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Text File | 1989-12-29 | 47KB | 1,079 lines

Copyright 1991 L&V Productions SHADOWMAKER Version 1.5 ***************************************************************** **THIS IS A COMPLETE WORKING DEMO OF A COMMERCIAL PROGRAM******** **THE ONLY PROGRAM RESTRICTION IS A LIMIT OF 39 PIXELS*********** **FOR THE HEIGHT OF THE CONVERTED FONT AT SAVE TIME************** **ALL OTHER PROGRAM FUNCTIONS ARE ENABLED************************ **THIS ARCHIVE MAY BE FREELY DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS THE ********* **FOLLOWING 2 CONDITIONS ARE MET********************************* **1. THIS ARCHIVE MUST CONTAIN ALL OF THE FILES LISTED BELOW***** **2. IT MAY ONLY BE SOLD FOR PROFIT IN PD DISK COLLECTIONS******* ***************************************************************** WHAT CAN SHADOWMAKER DO FOR YOU? If you produce Video titles or any type of Video Text generation then you need SHADOWMAKER! Are you forever creating Video shadows for your letters in DPAINT(tm)? Disappointed in the lack of Text handling features of the current Multimedia/Authoring packages on the market? Do you need consistent professional Antialiased FONT generation across all of the software packages you use in your production work? SHADOWMAKER is an Intuition based Font Shadow generator. In seconds you can convert your favourite Fonts into ColorFonts with Professional Video Shadows and Antialiasing built right in! ColorFonts are now BUILT IN to Workbench 2.0. Many of your favourite compatible programs can now share the same Professional Video Shadows and Antialiasing. For non-ColorFont compatible programs: The included program ON-TOP allows SHADOWMAKER Fonts to be used in any program that uses the Amiga Graphics Library Text routines. This includes the majority of Amiga software. The exceptions are high end Desktop Publishing programs and certain Video Titlers that take over the entire TEXT generation process. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SHADOWMAKER PROGRAM DOC FILE Include on the Distribution disk are the following Files: SHADOWMAKER -Add Shadows & Antialiasing to Amiga Fonts SHADOWMAKER.doc -This file Arp.library -Public Domain Library SHADOWMAKER.info -Icon file for Workbench 1.3 palette SHADOWMAKER2.0_ICON -Icon file for Workbench 2.0 palette ON-TOP -Patch to operating system. Makes sure that -shadows never overlap characters face. -Aways prints Face ON-TOP of Shadow. -User control of Face,Shadow,Antialiase color selection -Allows NON-ColorFont compatible programs to use -SHADOWMAKER converted Fonts. ON-TOP.info -ICON for ON-TOP An ICON with colors remapped for WB 2.0 is included.You must rename this to: SHADOWMAKER.info to have it work properly. The file SHADOWMAKER2.0_ICON is only an .info(icon) file. There is not a seperate SHADOWMAKER program for WB 2.0. The included file SHADOWMAKER will run under either WB 1.3 or WB 2.0 Execept for the Arp.library,this material is the property of L & V Productions Reg'd. Copyright 1990 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- **REQUIRES** AMIGA 500 or 1000 or 2000 or 3000 with 1MEG and 1 Floppy.(1.3 WB) Arp.library in your currently ASSIGNed libs: directory Colortext program under 1.3(Included with your Workbench 1.3 Disks) *NOTE* Under Workbench 1.3 you MUST run the COLORTEXT program before you run SHADOWMAKER or any other ColorFont compatible software!!!!! Workbench 2.0 Compatible -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Throughout this doc file DPaintIII is referred to continuously in any explanation of using SHADOWMAKER converted fonts in actual working examples. ***GENERAL OVERVIEW*** What is SHADOWMAKER and what can it do for me? SHADOWMAKER was originally designed to overcome the limited Text functions of DeluxePaintIII and similiar paint programs. During the course of daily video production work in a University setting, DeluxePaintIII was called on continually to generate simple text overlay screens. Though various software packages were tried and tested(TV TEXT etc.), the production team always came back to DPaintIII for the bulk of the work. In video work, text to be genlocked over live video must have a background surrounding shadow in order to keep the FACE of each character from blending into the backgound video. Just watch your local Newscast and you will readily see what I mean. To produce this same result in DPaintIII required the following steps: Set the BACKGROUND Color to white or gray Press F2 to set MODE= Color 1. Type in a line of text with the desired foreground color selected for the characters FACE. 2. Pick up the entire line as a brush. 3. Select BLACK as the background color with the right mouse button(RMB). 4. Select the 'CIRCLE' tool with the left mouse button(LMB) 5. Draw a small diameter circle using the line of text as a brush via the RMB. 6. Select Color0 as the background color using the RMB 6. Pick up this "rounded outline" as a brush 7. Select black as the background color using the RMB. 8. Select the straight line tool. 9. Using the "rounded outline" as a brush draw a line at a 45 degree angle say 5 or 6 pixels long with the RMB. 10.Finally, stamp the original colored FACE on top of the "Shadow outline". There are many different ways to accomplish the above steps but basically some form of the above 10 steps is used. In addition, this process is further complicated in a professional environment where KEYBOARD controls are used to obtain precise measurements/locations. Each video production in this University facility required hundreds of lines of Video text. Again TV TEXT and other Titlers were tried to help reduce production times/cost. But DPaintIII was required for many small graphic/animation