Register Your Color Manipulation Device 2.0

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CMD Version:

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Include a check or money order, made out to Chris Pearce, for US $15.00 and mail this form to:

CHRIS PEARCE

4880 SW SCHOLLS FERRY RD APT 25

PORTLAND  OR  97225-1699

USA

Enter any suggestions for improving or adding to CMD below.


Exiting the Color Manipulation Device

1	Click on the File menu.

2	Click on Exit.

Shortcut Key

<CTRL> - X


Copying a tag selection

1	Select a portion of the tag with the mouse.

2	Click on the Edit menu.

3	Click on Copy.

Note

This command differs from Copy Tag in that it will only copy the portion of the tag you’ve selected.  Use this command when you want to copy a specific color into your HTML document.

Shortcut Key

<CTRL> - C


Copying the whole tag

1	Click on the Edit menu.

2	Click on Copy Tag.

Note

This command differs from Copy in that it will copy the whole tag regardless of what portion you have selected.

Shortcut Key

<CTRL> - T


Resetting the Color Manipulation Device Colors

1	Click on the Edit menu.

2	Click on Reset Colors.

Note

This command resets the Color Manipulation Device to its startup colors.


Changing the sample homepage title

1	Click on the Edit menu.

2	Click on Change Title.

3	Type in the new name for the title.

4	Click on the OK button.

Note

This command only works for registered users.


Showing background images

1	Click on the Tools menu.

2	Click on Show Backgrounds?

Notes

•	You will need to select before being able to use Load Background.

•	To display a background loaded from a scheme Show Background must  be selected.


Load a background image

1	Click on the Tools menu.

2	Click on Load Background.

3	Choose your background and click OK.

Notes

The following file formats are supported:

Windows and OS/2 BMP, JPEG, PC Paintbrush (PCX), TIFF, Targa, Photo CD, MacPaint, FBM, Sun Raster, CMU WM Raster, Portable Bit Map (PBM, PGM, PPM), Faces Project, Utah RLE, X Window Dump, McIDAS areafile, G3 FAX, GEM Bit, X Pixmap, and X Bitmap.

Why aren’t GIF files supported?

Getting the Windows Color Picker

1	Click on the Tools menu.

2	Click on Windows Color Picker.


Why aren’t GIF files supported?

Flux uses a 3rd party imaging library to load images.  SimSoft, the company that produces that library writes states:

When GIF and TIFF with LZW image file formats were implemented, the LZW algorithm was thought to be in public domain.  This, apparently, is not true.  Unisys Corporation is the owner of United States patent number 4,558,302 and corresponding foreign patents.  For a long time, Unisys Corporation did nothing to enforce the patent, but in 1994 it came to an agreement with Compuserve, the copyright holder of GIF specification, that GIF developers have to license LZW from Unisys.

Unfortunately, SimSoft was unable to obtain a fair license from Unisys while still maintaining its commitment to distribute ImgLib royalty-free.  For that reason, all code that uses the LZW algorithm was removed from ImgLib.  This means that ImgLib will not longer be able to support reading GIF files and those of TIFF files that saved using the LZW compression.  As of TIFF specification version 6, the LZW compression is optional and should not be used to assure compatibility with "baseline" TIFF readers.  SimSoft will search for public domain or freeware libraries capable of reading GIF, and if we locate such a tool we will happy to recommend it.

SimSoft apologizes for the inconvenience that this may cause you, but we had no control over the issue.  Please contact SimSoft if you have suggestions on this subject.

Since the Color Manipulation Device itself is a for-profit program, we have decided not to introduce our own code for reading GIF files.  The incredible hassle Unisys wants developers to go through to use GIFs is very prohibitive to the small developer.  We apologize for any inconvenience.  We’d like to recommend the JPEG file format as a better alternative to GIF files and Flux will continue to completely support JPEG files.


Open a saved scheme

1	Click on the Schemes menu

2	Click on Open Scheme

Notes

Technical Description of the CMD Scheme file format

Shortcut Key

<CTRL> - O


Save a scheme

1	Click on the Schemes menu

2	Click on Save Scheme

Notes

Technical Description Of The CMD Scheme File Format

Shortcut Key

<CTRL> - S


Technical Description Of The CMD Scheme File Format

The default prefix for the file is .colors.

