home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
CU Amiga Super CD-ROM 19
/
CU Amiga Magazine's Super CD-ROM 19 (1998)(EMAP Images)(GB)[!][issue 1998-02].iso
/
CUCD
/
Utilities
/
Birdie
/
birdie.readme
< prev
Wrap
Text File
|
1997-11-23
|
11KB
|
322 lines
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Birdie</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Home page for the MakeCGXBootPic utility. An amazing program to create boot pictures for CGX v3">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="CGX,CyberGraphX,MakeCGXBootPic,Jacob,LCi,JAAK3">
</HEAD>
<BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#C0C0C0" LINK="#0000EE" VLINK="#551A8B" ALINK="#FF0000" BACKGROUND="HTTP://www.vgr.com/cybergfx/nasa.gif">
<IMG SRC="HTTP://www.vgr.com/cybergfx/bancgx.gif" WIDTH=185 HEIGHT=43 ALT="CGX">
<HR>
NOTE: The Birdie utility is NOT by the CGX Authors and is not directly supported by the CGX Webpage team.
He is to lazy to do this page or to make docs for his program so blame him. :) - Robert
<HR>
<H2><B>What is Birdie?</B></H2><BR>
<CENTER>
Birdie is 'a dirty hack that gives patterns in window borders for cgx 3 users'.<BR>
'It's really really cool, unless it crashes you. It's a real life software lottery .. is it stable for you?'<BR>
<A href="http://www.vgr.com/birdie/BirdieGrab.jpeg">
<IMG SRC="HTTP://www.vgr.com/birdie/BirdieGrabMini.jpeg" WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=150 ALT="Snap On Drugs">
</A><BR>
Click on the picture to see CGX V3 with SUPERLAYERS and Birdie on Drugs!
</CENTER>
<HR>
<H2><B>Birdie Files</B></H2>
<CENTER>
<TABLE CELLSPACING=0 BORDER=1 WIDTH=90%>
<TR>
<TD>October 8, 1997</TD>
<TD> <B>Birdie 1.3</B> </TD>
<TD>
WWW - <A href="http://www.vgr.com/birdie/Birdie13.lha">Birdie13.lha</A><BR>
FTP - <A href="ftp://ftp.vgr.com/Birdie13.lha">Birdie13.lha</A>
</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
<BR>
<B>Birdie</B> is copyright ©1997 by Trond Werner Hansen.<BR>
CyberGraphX V3 ©1996-1997 phase5 Digital Products.<BR>
</CENTER>
<HR>
<H2><B>Read This</B></H2>
<PRE>
Birdie 1.2 © 1997 Trond Werner Hansen (Tronan).
Email: tronhan@stud.ntnu.no
Birdie is a *hack* which gives you patterns in the windowborders
of windows on the workbench screen.
NOTE: this archive contains some example patterns, which probably
are copyrighted by someone.
NOTE2: this hack is designed for gfxcard owners, and although
version 1.3 works with AGA/ECS, keep in mind that I won't spend
time tuning if for such setups..
IMPORTANT:
While birdie is running, the default public screen (Workbench)
which it affects, will be locked. To change screenmode,
you must first CTRL-C break it. But you should not break
it if other hacks have patched your system after Birdie.
Therefore you should run Birdie last in your startup.
Remember to disable patches like QuickDraw, Centertitles and similiar
stuff.
Usage
-----
"Birdie ?" gives:
"ACTIVEPATTERN/S,PATTERNS/M,NODRAW/S,NOBITMAPS/S,NOICONBORDER/S,NOLIGHTING/S,
ACTIVECOLOR/K,IMPOSELEVEL/N,LRA/N,LGA/N,LBA/N,DRA/N,DGA/N,DBA/N,PRECISION/N"
PATTERNS
--------
From 1 to 20 names of patterns. If none are given or birdie
is unable to load none for some reason, birdie simply returns, doing
nothing. When running, each window will get a random pattern from this
list. The patterns are loaded using datatypes.
example: "Birdie pattern1.iff pattern2.iff"
ACTIVEPATTERN
-------------
This switch tells birdie that the first pattern
in the list (see above), should be used as active window pattern.
When windows are inactive they will get a random one from the
REST of the list. This switch makes no sense unless you give birdie
at least 2 patterns.
example "Birdie pattern1.iff pattern2.iff pattern3.iff ACTIVEPATTERN"
In this example, "pattern1.iff" will be used for the active window,
while when inactive each window will get either "pattern2.iff" or
"pattern3.iff" (selected random, when window is opened).
NODRAW
------
This switch disables the Draw() patch in gfx.lib. Meant for
debugging purpose.
NOBITMAPS
---------
No bitmaps rendered to the window border will be patched.
This usually means that system gadgets will be left alone.
NOICONBORDER
------------
This switch is for users of the original Workbench. Icons
will be rendered without border and have pen 0 transparent.
The iconbitmaps and masks are cached after first draw, which
means it will refresh faster, but it also eats memory.
Use this option instead of the NewIcons one. Also, disable
QuickDraw in MCP.
NOTE: For this switch to work, you must NOT use the NODRAW
or NOBITMAPS.
PRECISION
---------
This is a number from 32 to -1 meant for AGA users to specify
the remap precision, so that they can save some pen allocations.
Default is -1, which gives best precision (EXACT).
example: "birdie pattern1.iff PRECISION=32" (very low precision)
*********************************************************************
* the following options only make sense for users of
* hi/truecolor screens. (ie. Gfxcards)
*********************************************************************
NOLIGHTING
----------
This switch causes users of hi/truecolor displays to not have
the real shine/shadow effect, but get the old white/black lines.
Will save you some memory.