creations and it became a pain of continually switching back and forth. One day a Professor was watching the creation of a text screen in DPaintIII. He could not understand why the background Shadow was not built right into each Font. This way he said, anyone could sit down with DPaintIII and produce completed video text overlays quickly and easily. Well the earth shook and SHADOWMAKER was born. Working with the Video Production manager, the specifications were developed for SHADOWMAKER. In addition it was decided early on to add ANTIALIASING so that the finished result would be of broadcast quality. The resulting converted Font was saved as a ColorFont to allow maximum compatibility across all of the Amiga software packages. As ColorFont capability is built directly into Workbench 2.0 this seemed to be the best approach. Unfortunately, problems would arise if a large/deep shadow was selected. These 2 problems (A) and (B) are detailed below. (A) Depending on the intercharacter spacing and the direction of the shadow, this is what would happen: 1. You type the first letter of the line - no problem 2. You type the second character and it appears properly drawn. BUT the shadow of this second letter extends back over the first letter partially obscuring the FACE of the first letter. There would also be color mapping problems because of the overlay of the bitplanes. The above problems could be worked around if you restricted SHADOWMAKER to using the Upper Left and Lower Left light sources and kept the Shadow depth to a minimum. But the color mapping problem still would show up in NON PAINT programs. (B) Color selection was forced upon the user. Color0-Color4 were used by the SHADOWMAKER converted Fonts and could not be altered by the user. This would lead to problems if you were trying to overlay text on top of an existing IFF picture. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- TO overcome both of the above problems would require a rewrite of the Amiga Graphics library TEXT routines. This was not a feasible option as it would lead to gross incompatabilities. The solution was then to follow in the footsteps of the "COLORTEXT" Wedge that enabled the ColorFont standard to become widely accepted and established. Colortext works by intercepting all of the Graphics library Text calls. It examines the current Font and then decides whether to allow normal processing or do its ColorFont magic. The included utility "ON-TOP" follows this same path. ON-TOP is compatible with the Colortext wedge as long as the Colortext wedge is run BEFORE ON-TOP is activated. This only makes sense as ON-TOP wants final control before any text is generated. ON-TOP does not require that the Colortext wedge be active. It is a replacement for Colortext for SHADOWMAKER converted Fonts only!. Actually it will try to perform its magic on any font name that ends in "_SH", which is the standard suffix SHADOMAKER adds to all fonts converted by it. This means that SHADOWMAKER fonts can be used in programs that do not support the ColorFont standard under WB 1.3. ON-TOP can be run/rerun as many times as you wish. AS well it can be turned OFF/ON from within most Amiga applications. Therefore for the most transparent use of ON-TOP and ColorText, simply run the ColorText wedge FIRST, then run the ON-TOP wedge. ON-TOP removes most of the palette restrictions from SHADOWMAKER converted fonts running under the normal ColorText wedge. Please see the section *Color Selection* for a detailed explanation. In summary, SHADOWMAKER fonts require the ColorText wedge to be active if you do not have ON-TOP active or currently have ON-TOP turned off. But again, ColorText is NOT required if ON-TOP is active for the session. On-TOP's palette handling features alone are probable enough reason to have it active wherever you want to use SHADOWMAKER converted Fonts. ON-TOP means that the character's FACE will always be drawn "ON-TOP" of the shadow, regardless of the light source direction and shadow depth. ********************************************************************** ***INSTALLING SHADOWMAKER*** To copy SHADOWMAKER onto your Workbench Disk, Hard Disk or wherever, simply DRAG the SHADOWMAKER Icon over to the appropriate Window. Besides the file ARP.library, there are no support files to copy other than the main program file SHADOWMAKER. ***INSTALLING the ARP.LIBRARY*** The included file Arp.Library must be in your currently assigned libs directory. To install the Arp.library into your libs directory do the following: Open a CLI window and type: assign The CLI Window will now show you a list of the FULL Paths of the current assignments. We are interested in the ":libs" PATH and the "SYS:" PATH. If these two paths are the same then you simply type copy DF0:Arp.library sys:libs If the "SYS:" PATH and the "libs:" PATH are different then you must change the above CLI command accordingly. For example if the "assign" list shows "BOOT:libs" then you would type copy DF0:Arp.library BOOT:libs The above series of CLI commands assumes the file Arp.library is in the Root directory on a disk in drive DF0:. Please adjust this as necessary. ***STARTING SHADOWMAKER*** To start SHADOWMAKER simply double-click on its ICON or open a CLI window and type SHADOWMAKER . The CLI mode requires you to be logged on to the directory containing SHADOWMAKER or have previously "SETPATH"ed to the proper directory. In a moment a Window will open containing various Gadgets. The Window's "CLOSE BUTTON" may be used to quit SHADOWMAKER at any time. The Window is subdivided into 4 quarters. Each quarter or Section contains Gadgets that define/perform SHADOWMAKERS various functions. Each Gadget's Function is explained in the following sections. There are 3 Menu Items to select from. These are explained in the section ***MENU*** ************************************************************************ ***SECTION SHADOW TYPE*** This section contains the 4 Gadgets that are used to select the TYPE of shadow that you desire. *GADGET CLEAR* To clear out any previously made Shadow Type selections. *GADGET CAST* Selects CAST as the current Shadow Type. Letter FACE and SHADOW appear physically separated on the screen. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other Shadow Types. *GADGET DROP* Selects DROP as the current Shadow Type. Letter FACE and SHADOW appear physically joined on the screen. Can be combined with ROUNDED by simply clicking/selecting ROUNDED after selecting DROP. *GADGET ROUNDED* Selects ROUNDED as the current Shadow Type. Letter FACE and SHADOW appear physically joined on the screen. Letter appears OUTLINED in a 3 pixel border. Can be combined with DROP by simply clicking/selecting ROUNDED after selecting DROP. ************************************************************************ ***SECTION SHADOW DEPTH*** This section contains the 2 Gadgets that are used to select the DEPTH of the shadow that you desire. *GADGET ARROW UP* To increase the current Shadow Depth variable. Maximum = 25. Minimum = 0. *GADGET ARROW DOWN* To decrease the current Shadow Depth variable. Maximum = 25. Minimum = 0. **MINI SECTION FONT** This subsection contains the 2 Gadgets that are used to select the FONT file you wish to work with. *GADGET LOAD* To select the current working FONT. Uses the standard ARP library File Requester. The File Requester will appear in the top left hand corner of the Window, prompting you to select the FONT you wish to use. Here the File Requester will go directly into your currently assigned FONTS directory. This is the DEFAULT BUT you may go to any Disk or Directory you wish. Once you get there go right into the actual directory of the Font you want to use. For example if you wanted DIAMOND 15, you would enter the DIAMOND directory and double click on the file 15 (MAX SIZE=99). Please make sure you have selected a FONT FILE. If by mistake a non FONT file is selected, the File Requester will reappear prompting you: "Not a Font File! Please try again". Read the Section ***HINTS,TIPS*** for an explanation of the FILE Requester. Font file sizes under 10 points or over 99 are not supported! *GADGET SAVE* To SAVE the converted Font to a Colorfont in Ram:Fonts/(name)/size. For example if you had loaded Times 24 and added a 10 point Drop Shadow, then your new converted Font would be saved to ram:fonts/Times_SH/34.24. The letters _SH are appended to the Fonts original name to signify that this is a SHADOW(_SH) converted ColorFont. The final converted height of the Font is equal to the original height + Shadow Depth. So in this case 24 + 10 = 34. The actual Font file is named 34.24 to show you that this was originally a 24 pixel tall Font and has a 10 pixel Shadow added to it. Maximum = 99 including the Shadow Depth & manual positioning of Letter FACE. *Note* the actual conversion process begins when you click on this "SAVE" gadget. This process can not be interupted until it is completed. One modifier is available, the SPACEBAR key. If this is pressed while you click on the SAVE gadget, only the characters below $7f will be converted. Explantation to follow: Certain fonts intended for Desktop publishing or those coming from the Professional type houses, may contain a full character set. This means that in addition to the normal printable ASCII character set, Higher/Control characters are included in the Font. These extra characters can include most of the ACCENT modifiers and misc. Alt/Ctrl Key characters. Needless to say this can double the size of the Font in comparison to say a JDK or ZUMA Font. Simply hold down the "SPACEBAR" key while you click on the "SAVE" gadget. This will limit the converted Font to the high character of $7f. This is generally the highest character in a regular video Font, encompassing all of the regular printable characters on your standard keyboard. ************************************************************************ ***SECTION LIGHT SOURCE*** This section contains the 8 Gadgets that are used to select the DIRECTION and displacement of the light source/shadow. The 4 Arrows that form the tight square select the Light Source Direction. These are mutually exclusive, meaning only 1 of the Arrows can be active at a time. *GADGET ARROW UPPER-LEFT* Light Source is from Upper Left corner. *GADGET ARROW LOWER-LEFT* Light Source is from Lower Left corner. *GADGET ARROW UPPER-RIGHT* Light Source is from Upper Right corner. *GADGET ARROW LOWER-RIGHT* Light Source is from Lower Right corner. *GADGET ARROW UP* To Increase the Letter Face displacement along the Y axis UP. Maximum = 25. Minimum = 0. *GADGET ARROW DOWN* To Increase the Letter Face displacement along the Y axis DOWN. Maximum = 25. Minimum = 0. *GADGET ARROW LEFT* To Increase the Letter Face displacement along the X axis LEFT. Maximum = 25. Minimum = 0. *GADGET ARROW RIGHT* To Increase the Letter Face displacement along the X axis RIGHT. Maximum = 25. Minimum = 0. ********************************************************************** ***SECTION UPPER RIGHT QUADRANT*** This unlabeled section contains the Text Gadget that has the current Letter that is used in setting up/displaying your Shadow preferences. You may Click in this Gadget and change the Displayed letter at any time that the program is not in the process of generating a new font. Your new choice is made current as soon as you press the "RETURN" or "ENTER" key. ********************************************************************* ***SECTION MENU*** **Project** *ABOUT* Under the Project Menu there are 2 selections. The first Item is "ABOUT", this brings up a text window listing product information and the full company address and phone/fax numbers. To close this window simply click on either of your Mouse Buttons. *Quit* Selecting this Item will quit SHADOWMAKER, returning you to the Workbench or the CLI window you started SHADOWMAKER from. **Font** *Antialiase* ON -Turns Antialiasing ON.