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*************************************************************************** FREE PAINT REVISION 35 ZETA © 1991 by Stefan Günter Boldorf, all rights reserved! THE FREE PAINT MANUAL ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ © 1991 by Stefan Günter Boldorf, all rights reserved! (but first something necessary) *************************************************************************** LEGAL STUFF This package consists of the files FPaint, FPaint.info, FreePaint.doc, FreePaint.doc.info, FreePaintInstall and FreePaintInstall.info. The package and all its files are NOT Public Domain. However you are allowed to copy and use the package as long as ALL the following demands are met. Exception from any of the points below can only be granted by my expressed written consent. 1. This package may only be distributed in its intact, unchanged form. Altering, as well as omitting, expanding or any other change of the package or any part of it is strictly forbidden! 1. Neither this package, nor any portion of it may be included in or distributed as a commercial product. 2. Neither this package, nor any portion of it may be used commercially. 3. Neither this package, nor any portion of it may appear in an electronic mailing facility, where an additional charge to your telephone bill is upheld. 4. The disk, this package is distributed on may not be priced over $6 in the U.S.A. or the equivalent of DM 6 in Germany or any other country. 5. Neither this package, nor any part of it may appear or be included in any Public Domain or other disk series without my expressed written consent. No guarantees, implicit or explicit are provided. The user is responsible for all damages resulting directly or indirectly from the use of this pack- age. I cannot be made liable for any damage resulting in the use or misuse of the package or any part of it. Mackenbach, 6th of August 1991 Stefan Günter Boldorf *************************************************************************** CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2. FUNDAMENTALS OF FREE PAINT 2.1 HOW TO GET FREE PAINT TO WORK 2.2 A FEW CONVENTIONS FOR THE FURTHER TEXT 2.3 THE MENUBAR 2.4 THE FASTMENU 2.5 THE DRAWING AREA 2.6 FIRST STEPS 3. PAINTING WITH FREE PAINT 3.1 THE SKETCH MODE 3.2 THE SPRAY MODE 3.3 THE LINE MODE 3.4 THE SPLINE MODE 3.5 THE RECTANGULAR MODE 3.6 THE POLYGON MODE 3.7 THE CIRCLE MODE 3.8 THE ELLIPSE MODE 3.9 THE FILL MODE 3.10 THE TEXT MODE 3.11 THE ZOOM MODE 3.12 THE BRUSH MODE 3.13 THE COLOR MODE 3.14 THE DUMP MODE 3.15 THE UNDO MODE 3.16 THE EXIT MODE 3.17 THE ICONIFY MODE 4. THE MENUS OF FREE PAINT 4.1 THE PICTURE MENU 4.2 THE BRUSH MENU 4.3 THE MIXED MENU 5. THE REQUESTORS OF FREE PAINT 5.1 DISK REQUESTOR 5.2 PAGE FORMAT REQUESTOR 5.3 COLOR PALETTE REQUESTOR 5.4 PRINT REQUESTOR 5.5 CHANGE BRUSH REQUESTOR 5.6 BRUSH HANDLE REQUESTOR 5.7 FILL MODE REQUESTOR 5.8 FONT REQUESTOR 5.9 REMAP REQUESTOR 5.10 SPRAY REQUESTOR 5.11 ICONIFY REQUESTOR 6. MESSAGES AND REQUESTS 6.1 THE FREE PAINT MESSAGE SYSTEM 6.2 THE FREE PAINT REQUEST SYSTEM 6.3 THE WORKBENCH REQUESTORS 7. THE OPTIONS OF FREE PAINT 7.1 THE SYNTAX 7.2 THE KEYWORDS 8. KEYBOARD SETTINGS 9. PROFESSIONAL INFORMATION 10. ABOUT THE PICTURES THAT CAME WITH THIS 11. A WORD TO THE USER *************************************************************************** 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 WHAT IS FREE PAINT What is Free Paint? Well, Free Paint is a painting program for the Amiga, that lets you draw as 'free'ly as possible. Free Paint is NOT FREEWARE!!! If you are a beginner in Amiga affairs, this manual may help you understand this machine even better, some basic knowledge about Workbench and Amiga-DOS is needed, but nothing exceeding the Amiga-DOS and Users manual that came with your computer. I you have used the IconEdit tool you will find this no more complicated. If in doubt about something, try it out, but make sure it cannot do much harm (that means if you are sure the damage can be restored or is negilible, if not ask a friend about it or do not do it at all!). The intermediate user or hacker may be bored at some places, I admit, but I urge you to read this manual thorougly! There may be some misspell- ings and other grammatical errors ( I am neither English nor American), but it should be understandable. 1.2 WHY WAS FREE PAINT MADE When you feel the urge to do some drawing on the Amiga the standart equipment ( I speak of the Extras and Workbench disk) is neither plentyful nor up to date. The object editor on the Extras disk is a joke and the IconEdit program has to few tools and is hard to use. The Public Domain pool for the Amiga contains some rudimentary drawing programs, such as VDraw, DaVinci or Klecks, but they all lack functions or are not 'user friendly' (may Shneiderman forgive me!). Then there is the commercial market, well if you have the money ($100-$150) to buy one. The solution to the problem may be Free Paint, which is provided here. It cannot compete with most of the commercial software, but to my knowledge it is better than any one of the Public Domain programs. 1.3 HOW DO YOU USE THIS MANUAL This 'manual' was made to provide you with both a guide to the many functions Free Paint has and a basic tutorial into drawing with it. You should read this manual before you install or use Free Paint, or even better make a hardcopy and read it to help you before and while using Free Paint. 1.4 HOW DO YOU DRAW WITH FREE PAINT This part of the manual is primarily for the beginner and inexper- ienced, but may even prove helpful for people with more knowledge. After starting Free Paint, you will be presented a black screen with a white menubar, not unlike that of the workbench screen, and on the right there should be a panel of sixteen symbols and a checkerbord of thirtytwo different colors. On this panel the symbols are usually drawn black on a white background, but one is drawn white on a black background, this symbol shows you which function (or mode as I like to call it sometimes) will be used when you go to work with your mouse. Each symbol can be actived by clicking on it or typing a key that is associated with it (see 3. for information about them). Some functions will go to work the time you hit their symbol, some require you to mark points on the black screen, but all the specifics are discussed below, read section 3. to get to know them. If you want to store a piece of art to disk, or load it to make changes Free Paint has the capabilities to interface with most of the art software for the Amiga. *************************************************************************** 2. FUNDAMENTALS OF FREE PAINT 2.1 HOW TO GET FREE PAINT TO WORK Free Paint can be started three ways, first by CLI, then by clicking its Workbench icon and last by clicking on an picture or brush icon that was once made using Free Paint. Free Paint runs under Workbench 1.2 and 1.3, and may even under 2.0 ? You need at least 512KB to run Free Paint, but to be able to use all graphic modes 1MB is needed. When you have removed some files from your Workbench it may be hard for Free Paint to get all the resources it needs to work. (To find out if Free Paint runs, just double-click it on the Public Domain disk this package came on, if it works you will