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GBPaint v1, Manual
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Written by Bruno Azzara
copyright GBP 1992
Manual written by Geoffrey Harrison
copyright GBP 1992
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THIS PROGRAM IS A DEMO OF GBPAINT, AND IS THEREFORE PUBLIC DOMAIN. THE
SAVE FILE AND THE PRINTER OPTION HAVE BEEN DISABLED BUT OTHERWISE THIS
IS A FULLY WORKING (NO TIME LIMIT) PROGRAM.
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If you would like the full program, which is not public domain, then
you are advised, but by no means obligated, to write to the following
address:
Mr. Bruno Azzara (paint).
20, Heys Road,
Ashton-Under-Lyne,
Lancashire.
OL6 6NZ.
ENGLAND.
The price of the program is a mere œ11 (overseas œ13 - international
money orders only) - price includes postage. This gets you the current
version (v1.92, v2 is not yet complete but owners of v1.92 will be
notified of its release), the source to be used from within STOS
itself and a bundle of goodies. We sincerely hope that you find this
product useful and will want to upgrade to the full version to get the
best out of it. We hope to hear from you soon.
Now there is a annotated manual for you to read if necessary. Have
fun!
INTRODUCTION
If you only have 512k, then I would recommend you to run the program
from an auto folder as this will allow you to have two screens.
This program is written especially for people that use STOS Basic, it
was written by an author who is better known to many as a PD games
writer, or an accessory writer for STOS. This program took Bruno just
under a year, from conception to production. I was asked to write the
manual for it as, some may know already, Bruno is not too clever when
it comes to spelling.
The beauty of the program is that it can be loaded straight into STOS,
it does not matter that you may only have 512k of memory, it works
just as well. For those of you with 1MB, or greater, of memory there
are a number of features that are enhanced just for you.
After initialisation, the main screen has the following shown in
boxes:
DRAW BOX R-BOX CIRCLE ELLIPSE LINE K-LINE RAYS SPRAY MARK
PRINTER FILL GRID TEXT RGB ERASER ZOOM BLOCK CLS-PIC MISC
C-CYCLE FILE HOLLOW FILLED
These are all down the left hand side of the main screen, on the right
there is a large window containing information of the line size, line
type and line ends. Directly below this are two words, these are
RAINBOW and LOCK - either of these can be turned on or off by simply
clicking on them with the left mouse. Below there is the palette and
next to that is the fill type in a box, to change fill type just click
on the arrows above the box.
MAIN FUNCTIONS
Most of these functions are cancelled by pressing the right mouse
button. The right mouse button also returns you to the main menu
screen.
DRAW - This is freehand drawing, the thickness of the line can be set
with LINE SIZE, the ends of the line can be changed from square to
arrows to rounded. The type of line can be chosen from a set of
default line types by clicking on the box at the side of the line
definition box, or you can define your own line by clicking on the
smaller boxes within the line definition box. This function is
affected by colour and rainbow.
BOX - The box is also affected by line size and line type. To draw a
box, on the drawing screen click at the position you want the top left
corner to be, size the box and click again. Affected by colour,
rainbow, line definition and hollow and filled. Filled boxes are also
affected by the graphic modes.
R-BOX - See above, box has rounded corners.
CIRCLE - Draws a standard circle, click with the left mouse to choose
the position of the centre, size the circle and click again to confirm
your choice. Line size and line type affects this, as does rainbow,
colour, filled and hollow. The graphic modes also affect filled
circles.
ELLIPSE - Same as circle, but draws a less than regular circle, moving
the mouse left or right will stretch it horizontally, moving up or
down will stretch vertically.
LINE - Line size, type and ends can be changed for this. To draw a
straight line click for starting x and y co-ordinates, move mouse to
required position and click again. Affected by colour and rainbow.
K-LINE - Same as line, but with the added function of starting your
next line from the exact position of the end of the last. This
function is turned off by right mouse.
RAYS - Similar to k-line, only this time the new line is drawn from
the starting position of the old line.
SPRAY - This acts like an airspray, there are three different sizes
that can be chosen. To choose a size you must be on the drawing
screen, then the keys F1, F2 and F3 give you the sizes; F1 is the
smallest. Affected by rainbow and colour.
MARK - This sets the polymarkers to use when drawing, their sizes are
set with the arrows. Affected by rainbow and colour.
PRINTER - Disabled on the demo version.
FILL - The fill type is set by the small box in the bottom right-hand
corner. Affected by colour.
GRID - This is to set the grid size, default size is 16x16 pixels. The
smallest size is 2x2, the largest is 399x199. Grid lock can be set by
clicking on the box with lock in it or by clicking on lock above the
palette. With LOCK on there are a few things that you will notice
concerning the text function (see below.)
TEXT - The size of the text can be set using the arrows. Pressing
normal gives normal text, L-italic gives a left sloping text while R-
italic has the opposite effect. With the full version comes a program,
and a number of examples of fonts that can be loaded into the program
from the TEXT definition area itself.
RGB - This function allows you to alter a single colour or the entire
palette. There are ten default palettes. To alter a single colour just
click on the arrows on either side of the letters at the top of the
screen.
ERASER - Once the eraser has been selected it is possible to alter
it's size while on the drawing screen. To alter the size the keys F1,
F2 and F3 give you three sizes; F1 being the smallest.