(default) OFF -Turns Antialiasing OFF. These two menu items are mutually exclusive, meaning you cannot select both at the same time. Only one may be "active" at a time. Antialiasing is performed on any Pixel that is interpreted as being "Jaggie". If you own an Amiga you are probably very familiar with the Blocky appearance of lines drawn at certain angles. SHADOWMAKER Antialiases with 1 color only, current FG color+1 of the palette. Many of the popular programs perform Antialiasing with 2 or more colors. While this produces excellent results, it limits the availabilty of your color selections for your palette. More importantly, under Workbench 2.0 and the new ECS video chips, a new Super Hi-Res display mode is available. Resolution is 1280*400(non-overscan) but is limited to a 2 bitplane, 4 color palette. For those of you that have not seen an AMIGA displaying the Super Hi-Res mode, rest assured you may want to use it for much of your basic Titleing chores. This one color Antialiasing turns a bad Font into a good Font, and a good Font into a GREAT Font!. You will be very surprised with the results. Please read the section *Color Selection* for a further discusion of SHADOWMAKER's use of the palette. *CAVEAT* SHADOWMAKER saves ANTIALIASED Fonts as 3 bitplane ColorFonts. This results in a very large file. Please see the section *Program Limitations/Bugs* for a detailed explanation. ********************************************************************** ***HINTS,TIPS*** *DPAINT!!!(tm) Remember when you load DpaintIII under 1.3WB then you must have previously run the ColorText program supplied on your DpaintIII disk or with WB 1.3. When DpaintIII is loaded click with the RIGHT-MOUSE-BUTTON on the TEXT gadget. A File Requester will appear, defaulting to the currently assigned FONTS: directory. You will have to manually type in ram:fonts in this requester to set it to the proper path for your SHADOWMAKER converted FONTS, if you have just run SHADOWMAKER. When multitasking DPaintIII and SHADOWMAKER please keep the following in mind: 1. SHADOWMAKER and DPAINTIII are both memory intensive programs. While DPaintIII's memory requirements do not fluctuate that much once it is loaded(doing minor Text work), this is not true of SHADOWMAKER. You can easily have both programs running in memory at once on a 1 meg machine but will soon run into low memory situations once you start to Load/Convert/Save Fonts. SHADOWMAKER's memory requirements are directly proportional to the size and number of characters contained in the current Font being converted. 2. When a new Font is saved out of SHADOWMAKER it will not instantly appear in the DPaintIII Font file requester if you are already displaying the Fonts in RAM:. Simply bring up the Font file requester and click in the text box that holds the current Font path(ram:fonts). Now press the "RETURN" or "ENTER" keys. Your newly converted Font should be available. BACKSPACING to correct a mistake in TEXT mode requires a small modification. For example: Type the letters Pre You see that the "e" is wrong cause you were trying to spell Producer. You would normally simply press the BACKSPACE key and erase the "e". You would then type the replacement "o" and keep on going. If you do this when ON-TOP is active only the SHADOW gets erased when you BACKSPACE. This leaves the letters FACE still there. To get around this you would now press the SPACEBAR key once and then press the BACKSPACE key again. This erases the entire letter. So you really just repeat the BACKSPACE operation twice to completely erase the letter. BACKSPACE SPACEBAR BACKSPACE The above sequence also applies if you backspace to the first character of a line. You will need to BACKSPACE SPACEBAR BACKSPACE to completely remove the letter. I am looking into the problem! In a twist to the above matter, when backspacing more than just the previous character is sometimes affected. You may have to back up over an extra character or 2 in order to re-establish the proper FACE/SHADOW releationship. I believe that this is because of the internal text handling setup of DPaintIII, but I also do not believe in the pot calling the kettle black. As you probably know, DPaintIII does not handle tabs very well. This means that you will experience the very same problems with either SHADOWMAKER or normal Fonts when you tab/backspace etc. DPaintIII has the annoying habit of Permanently ASSIGNing the FONTS: directory/disk assignment to the path you choose via its Font requester. Nothing you can do about this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *FONTS* SHADOWMAKER works best with AMIGA compatible fonts 99 points and under. The FONTS do not have to be in the currently ASSIGNed FONTS: directory. You may load Fonts from any Disk or Directory as long as the accompanying .FONT file is in the proper directory. SHADOWMAKER can even convert the standard WB Fonts(Times, etc.) into useable Video Fonts! Make sure Antialiasing is turned ON! Please remember that the finished Font file must be 99 pixels or under in height. To determine the finished Height apply the following formula: Original Height 44 Shadow Depth 14 Manual Displacement 0 Rounded 6(3 pixel deep outline at both top/bottom of letter) ---------------------- TOTAL 64 If ROUNDED is selected as