not need to install it! In that case you may skip the following lines and proceed to 2.2.) I cannot supply all the resources with the Free Paint package because, as you may know, Commodore has extended its copyright over all files supplied on a Workbench. One can buy a license, but for a hefty annual fee, which I do not want to pay. Therefore I have not included the libraries, needed to use Free Paint. But do not panic, maybe the Public Domain disk this package is on has them already, and if not there is a file called 'FPInstall.mil' that has to be clicked on Workbench which creates a working environment for Free Paint on a separate disk. This file is a script file for my very own MultiInstall simple script execution program, that should be in the 'C' drawer of the PD disk. It can be run from CLI using the line: 'MultiInstall FPInstall.mil' (well, it is rather slow both ways). If you are a bit experienced you may like to do the routine yourself, well Free Paint needs the icon, diskfont, and mathtrans libraries from your workbench libs drawer to run, also the Workbench should use a 'topaz 8' like font. If you own an Amiga 3000 which to my knowledge does not have to have the 'topaz 8' font in ROM make sure that there is one in your 'fonts:' drawer. 2.2 A FEW CONVENTIONS FOR THE FURTHER TEXT I think this is the place to introduce a few conventions which will be used in the later text to avoid confusion. ------------------------------------------------ After starting Free | THE MENUBAR | THE | Paint the screen -----------------------------------------| | will look like this. | |FAST-| | | | | <---+ | THE DRAWING AREA | MENU| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------ When you start Free Paint (or FPaint as I will call it from now on) a new screen will be opened, and this screen is divided into three portions. First there is the MENUBAR, just like any normal Amiga screen on top of the screen, only a little bit larger. Then on the right hand side appears an area with a couple of symbols on the top and a color palette on the bottom, this area will be called FASTMENU. What remains of the screen is the DRAWING AREA. Only on this part of the screen the painting is done. Since the MENUBAR and the FASTMENU cover parts of the screen, the whole portion of your picture may not be in the DRAWING AREA, but still it is stored in the memory. To access the whole picture you can either move the DRAWING AREA or hide both MENUBAR and FASTMENU. The place, your whole picture is stored is called the PAGE. A PAGE may even be larger than any Amiga-DOS Screen (actually up to 1008 Pixels wide and 1024 Pixels high). You are able to copy portions of the screen into a separate hold, that I call BRUSH, because it can be used like a brush to draw on the DRAWING AREA with some restrictions. This BRUSH hold can be modified in many ways and even saved or loaded from disk. Usually, when using Workbench or programs that run on it, you are allowed to use the left mouse button to activate switches ( they are called 'gadgets' and in Free Paint the symbols in the FASTMENU are switches) and handle objects, while the right mouse button can only select items from the menu. Well, in Free Paint the user can paint and select with BOTH mouse buttons. You can associate each button with one pen, the current color of each pen is shown in the FASTMENU and the MENUBAR (see below). 2.3 THE MENUBAR Located on top of your screen is the MENUBAR. It should look like that: ___________________________________________ |FreePaint [][] Matte Free x4 320 200 | ¯¯¯¯¯^¯¯¯¯^¯¯^¯¯^¯¯¯¯^¯¯¯¯^¯¯¯¯¯¯¯^¯¯¯¯¯^¯¯ | | | | | | | | The Name | | Brush | Zoom | Pointer | | State | Factor | Y-Position Left Mouse | | | Button Color | Grid Pointer | State X-Position Right Mouse Button Color Starting from the left you see the program name, which is 'Free Paint'. Then the color display informs the user which color is associated with the mouse buttons (you draw with the color of the left box if you use the left mouse button, and with the color of the right rectangle it if you decide to use the right button). The next word, the brush state show you how a BRUSH will appear on the DRAWING AREA. For a description of the states see 3.12 below. On the right of this the grid state is displayed. The grid makes your pointer move in intervals you can specify in 4.3.4, see this section for more information on the grid feature too. Then there is the zoom factor, showing you how many times the zoom function (see 3.11) will magnify. Last, but not least, the coordinates of the pointer relative to the PAGE are provided. Pressing and holding down the right mouse button while pointing on the MENUBAR will show you some pulldown menus, just like on Workbench. These are discussed below, after some more important information. The MENUBAR can be hidden by striking the F9 key, another typing of F9 causes the MENUBAR to reappear. 2.4 THE FASTMENU On the right of your screen,the FASTMENU should look like this: FPant <---- The program name (actually FPaint). |/|/| |/|/| |/|/| <---- The symbol (or gadget) field area (actually 8 lines). |/|/| [¯I¯] <---- The mouse button color display (two 'round' boxes). OOOOO OOHOO <---- The color palette. A display of all colors available. OOOOO The currently selected color is boxed. (here it is 'H') When you look right, you see the FASTMENU. On top of it there is the inevitable 'Free Paint' title, under that are eight pairs of symbols, which are used to activate the different drawing tools. Most of this symbols are divided by a diagonal line. Usually you click these symbols using the left mouse button, doing this on the left top area normally activates a simple, non filled function, while the bottom right place does it on a more complex or filled on, e.g. the first symbol in the third line activates the rectangle function, if clicked on the left top corner, and the filled box if clicked on the right bottom. A few symbols may even clicked using the right mouse button, (the place where the click is made on is not important) which activates a requestor that allowes you to do even more complex functions. Some symbols even activate a function immediately, for example, the garbage can cleans the DRAWING AREA the time it is hit! Below the symbol area are shown two boxes. The left hand box is the same color as the pen you use, when painting with the right mouse button, the other one displays the color the left button uses. On the bottom of the FASTMENU a palette of all usable colors is available. The color used by the left mouse button is marked by a rectangle. You can select the color for either button by moving the pointer into this area and pressing the button on the color you want to set the pen to. The FASTMENU can be hidden by pressing the F10 key, striking F10 again makes it appear. 