ACTIVECOLOR
-----------
Instead of using ATCIVEPATTERN switch to get a seperate pattern
for the active window, you can instead make the window get
the same pattern as used when inactive, but imposed with a
a special color. The color is given as a hexnumber in RGB format,
8bits per gun. See example.
example: "birdie Patterns1.iff ACTIVECOLOR=ff0000"
This imposes color Red (ff0000) to the active window.
NOTE: this uses even more memory, twice as much in fact.
IMPOSELEVEL
-----------
If you use the ACTIVECOLOR option, you can use IMPOSELEVEL
to set how much in % the color should be imposed. Default
is 50%.
example: "birdie pattern1.iff ACTIVECOLOR=ffff00 IMPOSELEVEL=20"
this will impose the active pattern by yellow, 20%.
LRA,LGA,LBA,DRA,DGA,DBA
-----------------------
Each of these options is given with a number which is the
RGB balance value used for generating the shine/shadow effect
in high/truecolor.
DEFAULT is, shine: 60,60,60 shadow: -60,-60,-60
example: "Birdie pattern1.iff LRA 100 LGA 80 LBA 60 DRA -60
DGA -80 DBA -100"
This will give the shine version of the pattern a balance of
100,80 and 60, which means 100 will be added to the RED gun
of each pixel, 80 to the GREEN and 60 to the BLUE.
For the shadow version I use negative numbers so that the
RGB values get lower (darker pixel). Each gun i 8bit (0-255).
If you don't get it, try and you'll soon figure it out.
******
Birdie mini FAQ.
What is Birdie?
---------------
Birdie is a hack that gives you datatypes loaded patterns in the window
border of windows open on the default public screen (WB). Current version
is V1.3.
Where can I get it?
-------------------
www.vgr.com/birdie
How does it work?
-----------------
It redirects border rendering calls to own fast pattern fill routines.
If the screen is hicolor, also shine and shadow pens (white and black)
will be replaced with a shine and shadow versions of the pattern. This
light effect is currently precalc'ed, so each pattern is stored
in 3 versions, eating up memory if big patterns are used. In 8bit
only the normal fill color is changed. In 1.2 you can control how
it works somewhat more.
Is birdie safe to use? Will it crash?
-------------------------------------
Maybe. You just have to try it. There ARE problems, but many people
including myself don't have any of them. This makes it difficult for
me to debug it, but I'm doing my best to try to figure out what is
wrong.
It doesn't work here, is there anything I can do?
------------------------------------------------
Maybe. First try disabling ALL hacks and patches. Try to break
your startup right after IPrefs is loaded. Then start birdie, and see
if it works. If it does, you could try to nail down what other thing is
causing Birdie to crash by reenabling other hacks. If you discover
something neat, please mail me. (see address below)
Are there any known problems with other hacks?
----------------------------------------------
I haven't actually verified all of this, but people have mentioned
the following:
- disable PatchControl. At least for testing Birdie once.
- check if you're using a weird adddatetypes replacement.
(I doubt this means anything, but you never know).
- disable Arq if you use it and try.
- try running StackAttack and give all tasks some more stack.
again, if you somehow can verify anything, please mail me.
Birdie disables the NoBorder hack in NewIcons. What's up?
---------------------------------------------------------
Patch conflict, caused by NI being more dirty than it needs
to. I'm gonna do my own NoBorder patch within Birdie, so that
people don't have to run patch on patch on patch... It will
be faster too, I hope :)
NOTE: in 1.2 birdie has a new NOICONBORDER option which you
should use instead of the NI options.
Does Birdie make my system slower?
----------------------------------
Yes. But only by a tiny amount. You will probably never see it
yourself, but if you run WSpeed or similiar progs, you can
discover a tiny slowdown, at least in the Draw Hor/Vert
test I think.
DON'T be scared by this. In fact, for Gfxcard owners,
Birdie can actually make your border draw
faster!!! How that is possible? You see, the system gadgets
are normally in planar mode, and even when running sysihack
they are planar. Technically, this is due to that
when BOOPSI images are created, they get a DrawInfo
structure to peek at for rendering info. But this
structure was designed for planar AOS displays
and does not contain a bitmap pointer or any other source of
info so that the BOOPSI class can tell what custom CGX
pixelformat the screen is. Therefore, such images
ends up being planar. This means that everytime intuition
redraws a border, all the system gadgets must be converted
from, say, 8bit planar to 16bit hicolor, which is VERY
SLOW. With birdie, a pattern filled copy of the image
is quickly drawn because it is in hicolor already!
Any last words?
---------------
Well, Birdie was developed with the aid of chocolate. Author
is Trond Werner Hansen, tronhan@stud.ntnu.no
It was made just for fun and for all cgx users to enjoy.
******
version 1.3 (8.oct.97)
----------------------
Birdie no longer needs CGX/Superlayers.
Added PRECISION and IMPOSELEVEL.
ACTIVECOLOR now works with all hi/truecolor pixelformats.
version 1.2 (6.oct.97)
----------------------
Added NOLIGHTING,NOICONBORDER,ACTIVECOLOR,LRA,LGA,LBA,DRA,DGA,DBA.
Rewrote bitmap stuff.
Baked a chococake (not included in archive).
version 1.1
-----------
Added proper DrawInfo usage.
Added NOBITMAPS switch.
Fixed problems with dual-layered GZZ windows.
version 1.0
-----------
First public release. 95% rewrite.
version -13 (jan/feb 97)
------------------------
internal weird-thing (tm).
</PRE>
<HR>
<font size=1>
<CENTER>
As of August 30th, 1997 this is the 4,048th hit to this page.
If you have any questions you can email <A HREF="mailto:tronhan@stud.ntnu.no">Trond</A> ©1997 Trond Werner Hansen
</font>
</CENTER>
</BODY> </HTML>