part of the Shadow Type then the constant of 6 pixels is added to the FINAL Height of the Font. The manual displacement value is only used if you move the FACE of the letter Higher or Lower then the Shadows edges. For every pixel that you manually move the FACE of the letter, that is ABOVE the background shadow, you must add #1 to the Fonts finished height!. If your FINAL height is greater then 99 you will not be able to access the Font. (Note:actually the internal logic supports up to 124 pixels, but the filename LOAD/SAVE logic is limited to 99 pixels). The converted FONT is saved in ram:FONTS/Fontname_SH/Newsize.Oldsize. IE: Original Font = Times 24 Add 4 pixel deep Drop Shadow 4 ----------------------------------------------- ram:FONTS/Times_SH/28.24 As well the required ".font" file is generated. If you wish to copy this to a disk for permanent storage make sure this ".font" file is copied as well. As an example, with the file ram:fonts/Times_SH/28.24 sitting in the ram: disk and you wish to copy this to a disk in drive DF0:(your internal disk drive): 1. For ease of explanation please make a SUBDIRECTORY called DF0:FONTS Open a CLI Window and type Makedir DF0:FONTS 2. Then type Copy ram:FONTS DF0:FONTS all This will copy any and all Fonts presently in the ram: disk. This will result in the ".font" file being copied to DF0:FONTS. As well a new SUBDIRECTORY named Times_SH will be created--DF0:FONTS/Times_SH. Remember ALL Font files presently in ram: disk will be copied. If you wish to only copy a certain Font file then you will have to be more selective as in: Copy ram:FONTS/Times_SH/28.24 to DF0:FONTS/Times_SH Copy ram:FONTS/Times_SH.font to DF0:FONTS If you copy your converted SHADOWMAKER Fonts to another Disk/directory, and they don't seem to appear in a Font file requester, you may have a missing/damaged .font file. The system contains a command to fix/build this .font file. It is called "FixFonts" and generally resides in the SYSTEM directory. Remember though, FixFonts only seems to work on the currently "ASSIGN"ed FONTS: directory/disk. You must therefore type from the CLI window: ASSIGN FONTS: DF0:fonts FixFonts The above commands assume that the Fonts you want to "FIX" are on a disk in drive DF0: in a subdirectory named fonts. You must change this path "DF0:fonts" to the path you require in order for the "ASSIGN" command and the "FixFonts" command to find the right Fonts. If you are running WB1.3 then remember to run the COLORTEXT program before you try to use any of the SHADOWMAKER generated FONTS. When your application loads these FONTS it should ask you if you would like to load the suggested Color values into the current Color palette. Answer yes to see the suggested values from SHADOWMAKER. You of course may choose to load/alter your color palette as you wish. ********************************************************************* *COLOR SELECTION* Color selection defaults to the Workbench 2.0 palette. These values may be changed/remapped according to the capabilities of the software program you are using with the SHADOWMAKER Fonts. Reading the color palette from Left to right Color 0 Color0 - Background Color 1 Color1 - Front Face Color 2 Color2 - Shadow Color 4 Color4 - Antialiasing Remember not to overdrive the WHITE! For video NTSC output the WHITE RGB values should generally be at/under 13-13-13. I have also lowered the RGB values of the Background grey vs WB Background grey to allow the reduced RGB White values to have sufficient contrast. Antialiasing of the Face and Shadow is accomplished with Color4 of the palette. Take the time to experiment with different color values and see what gives the best end results. This will vary according to the finished media of your production. Remember what looks great on your Hi-res RGB Amiga monitor may show up poorly on a NTSC television. We find that Proportionally larger amounts of BLUE tend to produce excellent results, especially if the final viewer is NTSC bound. Antialiasing of the Shadow and the Background is not performed by SHADOWMAKER. Because LIVE video varies constantly in brightness and color, Shadow antialiasing can actually produce a bright ghosted outline at times. The viewers eye is constantly drawn to the Letter Face so any "jaggies" on the Shadow are generally missed. The Rounding and Drop shadow algorithms are tweaked to reduce these jaggies to a minimum. If you are supplying a solid color for the Background, simply pick a color that will naturally Antialiase the black of the shadow. Again a large Blue component seems to work well! SHADOWMAKER originally Antialiased both Face and Shadow, so there will be a utility forthcoming to allow you to set the level of Antialiasing to include the Shadow if you wish! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- *COLOR SELECTION* for *ON-TOP* Because we write from Left to Right certain Shadow directions cause overlapping of the current characters Shadow and the previous characters Face. A utility to overcome this situation is included on this disk. The programs name is ON-TOP. This is a small patch to the operating system that makes sure the characters Face is always drawn ON-TOP of the Shadow. ON-TOP can be started at any time. When it is run one of 2 things happen: May be run from Workbench or CLI. Does not require an output window so you can RUNBACK it in your Startup-Sequence if you so choose. 1. The screen flashes through a rainbow pattern for 1 second. 2. The screen fades to black for 1 second. The rainbow pattern signifies that ON-TOP is now active and properly installed. The screen fading to black signifies that ON-TOP is now disabled. You may run/rerun ON-TOP as many times as you wish in one session. Also ON-TOP may be turned ON/OFF from within the software that you are using. Simply press the "-"(MINUS KEY on SEPERATE NUMERIC KEYPAD). A space will print and ON-TOP is now disabled until you press the "+" or "."