The current version of the V Icon Editor will handle the native VVBM icon format, as well as XBM and XPM X Windows format files, and Windows BMP format files, so files generated by the X and Windows host platforms can be easily edited and converted to VBM format.
The V Icon Editor was originally developed as a team project for the Spring, 1996 Software Engineering class at the University of New Mexico by Philip Eckenroth, Mike Tipping, Marilee Padilla, and John Fredric Jr. Masciantoni. It has been heavily enhanced by Bruce Wampler. Although this program makes use of many V\ features, as a largely student project, the quality of the code is somewhat variable, especially in its use of objects.
The icon editor functions very much like other similar programs, and should be easy to use. This guide is not intended as a complete tutorial, but more as a brief, but complete, reference.
The V Icon Editor will usually be called viconed. It may be started with the name of a file to edit on the command line.
The interface to the V Icon Editor consists of a standard menu bar, two tool bars, a drawing canvas, and a status bar. The most common operations are supported by the tool bars (which, for the most part, duplicate menu commands). The drawing canvas shows an enlarged view of the icon as well as an actual size view of the icon. The enlarged view may be zoomed to several sizes, and displayed with or without a grid. The remainder of this guide will describe each menu command, and other features that can be invoked from the tool bars.
You draw an icon using one of three types of brushes: the normal brush, the text brush, and the copy/paste brush. The brush will draw in one of several shapes. Not all shapes work with all three brushes, but you can get some interesting effects using the text or copy/paste brush to draw a line or rectangle, for example. The normal brush also has a choice of several sizes and styles. Drawing with the left mouse button uses the foreground color, while drawing with the right mouse button selects the background color. Colors are selected with the color selection dialog.
The File menu generally includes commands needed to open, close, and manipulate icon files.
This will create a new icon using the current canvas. If the current icon has been changed, you will be asked if you want to save it. Then you will be prompted for the size of the new icon. A blank icon of the specified size will be created, and the color palette initialized to a set of default colors.
This command is used to open an existing icon in one of the supported formats. If the current drawing canvas has been edited or had an icon loaded, a new canvas window will be opened. The color palette for the canvas window will be initialized to the colors used in the opened icon.
The format of the icon is determined by the file extension. VBM is the native Vbitmap format, and is the format required by the various Vicon controls. The current version only supports the 1 and 8 bit VBM formats. Viconed also supports the X Windows XBM monochrome bitmap files, and XPM color pixmap files (up to about 90 colors). The Windows BMP bitmap format is supported for 8-bit bitmaps. All icons are limited to a maximum of 150 by 150 pixels.
This will save the current icon. If the icon was new, you will be prompted for a file name.
You will be prompted for a name to save the current icon. The format of the saved icon is determined by the file extension. VBM specifies the standard V icon format. Viconed will automatically save either the monochrome 1-bit VBM format, or the 256 color mapped 8-bit VBM format. The 24-bit VBM format is not supported. The other formats supported include X XBM monochrome bitmaps, and X XPM color pixmaps up to about 90 colors. The Windows BMP bitmap format is supported for 8-bit bitmaps.
When viconed saves an icon, it will minimize the size of the color map used in the file.
This will close the current icon, asking you if you want to save it if it has changed, and then clear the drawing canvas, ready to create a new icon, or open another icon.
This displays a dialog with information about viconed.
All open icons will be closed, with save prompts as needed, and viconed will exit.
The current version of viconed does not yet support standard cut, copy, and paste operations. (It does have copy/paste brush support described later.)
This will undo the last operation that changed the icon. Only one level of undo is supported.
This will clear the current icon to the background color. A clear is not undoable!
You can resize the existing icon to a new size. The upper left corner of the current icon will remain constant. If you specify a smaller icon, you will lose the lower and right portions. If you specify a bigger size, then the current icon will become the upper left corner of the new icon. You may find the copy/paste brush useful when resizing an icon.
The Draw menu is used to select the shape of the brush. The normal brush will draw the selected shape using the current normal brush style. The text brush will draw the shape using the current text. The copy/paste brush will draw the shape using the copied shape.
Using the left button selects the foreground color, while the right button selects the background color.
