | \___| | \ this wonderful machine!