2.5 THE DRAWING AREA What is left of the screen if called the DRAWING AREA. On this you can use the graphic functions selected in the FASTMENU. The DRAWING AREA is only a part of the full PAGE you can draw on. When the MENUBAR and the FASTMENU are hidden the DRAWING AREA may be as large as the PAGE, if you did not change the PAGE width and height in the Page Format Requestor. If the PAGE is larger than the DRAWING AREA it can be moved by pressing the arrow keys. 2.6 FIRST STEPS 2.6.1 LOADING A PREVIOUSLY DRAWN PICTURE To load a picture that has been drawn before move your pointer over the MENUBAR, press and hold the right mouse button and move the pointer on the first item of the first menu that should read 'Load Picture'. Release the button and a window will appear on the screen (for a de- scription of this window see section 5.1). There should be a list of files in this window. Try to find the text 'PICTURE (dir)' or the text 'FreePaint (dir)'. You can move the list with the arrow gadgets and the slider on the right. If you have found the second text click on it and you will find the first one!. Either way click on the PICTURE (dir) text and you will see a list of files succeeded by '.pic'. Now click on one of those and click the field where the 'OK is shown. The corresponding picture will be loaded and shown on the screen. You can draw as soon as the pointer changes from the 'forbidden sign' into your normal pointer. 2.6.2 DRAWING A SMILIE To draw a SMILIE click on the yellow rectangle on the bottom of the FASTMENU using the left mouse button. This sets the color used with this button to yellow and the circle between the color palette and the symbols and the one in the MENUBAR should turn to yellow, too. Now move the pointer higher to the circle symbol and click it on the right bottom corner, a filled disk should be drawn there instantly. Move your pointer left into the DRAWING AREA and you will observe that two lines go through your pointer (this figure is called crosshair). Place the pointer in the middle of the screen, press and hold the left mouse button and the move the mouse. You should see how a disk is drawn in yellow. When the disk has a size you like release the button and the disk stays that size. We will now draw the eyes for our smilie. To do so click on the black rectangle in the area you have clicked the yellow one before, move back into the DRAWING AREA and on the head of the smilie. There draw disks that make the eyes just like you did with the yellow head disk. After that the poor thing still needs a mouth. To do that click on the bottom right corner of the upmost left symbol and draw the mouth with your pointer, just as you would if your pointer was a pencil. Tata! 2.6.3 SAVING YOUR MASTERPIECE TO DISK Again, move the pointer on the MENUBAR, press and hold the right mouse button and place the pointer over the 'Save Picture' item in the first menu, the release it. A window will open ( see section 5.1 Disk Req.) like described above. There is a field above the 'DF0' gadget, where you can type in the name your picture shall have. After you have enter- ed a name click 'OK' and it will be saved. You can continue painting after the pointer gets 'normal' again. *************************************************************************** 3. PAINTING WITH FREE PAINT Here the simple painting functions are discussed. Each one of these functions has a symbol of its own in the FASTMENU. Not all of the many funtions Free Paint has are listed here, some are accessable from keyboard, only. See section 8. for a complete list of the keyboard settings. 3.1 THE SKETCH MODE This mode or function draws a pointed or filled freehand line when used. To activate the pointed mode strike the '.' key or click the top left corner of the top left symbol on the FASTMENU ( I call this symbol the first symbol, the one on the left the second and that below the third symbol and so on). The filled freehand line is invoced by pressing ':' or clicking the bottom right corner of the same symbol. Painting is done by moving the pointer on the DRAWING AREA and pressing ( or holding down) a mouse button (and moving around). 3.2 THE SPRAY MODE This one is selected by clicking the second symbol( a spray can) with the left mouse button or typing 'a' (for airbrush). Clicking it with the right one or striking 'A' causes a requester to appear in wich the shape of the spray stain can be changed according to personal taste ( see 5.10. for more information about this requestor). Painting works just like in sketch mode. 3.3 THE LINE MODE The symbol for this function is a straight diagonal line (it is the third one). Clicking on this or typing 'v' (for variable line) acti- vates it. To draw a line you move your pointer on the DRAWING AREA and the point your line shall start on, press a mouse button, hold it down, and move to the place the line has to reach. While doing so the line is stretched like a rubber band and drawn in its own color. Releasing the button finally draws the line on the DRAWING AREA. 3.4 THE SPLINE MODE A curve is used to symbolise this function. Pressing the 's' key or clicking this symbol selects it. This one works similiar to the line function. You move on the DRAWING AREA, place a line like in 3.3 and after realeasing the button you can form the curve by moving the pointer around. Pressing a button again draws the line in its color. 3.5 THE RECTANGULAR MODE The symbol for this is a ... guess ... RECTANGLE!. Clicking the left top corner or the 'r' key selects the hollow rectangle, the other corner or the 'R' key the filled box mode. You draw by once again going into the DRAWING AREA and pressing a mouse button. Moving the pointer while holding the button down enlarges or shortens the rectangle or box, releasing it finally places the figure. The place where you first pressed the button marks the first edge of the rectangle/box, where you released it marks the edge on the other side of a diagonal line. 3.6 THE POLYGON MODE On the right side of the rectangular symbol is the polygon symbol. The polygon line mode is invoced by clicking the top left area or the 'g' key, the filled polygon by the other area or the 'G' key. Unlike the other modes you move into the DRAWING AREA, press a mouse button and release it. Memorize the button you pressed. Now move the pointer around and press the SAME button as before to add an edge to the polygon and the OTHER button to place the final edge. You are allowed to draw a polygon with up to 50 edges, if you try to add a 51st one the function aborts as if you had pressed the OTHER button. 3.7 THE CIRCLE MODE Guess what symbold this one has! Right, a circle. A empty circle is selected by the top left corner or striking 'c', a filled disk by the other corner or the 'C' key. Pressing a mouse button inside the DRAWING AREA sets the center of the circle and moving the pointer while holding the button down selects the radius. Realeasing the button finally draws a circle or disk. 3.8 THE ELLIPSE MODE This one works exactly like the above, only here you can select the vertical and horizontal radius at the same time. 3.9 THE FILL MODE The tilted can with water flowing out is the symbol for the fill function. Clicking it with the left mouse button or typing 'f' activates it, while clicking the right button or pressing 'F' opens a requester to set one of the fill styles (see section 5.7. below). Clicking into the DRAWING AREA starts the fill, striking 'ESC' aborts the fill in process. 