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1992-01-16
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a_tartan - a Microsoft Windows tartan generator
Version 1.0
Copyright 1992 James Patrick Russell. All Rights Reserved.
Antrim Software Cellar
Jim Russell, prop.
27 Freeman Place
Nutley NJ 07110 USA
CIS [71620,3061]
ILink - JIM RUSSELL (WinAppDev conference host)
Purpose:
This WinApp will generate a small "swatch" of tartan bitmap, which can
be used as tiled wallpaper in Microsoft Windows (v3.0 and later). It
was written solely for my own amusement, and I am distributing it as
"freeware" for anyone to freely use and enjoy. I ask only for feedback
and maybe some pattern description's of YOUR clan's tartan.
As this is basically a "toy" application, don't expect long-winded docs
explaining what Windows wallpaper is, or for that matter, what tartans
are. If someone else knows enough to expand this little note, feel
free. Send me a copy, and it'll go into the next revision.
What's here:
a_tartan.exe The program. Goes wherever you keep WinApps.
a_tartan.ini Sample tartan patterns from my family tree
(Russell and Ross). Put this in your Windows
directory (the one that has WIN.INI in it).
a_tartan.txt What you're reading right now.
What's not here, but you need:
vbrun100.dll The Visual Basic runtime library, available
virtually anywhere you download files. Since
it is expected that a large proportion of
Windows freeware/shareware will be written
in Visual Basic, there is an unwritten rule
that it not be included in everybody's archives.
Pick it up separately and save download time!
Tartan Theory:
This whole application came about when I wore my Russell tartan tie to
work one day. While waiting for my ILink mail transfer to download, I
began examining the tie, and noticed that the cross-hatch pattern of the
threads looked a lot like pixels in a bitmap. In fact, the areas where
the black threads were going horizontal and the green threads were going
vertical looked exactly like a dithered color. I also noticed that the
pattern of a tartan is regularly repeating -- hmmm, just like tiled wall-
paper! If I could only describe the way it repeats, I could generate a
small bitmap, and tile it, and have my Windows wallpaper be the Russell
tartan.
That's exactly what I did. I broke down the description like so:
1 255 255 255
15 0 0 255
2 255 0 0
15 0 0 0
15 0 128 0
1 0 0 0
The first number of each line is the number of threads for a certain
color. The other three numbers are the red, green and blue values for
that color, ranging from 0 to 255. This is the "standard" way of
describing colors in Windows. So what we have above is:
a. 1 white thread
b. 15 blue threads
c. 2 red threads
d. 15 black threads
e. 15 dark green threads
f. 1 black thread
Now, this only describes part of the tartan, but the rest of it is all
mirror images of this description. In other words, in order to have a
"swatch" of tartan that would tile correctly, the threads would be
"woven" like this:
a b c d e f f e d c b a
a
b
c
d
e
f
f
e
d
c
b
a
Now, since that time, I've examined quite a few other tartans, and it
seems that they all follow this "mirror" pattern. If there are some
that are not symmetrical like this, please contact me and let me know
about them. Also, please note from the description above that the edges
of the "tile" pattern were described with 1 thread, even though, when
you look at the tartan, there are 2 threads. This is, of course, because
they will be butting up against another copy of the bitmap in the tile
(in the case of thread "a"), or against the "mirror" (in the case of
thread "f").
Clear as mud?
Then, I got into a discussion on the ILink network with an actual
Scotsman, a Mr. Sandy Blair from Glasgow. He brought up something I
had not thought about -- the weave. I wrote "a_tartan" assuming that
all tartans were woven the way that tie was -- one thread up, one thread
down, making the whole pattern look somewhat like a checkerboard. He
showed me some other weaves that were used, and they may be implemented
in future versions. For now, I stuck with the checkerboard weave.
A note on colors -- even though I used the RGB description for
colors, which allows for 256 values for each of red, green and blue,
a_tartan v1.0 only draws in 16 colors. This is a limitation of
Visual Basic, so until I port this application to Borland C++, that's
what we've got to work with. If you're not really, really picky as
far as shades are concerned, you should be able to describe your
tartan using the 16. Which, by the way, are:
255 255 255 white
0 0 0 black
255 0 0 red
0 255 0 green
0 0 255 blue
128 0 0 dark red (kind of maroon-y)
0 128 0 dark green (a forest green, useful in tartans)
0 0 128 dark blue (almost purple)
255 255 0 yellow
255 0 255 magenta
0 255 255 cyan (sky blue)
128 128 0 brown (copper/gold shade)
128 0 128 dark magenta
0 128 128 dark cyan (sky blue on a miserable day)
128 128 128 dark grey
192 192 192 light grey
Running the program:
If, by any chance, you've understood any of my ramblings above, and have
figured out how to describe your family's tartan, the actual running of
"a_tartan" is easy. Run the program (under Windows, of course). You'll
see a superbly designed main window. Press the "About..." button to
display my name. Ahhh, thank you. Freeware authors live for things like
that. You can press the "Ok" button to get back to the main window any
time now.
Alright, let's take the areas of the main window one at a time:
Clan: The "name" of the tartan, usually the family or clan name.
This is a combo-box -- you can press the little arrow to
pick from any previously described tartans saved in the
.INI file, or type in a new name.
Pattern: This is where you type in a pattern consisting of lines
of four numbers (number of threads, red, green, blue) as
I tried to describe above. Don't leave any blank lines
in between.
Pixels per thread: Defaults to one. I put this in because on a
high-resolution monitor, you might want to have "bigger" threads,
of two or three pixels. It's here, and it works, but it's pretty
slow. If you've got WinGif, or something similar, you might want
to generate your bitmap at 1 pixel/thread, and use WinGif to
enlarge it.
"Generate" button: Generates the bitmap. Once pressed, this
changes to a "Cancel" button, which stops the drawing. By the
way, you can minimize a_tartan while it's generating if you want.
"Save BMP" button: Once generated, you will want to save the
bitmap to a .BMP file, for later wallpaper use. I was very lazy
here - I make you type in the file name, and didn't use any of the
little directory windows and stuff you're probably used to seeing
in WinApps. Maybe when Windows v3.1 comes out, I'll use their
"common file dialog" box.
"About" button: Go ahead, press it again.
Tartan drawn here: Tartan drawn here.
Contacting the author:
The best way to get in touch with me is on the ILink bulletin
board network -- I host the Windows Application Development conference
(WinAppDev), and also lurk around in Basic, C-Lang, Programming,
RockAndRoll, and a few other places. You can also reach me on CompuServe
as [71620,3061], or by writing a real letter (my address is at the top
of this file). Let me know about any bugs, anomalies, or anything else
about "a_tartan". And send me some more tartan descriptions!
Enjoy!
Jim Russell
16 Jan 1992