(PLUS KEY or PERIOD KEY on the SEPERATE NUMERIC KEYPAD). Because the routine to READ your typed input is done from within the system TEXT routine, I must unfortunately go to the Keyboard hardware register directly. This means if you type one of the above KEYS(- + .) REALLY fast, it may get missed. Just strike the KEY again for proper reults. Color selection when ON-TOP is activated is as follows: Current FG color -1 = Characters Background Shadow Current FG color = Characters Face Current FG color +1 = Characters Antialiasing info(if any) For example if your currently selected color is Color2(third color in palette, starting from 0), then your Shadow will be in Color1, and your Antialiasing will be drawn in Color3. This gives you maximum flexibility in designing your palettes. If because of your FG color selection, a color that is outside of the palette boundaries is generated, the Default of Color2 will be used. TO change the current color of your text, simply select a new Foreground color and begin typing. Remember we are talking about palette positions, not the actual value in each palette slot. Unfortunately this color scheme requires that the Font be saved as 3 seperate bitplanes. I am working on a compression scheme to alleviate this problem. **IMPORTANT** YOU MUST RUN ON-TOP when you want to use SHADOWMAKER generated Fonts in any other program that the Fonts shadow may cause overlap. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ************************************************************************ **FILE REQUESTER** For those of you not familiar with the ARP File Requester I suggest you spend a few minutes getting aquainted with its features. Once the Requester is active, if you CLICK on or in the REQUESTER with your RIGHT mouse button, a LIST of the attached System devices appears in the File Selection Window. This enables you to easily jump from Disk or device to wherever you desire. Thanks to the people behind ARP! ********************************************************************* **CONVERSION TIMES** To convert a Font originally 30 points, 96 characters, with an 8 point Drop shadow with Antialiasing ON, takes approximately: 25 seconds on an AMIGA 1000 12 seconds on an Amiga 3000(25mhz) The above conversion times are reduced by about 50% if Antialiasing is set to "OFF". SHADOWMAKER does not "take over" the Amiga, so if you are running a task in the background your conversion times will increase. If you are experimenting with various Font sizes, turn the Antialiasing OFF until you select your final size. Then again if you are lucky enough to own a 3000(I do! hehe) who cares! ----------------------------------------------------------------- The newer updated ZUMA Fonts and the AMIGA Compatible JDK fonts(Modern etc.) work extremely well. The JDK fonts in particular give CHYRON like, broadcast quality results with the SHADOWMAKER added Antialiasing and Shadows.If you find any Fonts that SHADOWMAKER cannot handle please send a sample to the office. ----------------------------------------------------------------- If you hold down the LEFT SHIFT key while you click on any of the UP or DOWN arrows, the selected value will increase/decrease by 4 instead of 1. ********************************************************************* **END Section HINTS,TIPS** **PROGRAM LIMITATIONS/BUGS** There is nothing worse than wasting your time tring to guess if a program BUG/LIMITATION is: 1. Your own fault 2. Program BUG 3. Amiga's fault To help you out, this section contains EVERY SINGLE noticeable BUG/FEATURE/ABBERATION that was recorded during BETA testing. Where is the FILE REQUESTER at SAVE time?? I did not see the need for a file requester at SAVE time until I started getting some reccomendations from people using the Public Domain version of SHADOWMAKER. By then it was getting too close to the first release to make any major changes to program logic. The initial idea was to try to keep SHADOWMAKER as easy as possible to use. Also I did not really think that people would want to SAVE the converted Font files to disk because of their large size. I stand corrected and the file requester will appear in a version shortly. Where is the Screen Front/Back gadget? Unfortunately the screen was designed at the pixel level so I could not add a Depth gadget without changing all of the Intuition imagery. I simply did not notice until all of the screen imagery and layout was finished. Please use the AMIGA-M(AMIGA-N) commands until this gets fixed. Why did you design all of the gadgets with single line borders? The resulting Flicker is very annoying. This was my first attempt at creating a 3D effect for gadgets. By the time I learned right from wrong, the imagery was already 80% completed. I was too far along the path to turn back. In addition, this program was designed on an AMIGA 3000- so I never noticed the flicker until early Beta testing. The original Versions of SHADOWMAKER(1.0-1.3) saved their ColorFonts as 2 bitplanes. In order for ON-TOP to work better, it was decided to save the SHADOWMAKER fonts as 3 bitplanes if the ANTIALIASING feature was selected. I realize that this makes for extremely LARGE sized fonts, but I really never envisioned saving these to disk. It is so quick to generate them those people without Hard drives can just regenerate before they start a production session. This is not a solution. What is needed is a standard form of file compression. Since the Fonts are really bitmaps(bitplanes) the IFF employed compression schemes would do fine. I have found