3.10 THE TEXT MODE The capital letter is the sign for the text funtion. The left mouse button or 't' selects it, 'T' or the right button openes a requestor which lets you select the current font and text style (see sect. 5.8.) After selecting the mode you have to place the cursor inside where ? The DRAWING AREA, you're right! After that you are able to use the keyboard like in any text editor. The arrow keys move the cursor around, DEL deletes one column and backspace ('<-') the last character. ESC or selecting another function with the mouse buttons ends the text mode. 3.11 THE ZOOM MODE The magnifying glass or the 'm' key activates it. You have to place the rectangle that appears now over the area you want to magnify. The magnification factor can be adjusted by the '+' an '-' keys and the current factor is shown on the MENUBAR with a preceeding 'x' like x5 for factor 5. After you have moved the rectangle over the area to zoom click a mouse button and watch!. The DRAWING AREA will be split into two sections, the left one displays the working area in normal size, the right one magnified. You are able to use all the funtions in the FASTMENU on the right area just like in normal mode on the DRAWING AREA, with the exception, that while placing a line, rectangle or circle the effects will not be shown in their true color, but inverse. Note that neither menus nor toggling of MENUBAR and FASTMENU are possible in this mode. Clicking the zoom symbol again, pressing 'm' or using the EXIT function exits the zoom mode. 3.12 THE BRUSH MODE The symbol on the right of the zoom symbol activates the brush mode. To use a brush, you have to cut or load one first. The loading part is discussed below in the requestor section, but the cutting out is explained here. When I speak of 'cutting' out an area I actually mean copying it to the BRUSH holding space. There are two cut modes, first the rectangular cut, which is selected by the 'b' key or the top left corner, that lets you place a rectangle around the area you want to cut out. This rectangle is placed like in 3.5, note that the area covered by the rectangle itself will also be a part of the brush. The second one is a polygonial cut, in which you place a polygon around the area to cut like in 3.6, note that here the area covered by the polygon is also a part of the BRUSH. After you have cut out a BRUSH it will be shown under the pointer and can be placed on the DRAWING AREA like sketch mode ( see 3.1.) Pressing the left mouse button places the BRUSH on the DRAWING AREA. There are two modes in which this can be done. The 'Matte' mode, where the background of the BRUSH is transparent, like a matte painting for movies, and the 'Replication' mode, where it is not. 'Matte' mode is selected by F1, 'Replic.' by F2. Pressing the right mouse button puts the shape of the BRUSH in the color of the right mouse button down. Note that you can only have one BRUSH at a time. If you already have cut out a BRUSH and cut out or load another the first one will be lost! 3.13 THE COLOR MODE The three letters 'Col' symbolise this mode. When selected by ',' or the left mouse button, your pointer changes into a hollow star and the word 'USE' below it you can select a color inside the DRAWING AREA by moving the center of the star over it and clicking the corresponding mouse button. After you have released the button, the pointer will regain its original shape and the mode selected before will be acti- vated. Pressing 'p' or the right mouse button opens the palette requestor, that is explained below in the requestors section 5.3.. 3.14 THE DUMP MODE The dustbin is the symbol used for this. Clicking on it or pressing '*' clears the DRAWING AREA or the working area in zoom mode. Note that this function works immediately! 3.15 THE UNDO MODE This one makes the last operation undone, if possible. 3.16 THE EXIT MODE After pressing this or striking 'q' you will be asked if you are sure to leave. Note that all that has not been stored on disk is lost. Make sure that all of your brushes and Pages have been saved! 3.17 THE ICONIFY MODE Well, this mode (or function) is not really a drawing function. It can only be accessed via keyboard by the F5 key. Striking this key causes the screen Free Paint uses to close. A small window will be opened on Workbench that has the headline 'Resume Free Paint' and looks like a normal message requestor. Clicking 'CONTINUE' in this requestor reopens the Free Paint Screen. Why all of this you ask! Sometimes one wants to interrupt drawing and do something else, but resume drawing later. In that instance he or she hits the F5 key, Free Paint closes its display, but the actual PAGE is kept intact in memory. Then the person will work on something else. After finishing that, he or she clicks the 'CONTINUE' gadget and Free Paint tries to reopen a display. But if there is not enought memory Free Paint may not be able to do it, and some Disk Requestors ( see section 5.1 for mor info about this) appear which allow you to save the PAGE, BRUSH and SPARE PAGE to Disk. After the saving routine Free Paint closes down all its activities and quits. To avoid this messy situation, make sure that the amount of free memory when clicking 'CONTINUE' is not smaller than the time Free Paint went into ICONIFY MODE. Use this function with caution as it can mess up your machine big time!!! *************************************************************************** 4. THE MENUS OF FREE PAINT These menus work just like normal Workbech menus, with the exception, that the Amiga-keys are not neccessary for short cuts. On the right side of each item the key you can activate it by is displayed. Note that these menus are not available if in zoom mode! 4.1 THE PICTURE MENU 4.1.1 LOAD A PICTURE This item allows you to load a picture on your current page. It cannot be made undone! If the picture is larger than your PAGE the overhang will be cut away, if it is smaller, it will leave the rest of the PAGE intact. Free Paint loads IFF-ILBM pictures, up to 64 colors, which means most of the pictures (except H.A.M.) made on and for the Amiga. It will not load IFF-ACBM pictures (the BASIC pictures on the Extras disk). See section 5.1. for more information. 4.1.2 SAVE A PICTURE Here you can save the entire PAGE to disk. The options (see Options) will be used. If any problem arises you will be informed. Free Paint saves IFF-ILBM compacted pictures, which can be loaded by allmost any Amiga painting or other art program. If a file exists that has the same name as the one you have entered into the disk requestor, you will be informed about it and asked if you want to back the elder file up. If you select 'YES' the elder file will be renamed and get the suffix '.bak', your present file will be saved using your name only. If selected 'NO' the elder file will be deleted. See section 5.1 for more information about the 'Disk Requestor'. 4.1.3 PRINT A PICTURE This item enables you to print out your page on any printer that can be used via preferences. See section 5.4. for more information. 4.1.4 DELETE A FILE This item allows you to delete any Amiga-DOS file. Note that a deleted file is lost forever. You are not restricted to picture or brush files, any file can be deleted, except directories and icon files. See section 5.1. for more info. 4.1.5 CREATE A SPARE PAGE Here you can create an additional PAGE, having the same dimensions as the original. You can only create one spare PAGE!. 4.1.6 SWAP PAGE This one exchanges the spare PAGE and the one currently drawn on. You have to open a spare PAGE before doing this. 4.1.7 WRITE SPARE Selecting this item writes the PAGE currently used to the spare PAGE. There has to be a spare PAGE open. 4.1.8 DELETE SPARE This item removes a spare PAGE from memory. The picture in the spare PAGE is lost forever. There has to be a spare PAGE open before doing this, of course. 