ZOOM - After selecting zoom, you then decide the required size from
the drawing screen. This time the keys are from F1 to F8, F1 being the
largest. Once in zoom mode, you can reposition the required area,
choose your colours, or change magnification. The plus and minus signs
and the fuction keys alter the magnification, the arrows change your
position.
BLOCK - There are various functions within block, these are:
copy - take a copy from the picture and place in the block
memory.
cut - remove an area from the screen and place in block
memory.
paste - paste block in block memory onto picture. This is
affected by the graphic modes.
enlarge - to enlarge a block choose position for block and
then set the required size by moving the mouse
pointer both up & down and left & right. This is
affected by the graphic modes also.
under - this pastes the item in block memory under the picture.
When Gridlock is on, everything will snap to a 16*16 co-ordinate.
CLS PIC - Self explanatory
MISC - Within misc there are a number of functions again. These are,
on the whole, self explanatory, but here goes:
Gr mode - this is the graphics mode, found within this
is replace, trans, xor and inv-trans.
Replace - using the box or circle commands with
the filled function (see later) you can
replace an area of your picture. You choose
the position for the top left corner of your
box or the centre of your circle in the
normal manner (see above),set the size,
and the chosen area will be replaced with
the required item.
Trans - this makes the current fill pattern
transparent. Useful for overlaying a filled
box or circle over a picture without obscuring
the details.
Xor - is used to combine the colours of two separate
items. Placing the block over the original
picture will make the colours of the picture
and the block combine. It also has the
advantage that if you place the block over
itself then the block that has been put in the
picture will be erased.
Inv-trans - effectively the same as Trans, but the complete
opposite. What was transparent with Trans, now
becomes solid and vice versa.
Also here is a box saying 'Screen'. Now depending on your memory
restrictions it is possible to use all the remaining memory banks
within STOS as extra screens. On my ST (I have a 520 with 512k of
memory), I can only have two screen; but then I have so many
extensions installed in STOS that I only have around 217k left.
Most important, the quit button is also within the misc commands.
Also in misc is a box which says 'More', clicking on that will get you
into a section that says, 'Replace', 'H-flip' and 'V-flip'. Underneath
this is a palette (the same as the current palette) which has an arrow
above the first colour. This is for use with the replace function in
this section.
To use this replace function, you a choose a colour that you wish to
change by moving the arrow to the desired position, go to the main
palette to choose the new colour then press the right mouse. Once on
the drawing area you can then choose the area in which you wish the
change to take place. To choose this area pick the top left corner,
define an area and then click the left mouse, the colours will then
change - assuming that the colour that you wish changed is present
within the desired area. With rainbow on the colour to be replaced
will be replaced using the effects of the rainbow function.
The H-flip and V-flip functions are used to flip an area or the whole
picture either horizontally or vertically respectively.
C-CYCLE - This stands for colour cycle, with this you can make the
colours of a desired range change places - cycle. When you click on C-
CYCLE, you will be faced with two boxes above a palette. The top box
sets the speed of the colour cycle (speed 1 is the fastest), below
this is a box that allows you to switch colour cycle on or off and
rainbow on or off. If you switch rainbow on you will notice that the
word rainbow on the main screen has the word 'on' next to it. Cycle
has an effect that is immediately visible - try it.
To alter the range of the cycle is very easy. Position the mouse where
the left-hand marker of the bar over the palette is and click, move to
the left or right to the colour you want the range to start at and
click yet again. Do the same with the right-hand marker of the bar to
choose the end of your range. Notice that the left-hand marker cannot
go so far right that it passes the right-hand marker, this means that
the smallest possible range for a cycle is two colours. The range of
colours that the colour cycle uses is also utilised by the rainbow
function.
To us the Rainbow function there is one thing that you should make
sure of; the colour that you enter the drawing screen with must be
within the range that has been specified for colour cycle.
FILE - On this demo version, this has been disabled. Files, however,
can be loaded into the program.
With Paint you can use the following file types:
PI1 PAC PPC PC1 NEO PIC PAL MBK
HOLLOW and FILLED - These two are for using with the box and circle
commands. With FILLED highlighted you will draw filled boxes, circles
and ellipses. The opposite applies when the word HOLLOW is
highlighted.
CURSOR MODE - On the drawing screen there is the distinct lack of
indication about the position of the pointer. This can be amended by
pressing ESC, bringing up a cross-hair and (in a small box) the x and
y co-ordinates. If, while you are in this mode, you press the left
mouse button then the x and y co-ords are stored for use later. To
arrive back at the stored position press SPACE, this works with all
functions.
NOTE
If you load a picture and the main menu can no longer be seen except
for the palette box, then simply press the space bar.
APPENDIX
FUNCTIONS HIDDEN AND NOT SO HIDDEN
UNDO - Yes there is an undo function, obviously this is operated by
pressing undo.
Screens - How many screens are there, well for half meg users there is
the possibility of two screens being available.
Those with 1MB, aren't you the lucky ones, have the unhampered use of
ten screens.
To swap between these screens see MISC. Either that or use the keypad
(0-9). By pressing the numbers on the keypad you can easily change the
drawing screen - you must be on the drawing screen to use this
function.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Acknowledgements must go to Richard Gale for the PC1 file
decompression taken from the STOS Newsletter, issue 9.
Also to Aaron Fothergill for the alert box routine, taken from STOS
WORD - the wordprocessor - written by Aaron.
Lastly we must say thanks to the writer's of STOS PAINTMASTER for
giving the inspiration.