that this route will result in over 50% savings in file storage. The problem is to link any compression strategy into the Amiga system. I am working on the idea of a patch to the OPENFONT and OPENDISKFONT routines. We'll see! Certain Fonts, notably the older ZUMA Fonts, will sometimes produce less than desirable results under SHADOWMAKER. This is due to improper values in the Character-Width, Kerning, etc. tables of the fonts. After you run SHADOWMAKER and load a new Font, Convert it and then quit the program, you will notice that you will have less FAST memory than when you started. Obviously the converted Font is saved into RAM:, but even after subtracting that amount you will still be missing some Ram. AmigaDos does not free memory used to load FONTS until it really runs into a Low-memory situation. At that time it will purge any unused libraries, fonts etc. from memory and you finally reclaim your missing memory. Sorry, but as many programmers like to say--"It's the Operating systems fault.. not mine! SHADOWMAKER can sometimes have trouble with NON-PROPORTIONAL FONTS. SHADOWMAKER will Load/Convert/Save properly but the finished Font may not show anything but a SPACE when you try to type. This problem has only happened TWICE, and only on 1 machine out of the 4 used for Final Testing. It was an Amiga 2000 HD, 1 meg CHIP/2 Meg Fast/1.3 Kickstart in ROM, WB 1.3.2. If anything like this happens simply run SHADOWMAKER again to convert the same Font. Everything seems fine the second time. NON-PROPORTIONAL Fonts are not used heavily in the Amiga world. The system font TOPAZ is such a font. The above problem may happen to the Font converted immediately after the NON-PROPORTIONAL is converted. Font sizes under 10 points are not supported. If ROUNDED is selected as Shadow Type then a 3 pixel outline is drawn around each letter. With some Fonts this can result in a 1 pixel shadow overlap as the letters are being printed. This can be remedied by using the Manual positioning gadgets to PULL the Face of the letter to the LEFT 1 extra pixel. This will result in a 2 pixel outline border on the The BEST solution is to run the included program ON-TOP. IF ROUNDED is not selected, certain Shadow directions can cause the Text.Baseline to be out by 3 pixels. This will show up in DPAINTIII as the Text Bounding box Baseline being 3 pixels higher than it should be. This is not serious but will be fixed shortly. The program is NOW shipping its first COMMERCIAL Revision and I do not want to start the Beta testing over again just to accomodate this bug. I was having a problem with the Workbench Fonts 24 pixels tall and under. It seems an extra pixel was showing up at the very bottom of certain WB Fonts. Unable to trace the problem I added a small BUG to SHADOWMAKER to get rid of this extra pixel. Therefore all Fonts under 24 pixels in height will be missing the very bottom row of pixels. As long as the Shadow extends BELOW the Face you probably will not notice the missing row. BUT if you use just CAST or DROP, with no outline, then the bottom row of the characters Face of the letters j,p,q will be missing. This bug cost me a lot of time, and unless someone complains REAL LOUD, I never want to think about it again!(Sorry, I really HATE this bug!) If you hold down the LEFT SHIFT key while you click on any of the UP or DOWN arrows, the selected value will increase/decrease by 4 instead of 1. If you hold down this key while a font is being generated all of the increment/decrement variables will increase/decrease by 4 instead of 1 until you press the Left SHIFT key again. During Font generation all input events are discarded except for this LEFT SHIFT key UP/DOWN FLAG. Fixed in next revision. -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you bring up a system Font requester you may notice that if the shadow of the one letter overlaps the shadow of the previous letter, Color4 of the palette will be the result. The "QUICK" fix is to decrease your shadow so there is no overlap and/or increase the amount of spacing between each letter being drawn. The "BEST" fix is to run the program ON-TOP. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Remember, in most programs that do run time Text generation(AmigaVision etc) the underlying palette may change from screen to screen. If you wish to perform Text generation across multiple screens, then you must adjust the palette in each of the screens where SHADOWMAKER fonts will appear. If for some reason ON-TOP is not compatible with your runtime Multimedia software, you can still use SHADOWMAKER fonts to a certain degree. First convert the Font without Antialiasing and a small Shadow depth. The palette position normally occupied by the Antialiasing information, Color4 must be changed to the identical contents of Color2(Face). This is done within your Multimedia software. -------------------------------------------------------------------- SHADOWMAKER must use "NEGATIVE KERNING" to allow the wedge ON-TOP to do its magic. Therefore when you are at the beginning of each line the actual starting position you select must be adjusted. The amount of "NEGATIVE KERNING" is equal to the width of the Shadow. For example, if you positioned the Text box in DPAINTIII at coordinates 5,10(x,y), the first letter that you type may be 'clipped' along the left edge if the amount of Shadow that you added via SHADOWMAKER is greater than 5 pixels. Simply put, each character will JUMP back to the left, the number of pixels equal to the current shadow width, and then the letter will be printed. This seemingly BIZZARE practice will make sure that the actual FACE of the letter begins exactly where you position the text box. Conversely, character positioning at the extreme right edge of the screen can be equal to the maximum X coordinate plus the amount of shadow width. Again this is because the character positioning will actually JUMP back to the left prior to the actua printing of the character. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Garbage, in the form of overwritten characters may appear in the Font file requester within DPaintIII. This is a result of contention between ON-TOP and the OS and DPaint. Simply click on the "SHOW" button again to refresh the display. Also if garbage appears in the Font requester and then appears when you try to actually use this Font, simply reload the Font from the Font requester. The problem is a contention between DPAINT and ON-TOP over the color mapping of the current FG and BG colors, which DPAINT tries to remap to the highest colors in your palette every time the requester pops up. ITALIC mode is not supported when ON-TOP is active(SHADOWMAKER fonts only) *Note* It does seem to work on Fonts with small Shadow depths and certain light source directions. Remember though, any Antialiasing information will not be processed correctly by the system ITALIC routine. It is better to use the BRUSH-Warp or BRUSH-Rotate feature of your software package. If the SHADOW of your SHADOWMAKER font extends backwards more than 1 character than you have a problem. ON-TOP only redraws the single previous character. You will lose under 1000 bytes of memory every time ON-TOP is installed. If you find that ON-TOP is not functioning: 1. You may have inadvertently struck the "MINUS"(-) key on the numeric keypad. Simply press the PLUS or PERIOD(+ or .) keys to reinstate ON-TOP. 2. You may have run the ColorText wedge AFTER starting ON-TOP. This steals Text routine away from ON-TOP. You must rerun ON-TOP. In some cases the address to the Text routine may get mangled or called too many times recursively, so you will have to REBOOT! 3. The program you are using DOES NOT use the Amiga Graphics Library Text routines. Sorry, there is no fix for this. 4. Remember that ON-TOP uses the current color and the colors directly BEFORE and AFTER this color for the SHADOW and ANTIALIASING. If you have 2 of these colors identical or they match the current background color then obviously some component will not show up properly. 5. If you have Color1(DPaintIII DEFAULT) selected as the current foreground color then You will only see the FACE and Antialiasing bitplane information. Simply select a new foreground color with the left mouse button. 6. You may have run the ColorText program again. This steals the control of the system TEXT routines away from ON-TOP. Try to run ON-TOP again. You may have to reboot because there is no way to turn off the ColorText Wedge. Even though the docs say the maximum Font size is 99, this is not completely truthfull. Loading Font size is RESTRICTED to 99 MAX simply because the loading logic stops at 2 digits. The "SAVING" logic correctly handles up to max=256, but the filename creation routine breaks down after 2 digits(99). Therefore you could save a Font out no problem but the Filename would be mangled. You could still load these converted 99+ Fonts in DPaintIII even with the damaged names. BUT the real restriction is the upper right quadrant of the SHADOWMAKER control screen where each letter is built. The maximum Font height here is restricted to around 132 before you start overwriting Screen title bars and background graphics. Also the current Binary Font file creation routine can only handlce file sizes of max=262140 bytes. A coming revision will allow much larger Fonts/Bitmaps. If you are wondering why you would ever want letters this BIG??, it is because you might want to store say extra large bitmaps in FONT format, so that you could recall to the screen individual windows VIA the keyboard. Anyway, what's life without an update. ********************************************************************* **COMING UP!** SPECIAL EFFECTS! Perspective, mirroring and rotation, patterns etc. Load any Font into a your paint program for retouching/enhancing etc. Professional Video Font Sets. Hand crafted Bitmaps for Video Production. Animate your text SHADOWMAKER is the first part of the Flip'n Scroll project. Flip'n Scroll will be released in the next few months. It is an inexpensive Page Flipper/Scroller with many professional features. **VBHI** L&V Productions also produce the program VBHI. This is a low cost TEXT SCROLLER suitable for Titleing and/or Teleprompting. Retail Price is $29.99 US includes shipping/handling. TRADEMARKS DPaintIII is trademark of Electronic Arts SHADOWMAKER is a trademark of L & V Productions Reg'd Flip'n Scroll is a trademark of L & V Productions Reg'd AmigaVision is a trademark of Commodore Business Machines TV*TEXT is a trademark of the ZUMA group *COPY PROTECTION* NONE *NUMBER OF BACKUP COPIES ALLOWED* 1,235,642 (Anyone exceeding these numbers will be prosecuted to the FULL extent of the LAW!) (These backup copies must be for your own personal use!) ***REGISTRATION*** Special Introductory Offer! Regular Price $24.99+Shipping/Handling ** SALE PRICE $19.99 ** Includes Shipping/Handling in the continental US Offer good until May 1, 1991 To purchase the commercial version simply send a cheque in the amount of $19.99 US funds to the address below. Visa/Mastercard are also acceptable. L & V Productions 110 Columbus Ave Moncton, New Brunswick Canada E1A-5E4 PHONE: (506)-532-0094 FAX: (506)-859-2709 Note We are on the EAST Coast!! Please feel free to report any bugs/suggestions to: Stephen Lebans ONLINE Handle PLINK SLEBANS Thank you for TRYING or BUYING this program! Thanks Norbert! Dedicated to my daughters Alyssa and Samantha (I guess you know "WHO's the Boss"