4.1.9 PAGE FORMAT As you know, the Amiga has lots of different resolutions and colors available. This item lets you select one of them. The old PAGE, an existing SPARE PAGE and an existing BRUSH will be closed ( make sure your picture has been saved) and a new one with the desired attributes will be opened. If there is not enought memory to open a display with the selected attributes, the number of colors will be decreased and Free Paint tries again, until either a display is opened, or it re- signes and quits. 4.1.10 MEMORY After having selected this, you will be shown the current memory stat- istics, divided into CHIP and FAST memory. Note that only CHIP memory can be used for picture data. The largest continuous hunk of memory is also shown, because memory fragmentation may keep Free Paint to open an screen even if the total summ of memory is large enough. To see if you have enough CHIP-RAM look at the LARGEST line first! 4.1.11 INFORMATION Almost every software producer is vain, so am I. But I have to pro- tect my rights on this program and package, wich makes it necessary! Copying only the program without this document is illegal, also is changing any part of it, so be nice and do not violate my rules! 4.1.12 QUIT FREE PAINT Heres the way out of this program. Make sure that your pictures have been saved on disk before you do this, because after this they are lost! 4.2 THE BRUSH MENU 4.2.1. LOAD A BRUSH Loading a brush is similiar to loading a picture. But there are differ- ences. When a brush is loaded, all of it is loaded into memory, but the colors are stored in a special place (see 5.3.'Palette Requestor') and if the brush colors differ from the PAGE colors you are in for a surprise! If you already had a brush cut out it will be lost. See section 5.1. for more info. 4.2.2 SAVE A BRUSH To save a brush to disk use this item. It works similiar as 4.1.2 SAVE A PICTURE. 4.2.3 PRINT BRUSH Like 4.1.3, only for the brush. 4.2.4 RENEW BRUSH If had cut out a brush before and used another function later, this gets back the last brush you had cut out or loaded. 4.2.5 CHANGE BRUSH After selecting this item a requestor will open, asking you to specify the way you want your brush changed. Note that you cannot undo this! See section 5.5. 'Brush Change Requestor' for more information. 4.2.6 DISCARD BRUSH The brush version of DELETE SPARE. 4.2.7 BRUSH HANDLE This is used to specify the place, where the pointer holds the brush. See setcion 5.6.'Brush Handle Requestor' for more information. 4.2.8 BRUSH OFFSET When a brush is loaded or cut out Free Paint stores the coordinates of the place it was cut out from. You can modify these values here. 4.3 MIXED MENUS 4.3.1 COLOR PALETTE After having activated this the palette requestor opens. You can edit both color and color rotation parameters here. See section 5.3. for more info. 4.3.2 REMAP COLORS This items calls a requestor in which colors can be moved without changing the palette. See section 5.9. 'Remap Requestor' for more info. 4.3.3 MOVE SPACING When you move the DRAWING AREA you use the arrow key. This requestor allows you to specify how much pixels one stroke will move the DRAWING AREA. 4.3.4 GRID SPACING Free Paint can be told to use a grid for pointer adjustment by pressing the F8 key. The position, on which the pointer appears are adjusted, according to the values specified here. If you enter 10 and 20 for X and Y spacing, your pointer will move to positions like 0,40 10,20 110,280 etc. Note that your real Amiga pointer still moves to any position, but the drawing will be done according to the adjusted positions only. 4.3.5 OPTIONS All other items in this menu are options. See OPTIONS below for more information. *************************************************************************** 5. THE REQUESTORS OF FREE PAINT In this section of the manual, a special window type is discussed, the requestors. Requestors will appear when a decision has to be made or more complex settings have to be modified. All of the requestors have a headline, and at least one gadget to close them. A simple requestor is the one opened when you want to exit Free Paint. There is a headline which reads 'Free Paint Request:', the text 'Really exit FPaint?' and two gadgets saying 'YES' and 'NO'. Note that you can also select gadgets by the 'Y' and 'N' keys here! 5.1 DISK REQUESTOR When this requestor is opened the headline tells you what to do, e.g. 'Load A Picture', or 'Delete a File'. Below the headline is an area, where the current path (see your Amiga-DOS Manual) is displayed. You can edit this path by clicking on it, typing a new path and striking the return key. Below the path is a list of the files in the current directory. This list consists of the names of all directories and other files in the current directory. Directory names are succeeded by a '(dir)' suffix and will always appear before the other files. Icon files (the '.info' files) are not displayed. The list is sorted alpha- betically while the names are read in, so only during the loading process their position may change. The names in the list can be click- ed on like normal gadgets. Clicking on a 'normal' name causes it to be highlighted and the name be copied in the field below, clicking on a directory makes the requestor read that directory and display it. Under the list is the place for the name of the file to perform an operation on. You can edit this file like the path area, or click on a file from the above file list. Further down a list of Amiga-DOS devices can be found ( DF0:, DF1: or RAM:). Clicking on these has the same effect as typing in their names in the path area. On the right of these the 'PARENT' gadget moves you to the parent directory if it is possible. On the right hand side of the requestor a slider can be found to move the file list up and down, and above or below it are arrow gadgets, that, when selected move the list one item up or down. Finally clicking on the OK gadget tells Free Paint to perfom the oper- ation,while EXIT makes it forget it. Double-clicking on a filename has the same effect as selecting 'OK'. 5.2 PAGE FORMAT REQUESTOR This is the req. to specify the mode of the PAGE. The High Resolution gadget switches to the mode a normal Workbench screen has, (640 pixel wide), Low Resolution to the mode most games run in (320 pixel wide). The PAL gadget turns PAL mode one ( 256 Pixel high, for European Amigas only) while the NTSC gadget turns to the American TV norm ( 200 pixel high). The Interlace gadget turn the interlace mode on and doubles the vertikal pixel count. Below you can specify the number of colors you want to use. Note that only legal Amiga modes are possible! As you have read before, a Free Paint Page can be larger than a screen, the Width and Height gadgets allow you to specify the width and heigt of your page. Note that widths have to be multiples of 16, other widths will be adjusted to the next greater legal value. This is done because the Amiga system opens screens only with widths of multiples of 16, even if you specify others, so all of the memory allocated is available to you! Note also that the maximal dimensions of a PAGE is 1008 * 1024 Pixels. If your machine has not enough emory for this mode Free Paint will attempt to open a Page with the same dimensions, but less colors, until it succeeds or admits, that it cannot open a PAGE at all and exits. This requestor can be closed by the OK gadget, which invoces the changing process, or EXIT, which cancels the action. 