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PatEdit
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patedit.doc
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1988-03-13
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6KB
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112 lines
Documentation file for PatEdit pattern editor
written by Don Hyde 1988
Not copyrighted, you may make whatever use you may wish of
this program and its accompanying documentation. No warranties
of any kind are made or implied.
The purpose of this program is to eliminate graph paper and
guessing from the process of creating the necessary patterns for
input to the Amiga SetAfPt macro call. This call sets the area
fill pattern for the area filling graphics calls such as
RectFill, AreaDraw, etc.
The program's input is entirely through the intuition
interface, with most functions being performed with the mouse.
To run from cli, type PatEdit. An icon is also supplied, and the
program can be run from the Workbench with it.
The large field of white squares on a green background at the
left is the pattern itself. Clicking on the squares inverts the
individual bits. Clicking on the Clear gadget below the pattern
clears it to all white (zero bits). Moving the slider beside the
field changes the vertical size of the pattern. Since the Amiga
functions restrict this size to be a power of 2, the possible
sizes are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32 bits high. I'm not sure what the
actual maximum value allowed by the Amiga functions is, but 32 is
all that would fit on the screen and make the squares easy to
click on. When you move the slider, the program selects the
nearest allowed value.
The large rectangular area on the right shows you what the
pattern will look like on a large area of the screen. When the
program starts, this area will be black because it starts with
black ink in both pens. Below the example area are two color
palettes, one for each of the two Amiga pens. Clicking the mouse
on the color palettes changes the color of its pen. The example
area will reflect these choices. In a program you would call
SetAPen and SetBPen to set pen 1 and 2 respectively.
Pressing the right mouse button reveals a Project menu with
the menuitems Load, Save, About, and Quit.
Load and Save bring up Charlie Heath's file requester, which
will display files having the extension .pat, which is used by
the program to designate its data files. Load, as you might
expect loads one of these small files. Save saves the pattern in
a file called <filename>.pat. It also creates a file named
<filename>.h, which contains C code for the data which you will
need to pass to SetAfPt, SetAPen, and SetBPen in order to use the
patterns. You will also need to call SetDrMd(rp, JAM2) in order
to make patterns like the ones on the screen. Other arguments to
SetDrMd can cause some interesting effects, and you may want to
experiment with them.
About briefly describes the program.
Quit, makes the program go away.
The screen, window, menus, and Gadgets were created with
PowerWindows2, which I highly recommend to anyone who intends to
create programs for the Intuition environment. With PW2, it is
not only possible, but easy and convenient to create programs
like this one. Including some learning of PW2, which I had just
upgraded from the earlier version, it took me two days to get
this tool up and debugged. I have included the PW2 internal form
file PatEdit.pw for anyone who is interested in modifications to
the program. The program was compiled with Manx c 3.40B. I have
included a makefile. If you do not have make, you should be able
to figure out how to link and load it from the makefile.
I have not included source code for Charlie Heath's file
requester, since his message asks that it be distributed only in
archive form, and without modifications. I think that modified
object is ok, so I have included that. As supplied it will not
operate on a low-resolution screen, so it needs slight
modifications to work here, and I have added a filter so that it
displays only .pat files. It is widely available in the public
domain, so I trust you will be able to find it if you need to
modify it. The needed changes are:
In the static struct NewWindow NewFiles, the first number,
which defines the left margin of the window, must be changed to
0, since the width of the window is 320, and that is the full
width of a low-resolution screen. This change is adequate to
make the program run.
After the comment /* Here you can add a file/directory
filter */, after the next line of code which begins p_D->isfile =
..., add the lines:
/* .pat filter */
if (p_D->isfile) /* filter only files, not directories */
{ p_mung=index(dir_info->fib_FileName, '.'); /* find . in name */
if (!p_mung || strcmp(p_mung, ".pat")) return NL;
}
The line after is: p_mung = p_D->dE[0];
This second change is the filter for files with .pat
extensions.
I hope you can enjoy the program and find it useful. It is
pretty to look at anyway.
Don Hyde
6641 Scott St.
Hollywood, FL 33024
(305)966-8179