Information inside the file is stored as follows:

struct cmd_scheme {

BYTE Signature[3];  // File signature is always “CMD”

DWORD colors[15];   // Color information

BYTE pathLength;    // Length of next section

BYTE path[x];       // Where x is pathLength

BYTE fileLength;    // Length of next section

BYTE file[x];       // Where x is fileLength

} scheme;

Color Information

colors[15] is the main color information.  It is an array of DWORD values, organized in this way:

colors[0]	Red value for BGCOLOR

colors[1]	Green value for BGCOLOR

colors[2]	Blue value for BGCOLOR

The order of tags in the array is:

BGCOLOR

TEXT

LINK

VLINK

ALINK


Help

1	Click on the Help menu.

2	Click on Help.

3	Viola, you get this!


About

1	Click on the Help menu.

2	Click on About.

3	Its all about CMD.


Using the Color Manipulation Device

Drag the sliders until you get a desired color.  The current color choice will be reflected in the Sample Homepage window, the current tag option you have selected determining what actually changes.  The body tag for the current choice is displayed in the Body Tag box, it is updated every time the display is changed.

To display a background, click on the Tools menu and click on Show Backgrounds.  This will enable you to load a background which will be displayed in the Sample Homepage window with text over it.  To remove the bitmap from view click on Show Backgrounds again.

Choosing the Windows Color Picker under the Tools menu will bring up the standard Windows palette and color picker which you can use to choose a color.

When you find a color combination you like, you can save it by selecting the Schemes menu and selecting Save Scheme.  Schemes can then be loaded with the Open Scheme item.

If you don’t like the colors you have you can reset them to normal with the Reset Colors item under the Edit menu.

Finally to exit the Color Manipulation Device, select the File menu, item Exit.


Body Tag Reference

(From Netscape’s Web Site)

The Background Attribute

Recent versions of the proposed HTML 3.0 spec. have added a BACKGROUND attribute to the BODY tag. The purpose of this attribute is to specify a URL pointing to an image that is to be used as a background for the document. In Netscape 1.1, this background image is used to tile the full background of the document-viewing area. Thus specifying:

<BODY BACKGROUND="textures/arena.gif">Document here</BODY>

would cause whatever text, images, etc. appeared in that document to be placed on a background that would give you the look of the paper texture from the Arena Web browser. Take a look at a few examples for ideas on other background choices.

The BGCOLOR Attribute

This attribute to BODY is not currently in the proposed HTML 3.0 spec, but we're working on it. Basically, many people just want to change the color of the background without having to specify a separate image that requires another network access to load. This attribute allows just that. The format that Netscape 1.1 understands is:

<BODY BGCOLOR="#rrggbb">Document here</BODY>

Where "#rrggbb" is a hexadecimal red-green-blue triplet used to specify the background color.

How To Control The Documents Foreground Color

Clearly, once you have control of the background, you are going to need to also control the foreground to establish the proper contrasts. The following attributes are also recognized as part of the BODY tag by Netscape 1.1.

The Text Attribute

This attribute is used to control the color of all the normal text in the document. This basically consists of all text that is not specially colored to indicate a link. The format of TEXT is the same as that of BGCOLOR.

<BODY TEXT="#rrggbb">Document here</BODY>

The LINK, VLINK, And ALINK Attribute

These attributes let you control the coloring of link text. VLINK stands for visited link, and ALINK stands for active link. The default coloring of these is: LINK=blue, VLINK=purple, and ALINK=red. Again the format for these attributes is the same as that for BGCOLOR and TEXT.

<BODY LINK="#rrggbb" VLINK="#rrggbb" ALINK="#rrggbb">Document here</BODY>

Stuff And Bother (The Details)

To state the obvious, since these color controls are all attributes of the BODY tag, you can only set the colors once for the entire document. You cannot change coloring partially through a document.

Since setting a background image requires the fetching of an image file from a second HTTP connection, it will slow down the perceived speed of your document load. None of your document can be displayed until the image is loaded and decoded. Needless to say, keep your background images small.

If you have the Auto Load Images option off, background images will not be loaded. If the background image is not loaded for any reason, and a BGCOLOR was not also specified, then any of the foreground controlling attributes (LINK, VLINK, and ALINK) will be ignored. The idea behind this is that if you didn't get your requested background image, setting your requested text colors on top a the default gray background may well make your document unreadable.

Copyright © 1995 Netscape Communications Corporation


For more help

Please write to support@meat.com and we’ll try our best to solve your problem.


Registered 1.x User Upgrade

Registered users of Color Manipulation Device 1.x may upgrade to version 2.0 free of charge.  Just send email to upgrade@meat.com and include your name and zip code.  We’ll cross check you against our database and if there are no problems we’ll email you back with instructions for getting the upgrade.


Contacting Flux

Flux

4880 SW Scholls Ferry RD #25

Portland, OR  97225-1699

USA

email:  flux@meat.com

website:  http://www.meat.com/