5.3 COLOR PALETTE REQUESTOR This req. is the easy but powerful tool to adjust your palette and color cycling facilities. On the top left corner three sliders named R, G and B can be used to set the red, green and blue parts of the currently selected color (this color is marked by a rectangle in the palette in the middle and shown in a box at the right top corner). If you do not like the RGB color mode, next to those sliders are three more, named H, S and V. The H slider selects a colour out of a color list of 'pure' colors, the S and V sliders add white to it or reduce its value. To the right, a list (or palette) of colors is displayed. You can activate a color by clicking it in there or in the DRAWING AREA! On the far right three small gadgets perform actions on the whole palette: BRU copies the brush palette, DEF the dafault and REC the last time used palette onto the current one. Below the sliders are the 'action' gadgets. After clicking on COPY the pointer will change to a arrow with 'TO' below it and the next selected color will have the currently selected color be copied on it. SWAP work accordingly, with the only difference that it swaps the two colors. FLOW computes a soft flow between those colors. MARK marks a color cycling range between the two and stores the direction they were selected. MARK works only if one of the cycling ranges has been selected (see below). A marked cycling range is displayed in the palette by a continuous line in the used colors and a horizontal one in the start and end colors.UNDO takes back the last action. CYCLE cycles the currently selected cycling range for six times,which will take some time, if it rotates slow! There are four numbers right of this one, these mark the four cycling ranges Free Paint uses. Clicking them activates the corresponding range. Below these a slider can be used to set the cycling speed. OK activates the current settings while EXIT cancels them. Note that when using 64 colors, only 32 will be displayed. That is due to the fact that the Amiga does not use 64 different colors in this mode, but copies the first 32 to the second and makes them half the brightness of the first (it is called HALFBRIGHT MODE). 5.4 PRINT REQUESTOR This req. appears when you want to print out a brush or PAGE. There are three print modes, 1/1000 INCH, FULL PAPER and Prt.Pixels. The first reads the values in the 'Horiz.' and 'Vert.' fields and inter- prets them as 1/1000 Inch values for printing dimensions. The second prints on the full paper width and height available. The last one uses the 'Horiz.' and 'Vert.' fields to specify the print width in printer pixels, i.e. dots. The Center gadget centeres the printout on the paper and the Aspect gadget tells the printer to ignore one of the dimension values and compute them so that the proportions of the hardcopy look like the ones on the screen. PRINT causes the printer to work, EXIT cancels the action. When printing a window will appear. Clicking the 'CONTINUE' gadget aborts the printing process. The function this requester represents is rather crude. I suggest you use a printing program if you want to get a really good hardcopy of your image. 5.5 CHANGE BRUSH REQUESTOR When this req. is opened, you will see a field of 12 gadgets. Each line has three gadgets, and so there are 4 lines of them. The first two gadgets are named MIRX and MIRY, the will mirror the current brush on the X or the Y axis. The 90° gadgets performs an 90 degrees rotation. HLFX, HLFY shrink the brush to half its former size while DBLX, DBLY double it horizontally (X) or vertically (Y). SIZE lets you select the new size of the brush by moving a rectangle of the current brush size around, pressing a mouse button, holding it down and moving the pointer makes you size it. After the button has been released, the new brush will be computed. ROT is used to rotate a brush any degree you want. Similiar to SIZE, the angle is given by moving the pointer. SHRX, SHRY are the functions to sheer a brush horizontally or vertically. Finally, the EXIT function closes the req. without any brush change. 5.6 BRUSH HANDLE REQUESTOR This requestor contains a square of 9 black boxes, actually only 8 black and one white box. The white box marks the place, where the pointer holds your brush. Clicking on a black box causes the white box to move to there. If you click OK, the requester is closed and the brush handle set to ther area, the white box was at, EXIT aborts the action, leaving the old handle intact. 5.7 FILL MODE REQUESTOR To set the style of the fill function, this requestor was made for. There are seven different styles to select from, but some of them are not available all the time. On the right top corner of the req. a box showns you how the filled area might look (the colors may not be true only the pattern is). If this area is crossed out, that means this style is not available. The styles are as follows. The 'Solid' style fills with the currently selected pen, the 'Brush' style uses the brush, if there is one, for a pattern, 'Check' checkers the fill, 'HLine' draws horizontal lines, 'VLine' vertical ones, 'Rand.' creates a random pattern of the two mouse pens and 'Spare' fills with the pattern of the spare page, if there is one. Selecting OK sets the style, EXIT remains with the old style. 5.8 FONT REQUESTOR This req. enables you to use any Amiga-DOS fonts inside Free Paint. There is a list of all available fonts, which can be moved by a slider on the right or two arrows below. Clicking inside the list marks one font. These fonts are shown by name and then the size follows. Below the list, the styles can be found and selected, too! Below them the LOAD gadget loads the specified font and sets the style, while SET only sets the current font to the marked style. EXIT aborts as usual. 5.9 COLOR REMAP REQUESTOR Like in the color palette req. you are shown a palettes of colors, but here there are two of them, one called OLD, the other NEW. The meaning of this is, that the OLD palette marks the color configuration before the req. was opened, and the NEW part the configuration you will set, when selecting the OK gadget. The OLD part cannot be changed, the NEW one should be or no change will take place. You use this req. to change the colors in parts of your picture only, without changing the colors in your palette. You can COPY, SWAP and UNDO like in the pallete req. additionally it is possible to select colors inside the DRAWING AREA. The NORM gadget copies the OLD part to the NEW one. Below all those gadgets are four ones, that stand for the areas you want to remap. First there is SCREEN which stands for the DRAWING AREA, BRUSH for the brush, REGION for a part of the DRAWING AREA you are asked to mark (it works like cutting out a brush in rectangular mode) and PAGE for the whole PAGE. Note that remapping a page cannot be made undone! The OK gadget start the remapping or area selecting process. The remapping can be stopped by pressing 'ESC'. 