═══ 1. Introduction ═══ WarPaint WarPaint is a basic paint program for OS/2. It allows the user to work with existing bitmaps or to create bitmaps from scratch. We consider it to be a pixel paint program. One of the handier aspects of it is that you can zoom in to a very high degree to do pixel by pixel changes. The OverView allows you to select a small area to zoom in on as well. WarPaint has been knocking around PillarSoft for about three years but has been held from release by a couple of issues that may or may not affect most users. If it is a major part of the reason you would be interested in purchasing the PillarSoft Suite, please be sure it works satisfactorily in your case before making any commitment. Major bitmap formats supported by WarPaint are: o BMP o GIF o PCX o TIF o TGA There are other lesser known formats that WarPaint will work with but most are so obscure that we won't mention them here. The JPG format is not supported internally but because it is such an important format we have made provisions for WarPaint to use cjpeg.exe and djpeg.exe (if present) to convert JPG's into a temporary BMP file for viewing and editing. The file may be saved as a JPG after editing but the quality is very poor at this time. You will notice that it isn't quite seamless and native by the extra time it takes to load the jpg's. ═══ 2. Menu items ═══ Menu items File Edit Selected View Tools Help ═══ 2.1. File ═══ File New - Start a new editing session with a clean canvas. Open - Open a bitmap and load it. Save - Save the current bitmap. Save as - Save the current bitmap under a new name or format. Print - Print the bitmap. Capture screen - more... Convert to B/W - Convert currently loaded bitmap to a two color (black and white) bitmap. Exit - Exit the program ═══ 2.2. Edit ═══ Edit Undo - Undoes last operation Cut - Cuts currently selected area to clipboard Copy - Copies currently selected area to clipboard Paste - Pastes currently selected area from clipboard Clear - Deletes currently selected area Select all - Selects all of the canvas area Select none - Deselects any previous selection Font - Sets font to be used with the "Text" tool ═══ 2.3. Selected ═══ Selected Crop - Removes all areas outside of the currently selected area and resets the canvas to show only the selected area as the current graphic. Flip - Allows the user to flip the selected area horizontally or vertically. Rotate - Allows the user to rotate the selected area 90, 180 or 270 degrees. ═══ 2.4. View ═══ View Tool Palette - Turns the Tool Palette on or off. (more on the Tool Palette) Color Palette - Turns the Color Palette on or off. (more on the Color Palette) Image Settings - Opens the Image Settings window. (more on Image Settings) Full Screen - Selecting this or pressing F3 stretches the loaded bitmap to a full screen view. Press to close this view and return to WarPaint. OverView - Opens the OverView window where the user can select any area of the loaded bitmap to zoom in on by drawing a box around it. Zoom in - Zooms the view of the loaded bitmap by 2 times it's present size. Zoom out - Zooms the view out on the loaded bitmap by half it's present size. Actual size - Returns the loaded bitmap to it's actual size in the editing window. ═══ 2.5. Tools ═══ Tools Menu The Tools menu selection is much like the Tool Palette with the added option of choosing Brush, eraser and spray styles and shapes. The tools are selected by clicking on them, like any other menu item would be selected. Your cursor should change to whatever tool you have chosen. ═══ 2.6. Help ═══ Help Not much to tell you here. Pretty much self-explanatory. ═══ 3. General help ═══ General help Tool Palette Color Palette Image Settings Screen Capture ═══ 3.1. Tool Pallette ═══ Tool Palette The Tool Palette allows the user to select the tool he would like to be active while he is making his next change to the current graphic. Like the Color Palette you may resize the Tool Palette to your preference and the size should be saved for future reference when you close the application. The Tool Palette selections are: Select - The selector tool. Used to outline areas for other operations. A single click of the selector tool will automatically outline irregular areas if the are a constant color. Lasso - Another selection tool that allows drawing and irregular area to be copied or moved etc. Pen - Used to draw lines or separate pixels. Brush - Used to draw in a larger scale. Brush sizes and shapes may be selected from the "Tools" menu. Erase - Erases an area. Eraser sizes and shapes may be selected from the "Tools" menu. Extract - The eyedropper is used to retrieve the exact color being used in any given area. Spray - Works like a can of spray paint. Patterns may be selected from the "Tools" menu. Text - Allows the user to type text into a graphic. Text size and font may be selected from the "Edit" --> "Font" menu items. Fill - Flood fills an area on the canvas. This doesn't always seem to work to well unless it is filling over white. Line - Draws a line. Mouse button down, move to line end and release the mouse button. Rect - Draws a rectangle. Mouse button down, move to opposite corner and release the mouse button. Round - Draws a rectangle with rounded corners. Mouse button down, move opposite corner and release the mouse button. Diam - Draws a diamond shape. Mouse button down, move to diamond end and release the mouse button. Ellipse - Draws circles and ellipses. Mouse button down for center, move mouse give desired shape and size and release the mouse button. Line Attr - Opens the Line Attributes dialog. Set your line width, choose a line type or select an arrow end for a line. ═══ 3.2. Color Pallette ═══ Color Palette The color Palette contains a color wheel or a sixteen color value set depending on how it is toggled by the button at the base of the Palette. Any click on either of these palettes will change the working color in use to whatever is selected. Like the Tool Palette you may resize the Color Palette to your preference and the size should be saved for future reference when you close the application. The "Pattern selector" on the bottom half of the Palette allows the user to choose whether a square or circle tool, for example, will draw in a solid color, an outline with the selected color or some type of hash with the selected color. The Pattern selector has been a bone of contention in some of our tests. It works fine on some machines but on a machine with an S3 ViRGE it has been very troublesome. For this reason, it is not turned on by default but is available to be tested or used by using the /P parameter when starting WarPaint. To do this you must: Open the WarPaint desktop object properties by right clicking the icon and selecting "Properties." Enter /P in the "Optional Parameters" field. Close the desktop object. Start the program. Note: It has shown itself to be troublesome here after a fresh reboot but seems to work OK after some unspecified period of time. We are baffled by the behavior and wish to avoid problems but wanted it to be available to those of you that may have no problems with it. (as it is on every other machine we tested on) ═══ 3.3. Image Settings ═══ Image Settings There are three pages in the Image settings notebook. o Attributes - Sets the image size and bits per pixel. You may set any size in the fields and the program will stretch or squish the bitmap to the size desired. The bit per pixel settings are: 1 bit - 2 color (Black and white) 4 bit - 16 color 8 bit - 256 color 16 bit - 65k color o Grid - Overlays a grid on the canvas to aid in spacing things properly. Snap to grid will make all new work start and end on the gridlines. o Line styles - Allows the user to set a line type, line size, use arrow ends and set arrow sizes on all new lines. ═══ 3.4. Screen Capture ═══ Screen Capture This is a very simple screen capture. When selected, WarPaint will minimize itself and after a three second wait, it will snap a picture of the screen and return you to the program with the screen capture loaded. ═══ 4. Known Problems ═══ Known problems The pattern selector can be quite flaky and does not work on at least one machine here with an S3 card immediately after a clean boot. After a fresh reboot, any programmatic selection of the pattern selector causes a trap in PmMerge.dll. If we do not select it programmatically, it will run but manually selecting a pattern can cause the program to become unresponsive. After some unknown amount of time it seems to work fine but we have disabled it to avoid problems. It can be enabled by starting WarPaint with the /P parameter. This can be accomplished by doing the following: 1. Open the WarPaint desktop object properties by right clicking the icon and selecting "Properties." 2. Enter /P in the "Optional Parameters" field. 3. Close the desktop object. 4. Start the program. The pattern selector is actually an important tool because it is the only way for the user to toggle between drawing outlines of circles, squares etc or drawing them filled with color. If you happen to select a pattern and the cursor disappears or the program becomes unresponsive, press the Control-Escape key combination and end the program immediately. The more time you try to make it work, the longer it will take to kill it. More about it in Color Palette. ──────────────────── The Fill tool works fine on an empty canvas but seems to have trouble filling over any color. ──────────────────── When doing a Screen Capture, the Tool Palette and the Color Palette will move. We will be addressing this in upcoming releases but please keep in mind that the "standard" applications in the suite will probably receive attention earlier than any of the "Bonus" type apps like WarPaint.