The shape selections are duplicated on the tool bar for easy interaction.
This draws a single point, or instance of the text or copy/paste brush. Holding the mouse button down and moving will draw a series of points.
The button press selects the starting point of the line, and the release selects the end point.
The button press selects the first corner of the rectangle, and the release the opposite corner. If snap is on, then this will draw a square.
This is a rounded rectangle instead of a square cornered rectangle.
This draws an ellipse, or a circle with snap on.
This lets you pick a color from the current icon. Pressing the left button will make the color under the cursor the current foreground color, while the right button will pick the background color. Using the pick color (a dropper icon on the tool bar) is often easier than using the color selection dialog.
This will fill the closed area with the foreground or background color depending on the mouse button pressed.
Normally, this command should not be needed, but it will cause the icon to be redrawn.
This will turn on or off the display of the drawing grid.
These select the type of brush to use. Brush selection is duplicated on the tool bar.
All three brushes actually use the same mechanism - a general brush that can hold a pattern to draw onto the icon. A regular brush is usually a pattern of a single pixel, but can be any of the patterns supported by the brush style dialog. The text brush uses text to make the pattern. The copy/paste brush set the pattern based on a selection from the current icon.
You can get some interesting effects by using different brush shapes (point, rectangle, etc.) when drawing with any of the brushes. Using the point shape and then dragging with the mouse held pressed can yield shadow effects, for example.
The regular brush draws the currently selected shape using the current regular brush style. The styles include a single pixel point, as well as square, line, and circular shapes of various sizes. The regular brush style is selected from the brush dialog, which is toggled on and off from the tool bar.
When you select the text brush, you will be prompted for some text, which will then become the brush. You can then position the text, and press the right or left mouse to draw the text in the icon.
Currently, only upper and lower case alphanumerics are supported, and some of the letters don't quite look right.
Right after you select the copy/paste brush, you will need to select an area of the current icon to "copy". This then becomes the brush, and you then draw the brush into the icon by pressing the right or left mouse buttons.
Vicone will display the icon zoomed from two up to 32 times the size of the actual icon. Use the zoom menu to select the zoom factor.
There are two tool bars in the viconed interface. The first tool bar shows the current foreground and background colors on the left side. The next icon on this tool bar is the "snap" toggle. When pressed, drawing with the rectangle brush shape will draw squares, and the ellipse shape will draw circles. The next icon is the brush toggle, and will display the brush style dialog. The next icon is the color selection toggle, and will display the color selection dialog. These three toggles do not have corresponding entries on the menus. The right end of the first tool bar show three toggles to select the regular, text, and copy/paste brushes.
The second tool bar contains buttons for clear and undo, as well as toggles for selecting the brush shape. All these are duplicates of menu commands.
The color selection dialog is used to pick and select foreground and background colors. Internally, viconed uses 256 colors for each icon pixel. Depending on the color resolution of your display, all 256 colors may or may not be available. Typically, icons do not use very many colors, so this shouldn't matter.
The color selection dialog shows a large color square showing the current selection color. Two buttons next to the current color square are used to apply the current selection color to the foreground or background color.
Below that is a palette of 64 small color buttons arranged in 4 rows of 16. Selecting one of these buttons make it the current selection color. Viconed supplies 64 default colors for new icons. Again, depending on the color resolution of you color display, these may or may not show as 64 colors. When a new icon is loaded, its colors are used to load the color selection color palette. Most icons won't use 64 colors, and unused colors are filled with black.
Below the palette are three sliders that can be used to change the color. Select a palette button to change, then use the sliders to adjust the red, green, and blue. You can also press the small red, green, or blue button next to the sliders to enter a specific value for that color component. The reset button will reset the palette entry back to its original color.
Note that even though the color selection dialog only has 64 entries, the colors shown do not necessarily have any relation to the colors used in the icon. The colors in the icon are set by the foreground and background colors. You can use the sliders to specify any color, and then apply it to the foreground or background color. The color selection dialog allows you to easily pick any one of the 64 palette colors.
Use only standard, basic colors in icons (black, white, red, green, blue, etc.) to minimize the impact on the color maps used on systems with color resolutions of 256 or less.