5.10 SPRAY REQUESTOR There are only two sliders in this req. The RANGE slider adjusts the area, that is sprayed, DEPTH the number of points set with one spray. OK and EXIT work like always. 5.11 ICONIFY REQUESTOR By pressing the F3 key, Free Paint changes into 'iconify mode', which means that it stops working, opens a requester on the Workbench and waits until you click 'CONTINUE' inside it. After you have clicked 'CONTINUE' the Free Paint screen reappears and you can go on painting. If you have closed the Workbench by using the F4 key, it will be reopened and not closed when Free Paint resumes. *************************************************************************** 6. MESSAGES AND REQUESTS 6.1 THE FREE PAINT MESSAGE SYSTEM If Free Paint finds one of your commands difficult to execute, or if you have made a mistake, the program will tell you what went wrong or how to fix it. A window will appear that has a headline reading 'Free Paint Message'. A text below is the message to the user. When you have read this text, notify Free Paint by either clicking the 'CONTINUE' gadget in the right bottom corner, or striking the 'C' key or the spacebar. For more important messages Free Paint opens a display that looks like a Guru Meditation, but in most cases it will not go into reset! 6.2 THE FREE PAINT REQUEST SYSTEM When simple YES/NO decisions have to be made Free Paint opens a window, that looks like a message window in 6.1. and has the headline 'Free Paint Request'. A text asks you to make a decision. Click either the 'YES' or 'NO' gadget, or type 'Y' or 'N' to tell Free Paint what to to. 6.3 THE WORKBENCH REQUESTORS In error situations, that are handled by the Amiga software and cause the dreaded 'System Request' requestor to appear on the Free Paint screen, make sure, that you respond to them. As long as this requestor is on your screen the actual Free Paint is halted and none of its functions will work. This is due to the way the Amiga is built and cannot be changed easyly. *************************************************************************** 7. THE OPTIONS OF FREE PAINT Options are those items in the MIXED menu, that are not alligned with the first four. This was done to allow for some space for the asteriks '*'. An asteriks '*' appearing before an option means, that it is used. If the '*' is missing, the option is ignored. Options can be specified three ways, first by selecting them in Free Paint itself, the by using the key word in the command line in CLI or as 'Tool Types' in the Free Paint Icon. Using the last two ways has the advantage, that all key words are accessable. It is also possible to specify an startup picture file, but if you do so on Workbench, all options are ignored. In CLI a startup file has to be the only parameter in the command line and be preceeded by a '-' character (e.g. FPaint -MyDrawing.pic) or it will be ignored! 7.1 SYNTAX If you specify options in CLI or as 'Tool Types', a special simple syntax has to be used. It looks this way: first the keyword, followed by an underscore ('_') and a switch ('ON' or 'OFF') or a numerical value. Calling Free Paint from CLI to open a Workbench'like screen is done this way "FPaint HIRES_ON COLORS_4". Multiple options can be written into one line with at least one space in between. When using 'Tool Types' multiple options in one 'Type' and multiple 'Tool Types' are possible. If one keyword appears more than once, only the first one is used! 7.2 KEYWORDS 7.2.1 ICON This keyword switchs the use of icons for Workbench. If it is "ON" icons wil be saved for each brush and picture saved by Free Paint, but when using the 'DELETE FILE' item, the corresponding icon will be deleted! It uses the switchs "ON" and "OFF", default value is "ON". 7.2.2 HANDLE HANDLE switches the saving of the brush handle position of a cut out brush. It uses "ON" and "OFF", default value is "ON". 7.2.3 OFFSET Free Paint stores the coordinates, where a brush was cut out. This switch tells Free Paint,if it should save these too. It uses "ON" and "OFF", default is "ON". 7.2.4 CYCLES This option controls the saving of color cycling ranges.It uses "ON" and "OFF", default value is "ON". 7.2.5 SCREEN If a PAGE is larger than a normal Amiga-DOS screen Free Paint allows the user to move the DRAWING AREA around. So information about the DRAWING AREA and the PAGE are stored when saving. But some display- ing and painting programms do not accept the fact, that a PAGE can be larger than a DRAWING AREA. To create picture files, that run on these programs turn this option "OFF". Of course, it uses the "ON" and "OFF", default value is "ON". 7.2.6 LORES (CLI + 'Tool Types' only) This option cause Free paint to open an low resolution (320 pixel wide) screen. It uses the "ON" and "OFF", default value is "ON". If you specify LORES_OFF the current revision will try to open a high res. screen. 7.2.7 HIRES (CLI + 'Tool Types' only) This option cause Free paint to open an High resolution (640 pixel wide) screen. It uses the "ON" and "OFF", default value is "ON". If you specify HIRES_OFF the current revision will try to open a low resolution screen. 7.2.8 LACE (CLI + 'Tool Types' only) LACE switches the dreaded interlace mode on or off. Use like the above! (Oh my god, it rhymes) Default is "LACE_OFF" 7.2.9 COLORS (CLI + 'Tool Types' only) You can specify the number of colors you want here. Use it like this "COLORS_16" or "COLORS_8". The numbers have to be powers of two, or you will get less colors than you want. Make sure that you select a valid Amiga-DOS number of colors for the selected mode. Default is "COLORS_32". 7.2.10 WIDTH (CLI + 'Tool Types' only) This numerical keyword lets you enter the width of your page (for restrictions see PAGE FORMAT Req.) Example: "WIDTH_640". Default is "WIDTH_320". 7.2.11 HEIGHT (CLI + 'Tool Types' only) This numerical keyword lets you enter the Height of your page (for restrictions see PAGE FORMAT Req.) Example: "HEIGHT_256"(it is default, too!) 7.2.12 PAL (CLI + 'Tool Types' only) A switch for the TV mode. In European Amigas 256 lines are accessable, in American only 200, due to the difference in power supply frequency. This switch uses "ON" and "OFF", default is "ON", meaning 256 lines. 7.2.13 NTSC (CLI + 'Tool Types' only) Like the above, but turns on the NTSC mode. *************************************************************************** 8. KEYBOARD SETTINGS Here the functions that can be called by striking a key are listed, those that are not accessable in zoom are marked by (nz). In text mode all of those functions are inactive, see the 'Text Keys' part for the settings there. 