GravitÄ makes Macintosh Drag & Drop look and feel more like the real thing. When GravitÄ is installed, dragged objects (Finder icons, image clips╔) behave according to laws of mechanics such as gravity, inertia and friction.
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Ñ GravitÄ 2.0.1 is designed for PowerPC Macintoshes running MacOS 7.5.3 through 9.
Ñ To install, just put the GravitÄ control panel into the ╘Control Panels╒ folder of your system folder and reboot your Macintosh.
Ñ GravitÄ 2.0.1 is free.
If you like GravitÄ, send an e-mail to gravite@wildbits.com -- or better, a postcard to the following address:
Sylvain Demongeot
34 Chemin LatÄral
94140 Alfortville
France
Visit the GravitÄ Page: <http://www.wildbits.com/gravite/>
Control Panel Reference
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Ñ Toggled by Caps Lock: If this is checked, you can activate or deactivate GravitÄ through Caps Lock (without opening the control panel).
Ñ Gravity: This controls the gravity field intensity.
Ñ Mouse Friction: This controls the intensity of the friction force at the end of the arrow.
Ñ Air Friction: This controls the intensity of the air friction force.
Ñ Sounds: This allows sounds to be played.
Ñ Free Flight: If this is checked, the object can be dropped by pressing the ctrl key and releasing the mouse button. The object will fly freely until you release the ctrl key.
Ñ Quality: This controls the display quality (anti-aliasing level). Better quality may yield poorer animation if your machine isn╒t fast enough.
Ñ Solid Drag: If this is checked, the dragged object will appear solid, not transparent.
Technical Insight
Ñ GravitÄ 2.0.1 was completely rewritten for PowerPC, the Drag Manager and tranparency. No code from GravitÄ 1.5 was used.
Ñ GravitÄ 2.0.1 patches the ╘SetDragImage╒ system call to install its own custom DragDrawingProc.
Ñ GravitÄ 2.0.1 also patches ╘OSEventAvail╒ to allow proper free flight. This patch is ╘fat╒ to prevent instruction set architecture switches.
Ñ GravitÄ 2.0.1 implements 11 optimized bitmap rotation routines - one for each combination of screen depth (8, 15 and 24-bit modes) and oversampling (1x, 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x). Oversampling is not available in 8-bit mode.
Other Things that Need to be Written
Ñ GravitÄ comes with no technical support. I don╒t commit to fixing bugs either. However, bug reports are welcome at gravite@wildbits.com.
Ñ Although GravitÄ is believed to be safe and harmless, GravitÄ comes with no guarantee of any kind. Use it at your own risk.
Ñ GravitÄ 2.0.1 may be distributed freely. If you distribute GravitÄ on a CD-ROM, it would be nice to let me know and even nicer to send me a copy. Thanks! :^)
Ñ 68K users: GravitÄ 2.0.1 won╒t run on your machine (translucent dragging isn╒t implemented on 68K machines anyway). However, if you use system 6.0.3 trough 7.5, you can probably use GravitÄ 1.5 (to be downloaded at the GravitÄ page).
Revision History for Version 2
Ñ version 2.0.1 released 10/20/2000
- Compatible with ╥A-Dock╙.
- ╥Crash╙ sound is now asynchronous.
- In a certain situation, GravitÄ could ╥eat╙ a click. Fixed that.