8.1. FAST MENU KEY SETTINGS These keys act like the symbols in the FASTMENU. They have been described in section 3. Key | Action --------+--------------------------------------------------- '.' ':' | Draw pointed or straight sketch 'a' 'A' | Use spray function or set spray parameters 'v' 'V' | Draw normal line 's' 'S' | Draw spline line 'r' 'R' | Draw rectangle or box 'g' 'G' | Draw polygon or filled polygon 'c' 'C' | Draw circle or disk 'e' 'E' | Draw ellipse or filled ellipse 'f' 'F' | Fill area or select fill mode 'm' 'M' | Activate zoom mode 'b' 'B' | Select brush cutout mode ',' 'p' | Get color under pointer or activate color palette '*' | Clear screen 'u' 'U' | Undo 'q' 'Q' | Quit 8.2. MENU SHORT-CUT KEY SETTINGS These keys are short-cuts for menu selections. They have been listed in section 4. Key | Action --------+--------------------------------------------------- 'l' 'L' | Load picture or brush (nz) 'z' 'Z' | Save picture or brush (nz) 'd' 'D' | Print picture or brush (nz) 'x' 'X' | Delete file (nz) 'o' | Create a spare page (nz) 'j' | Exchange normal and spare page (nz) 'w' | Write normal page to spare page (nz) 'k' | Close the spare page (nz) 'n' | Change page format (nz) '?' | Show memory info 'I' 'i'| Show program info 'q' | Quit 'h' | Renew brush 'N' | Change brush '&' | Select brush handle '%' | Select brush offset 'P' | Remap area (nz) 'p' | Activate color palette '$' | Select move spacing '!' | Select grid spacing '6' | Toggle icon usage '7' | Toggle brush handle usage '8' | Toggle brush offset usage '9' | Toggle color cycle usage '0' | Toggle page dimensions usage 8.3. FUNCTION KEY SETTINGS Listed here are the actions, that are invoced by pressing a function key. Key | Action --------+--------------------------------------------------- F1 | Select brush mode 'Matte' F2 | Select brush mode 'Replc' F3 | Open Workbench F4 | Close Workbench F5 | Iconify Free Paint (nz) F6 | Toggle pointer F7 | Toggle pointer marker mode F8 | Toggle grid F9 | Toggle MENUBAR (nz) F10 | Toggle FASTMENU (nz) 8.4. OTHER KEYS Key | Action --------+--------------------------------------------------- Arrows | Move screen on page '+' '-'| Increase or decrease magnification factor '[' '{' | Next left / rigth mouse pen ']' '}' | Previous left / right mouse pen '1'-'4'| Cycle corresponding color range '#' | Activate color panic mode (so that you can see the FASTMENU | and MENUBAR without having to change the colors!) *************************************************************************** 9. PROGRAMMERS INFORMATION Free Paint is a raster oriented painting program for the Amiga. It saves using the IFF-ILBM format, with a compacted body chunk. A normal saved file contains four CRNG chunks for color rotation and an CAMG chunk if in EXTRA_HALFBRITE. A saved brush contains a GRAB chunk to store the position of the brush handle. The Image width and height, both brush and picture are stored in the BMHD Width and Height fields, while the dimensions of the screen are written into the PageHeight and PageWidth fields (see SCREEN option). A brush offset is stored in the BMHD OffsetX, OffsetY fields, and can be switched to 0,0 by the OFFSET option. If the HANDLE option is off, no GRAB will be saved, if the CYCLES option is off no CRNG is saved. Free Paint loads almost anything, that starts with FORM....ILBM and has a BMHD, CMAP and correct BODY chunk. If the image is displayed correctly depends on the current screen mode. Free Paint uses the $bfe001 and $dff016 custom chip registers for mouse button handleing. Input devices or handlers that do not use these registers will not work. All other environmental interaction is done using Intuition functions and should work on any Amiga. *************************************************************************** 10. ABOUT THE PICTURES THAT CAME WITH THIS There should be a 'PICTURE' and 'BRUSH' drawer in the same directory that FPaint is in. In these subdrawers some pieces of art have been supplied by me. I have drawn all of them myself, so there is no need to blame anyone else for the mess. I AM NOT AN ARTIST, I use FPaint mainly to design graphics for games (like Mamba Move) or utilities (such as Label Maker). On the other hand, I am quite proud of some of the pictures I have drawn, so limit your criticism. *************************************************************************** 11. A WORD TO THE USER There are some words I would like to add about the way Free Paint was programmed and has to be spread. I started to write FPaint in the autumn of 1989, because I was broke and desperatly needed a painting program. I had written some drawing programs in Amiga-Basic, but they were slow and memory consuming, all Public Domain painting programs made me angry ( I speak of VDraw 1.16 and VDraw 1.19 as well as Klecks). So I began to write this one. There were some serious setbacks ( I backed up on one of my source disk, killing about 800k of source code, including 2 well running FPaint revisions). My revision system is somewhat strange, I have to admit. There are no revisions 1-9, the first one was called I , then II and ][ and after that 1.2 which is revision 12! From that on numbers are correct (this should not trouble you, since the older versions have been released to a number of my friends only, by the way the revisions 14 and 15 were the two that went overboard, I had to reconstruct the later revisions from an earlier 14, 13, and lots of new ideas, which made FPaint14-18 rarely working hacks.) This revision ( I do not want to call it version) was testet on Amiga 2000 A + B + C (I own an A) by myself and the people listet below. The greek letters after the re- vision number is the debugged version count, ZETA means sixth debugged version of that revision. After FPaint had grown I thought about sending it to a PD series to have other 'Amigaphile' creatures enjoy it, too! But there are some German 'PD-dealer' that sell single PD-programs or packages for three times or more the price of a normal PD-disk, some include strange expansions to rectify this, some even do not! To make sure that those 'black sheep' do not make profit out of my hard work I have included the rather elaborate legal header. There is a even stranger way of getting into the PD-market, it is called SHAREWARE. First, there are those, who send in a half-working copy of their oh-so wonderful hack and expect you to pay a fortune in shipping and program price to get a fully working one. This way, they make PD an advertising board free of charge, and I do not think that is the way it should be. Then there are those, who send in working programs and demand a share fee. Well, I think you should either put your software into to PD market ( they do not have to be FREEWARE), or make your programs commercial products, low budget perhaps. I myself am not a rich man ( a starving student rather) but in my opinion the share fees are paid by the wrong people, law abiding users, and not by the pirating masses, that hurt the Amiga scene. And when I look at the header of many SHAREWARE programs and see a disclaimer, that makes the user the victim if the programmer screwed up, I get angry. You usually do not pay to play Russian roulette! If the programmer does not want to bear the consequences, he should not demand payment! This package is partly dedicated to those, that cherish the idea of PD and just include their works in the PD as I do. This program is NOT SHAREWARE, I do not expect anyone to pay me any- thing as long as she/he abides by my demands in the legals section. Donations are accepted, of course, but I do not put moral pressure on anyone! Well, there is only 'one' thing to say now, HAVE FUN, ENJOY, CU! Thanx for many tips and a lot of testing go to: Thomas Geib, Björn-Eric Trost, Christian Motz and Dirk Remmelt. Mackenbach, 20th of August 1991 Stefan G. Boldorf Flürchenstraße 16 W-6751 Mackenbach GERMANY ***************************************************************************