First, let me say thank you for using DrawIt. It's been a great learning experience for me to write it, and I hope it gives you some pleasure, or at least is vaguely useful.
This software was written entirely on the palm, using OnBoard C and OnBoard RsrcEdit, both fine packages from www.individeo.net, mostly in parts while I was outside smoking, or while I was supposed to be doing something useful. I also received help from Steve Nerby from Vista-software with the save routines, and Aaron Ardiri, who gave me some help with a problem with the Visor-prism as this is my first attempt at not only Palm Programming, but C as well. I really wrote it to learn the language, and the platform, so I could start making games.
And thank you to Lothar, my first registered user!
If you are having any problems with this software, please download the manual from my website.
Anyway, here is how it works... You may think the word COLOR is mis-spelled in this document, but in New Zealand, it is spelled 'Colour', so that's how I'll do it here. Apologies for any confusion which may arise over this ;)
In this zip file are two PRC files. DrawIt.prc and CustIt.prc. Install both of these files onto your palm in the usual way.
CustIt is the customizer for DrawIt. You can run this application on your palm, and drag and drop tools to where you want them on the toolbar. I suggest you run DrawIt first, to get a feel for how it works, then use CustIt to tweak the settings so you can work the way you want to.
Once you have customized DrawIt, and are happy with it, you can safely delete CustIt off your Palm. Your customization will NOT be lost by doing this. You can re-install or delete CustIt at any time without effecting your previous customization.
When you run DrawIt for the first time, it will show a series of grey boxes, symbolising spaces in which to store your images. On the left hand side of the screen are 4 tools. From top to bottom they are: New, Open, Duplicate and Delete. To start off, tap the New icon, then tap the first square on the top-left to create a new image. These tools all work in this way. Tap the tool first, then the image you want to work on.
To add a new image, tap the New tool, then tap in the box you want to create the image in. If you tap on an existing image, all of the images in front of it will be pushed forward one square. You can not tap on a grey box that's more than one past the last image.
Once you have filled up the grey boxes you will see arrows at either the top or bottom of the screen (or both depending on how many images you have). These allow you to navigate between pages of images, one row at a time. You can also now use the hardware up and down keys for this.
Now if you tap the Open tool, then the first image, you will be presented with the main DrawIt screen. Along the top of the screen, you will see two tabs. These belong to the toolbar, containing all of the tools available to you. Tap the tabs to raise or lower the toolbar, or switch between them by tapping the tab which appears to be on the bottom. You may also use the hardware up and down keys to raise and lower it.
On the right hand side of both tabs, are two coloured boxes. These are your foreground and background colours. Tap either one to set the colour. Between the boxes is a button with a left-right arrow. Tap this to exchange the two colours.
When you tap on a tool in the tool bar, it will have a yellow glow behind it, telling you which tool is currently selected. If you see a small black triangle to the top-left of the yellow glow, it means there are extra tools under the current one. To get to these extra tools, tap again on the same tool, and once the end has been reached, the tool will change back to the first one.
Along the top of the toolbar, you may see a slider (depending on the tool you currently have selected). This effects the thickness of the drawing tool you are using. Tap on the right hand side of this slider to make your tool thicker, or the left to make it thinner. There are 4 possible settings. This slider will be referred to as the 'Brush Size'.
The tools are as follows:
Pencil: Use this to draw freehand lines using the current foreground colour. Set this colour by tapping on the left-most colour square on the right of the tool bar. To change the thickness, use the brush size slider.
Line: Draw straight lines with this by tapping at the start of the line, then dragging to where you want the line to go, and releasing the pen. This tool also uses the brush size slider, and the current foreground colour.
Q-Line: This is a 'Quantized' line tool, which effectively snaps to an invisible grid while you are drawing, constraining your lines to angles of 45░, horizontal or vertical. Also uses the brush size slider and the current foreground colour.
Crayon: This draws in the current foreground colour, a pattern which resembles a crayon. It is not affected by the brush size.
Wet Felt: Uses the foreground colour, and the brush size, and draws in much the same way as a wet felt-tip pen would. You can partially see through the lines, and scribbling with it produces a solid colour.
Spray Can: The brush size is thicker for this tool, which splatters the foreground colour onto the image in a random pattern. Useful for dither type effects.
Blur: This tool uses the brush size slider, and performs a median blur on the area you are drawing with. For best results, use it slowly with a finer brush. Because the Palm screen is limited to 256 colours, the blending is not perfect. Some combinations of colour will produce odd effects.
Smear: Much the same as the blur tool, but will carry the colours much further, like smearing wet paint with your finger.
Burn: Like the wet felt, but uses a black ink so darkens the image where you draw.
Dodge: Again, like the wet felt, but uses white to lighten the image.
Clone: When you first select this tool, the icon will have a shadow underneath it, symbolizing the fact that you need to define a source point to clone from. Tap and drag on the screen to define a source point, then the icon will no longer have a shadow. This tool works like a paintbrush, but you paint with another part of the image, using the current brush size. The source point moves with the area you are painting. If you need to redefine the source point, tap the icon again, and the shadow will appear again, allowing you to select a new point on the screen.
Bucket: Fills in CLOSED areas with the foreground colour.
Eraser: Rubs stuff out in the background colour, which is the block of colour to the far right. The size of the eraser is fixed.
Undo Eraser: Rubs stuff out, but with the undo image. Sort of like a localized undo tool.
Eye Dropper: Picks up whatever colour you tap on on the drawing and makes that the foreground colour. You can drag this tool across the image and let go when you find the colour you want. Once you let go, DrawIt will go back to the last tool you were using.
Circle tools: Drag from the top left to the bottom right to draw a circle within an area. A BG Circle is filled with the background colour, and has a foreground coloured outline, where a Filled circle is entirely filled with the foreground colour.
Square tools: Much the same as the circles, but will draw rectangles in the area you define.
Mask: Masks an area on the screen. Put the pen at the top left of where you want to start your mask, and drag it to the bottom right. When you let go of the pen, you will see a rectangle on screen. You will not be able to draw, fill, blur or erase outside this rectangle until you remove it by tapping the Mask tool again, or selecting a new rectangle to mask on the drawing.
Undo: Undo your last action.
Clear: Clears the current page to the background colour.
Revert: Restores the image to the state it was in when it was last saved. See the Saved Eraser tools instructions for details on when an image is saved.
Previous page: Moves to the previous image in the database.
Index: Jumps to an index sheet of your drawings, from which you can create new images, or delete and open existing images.
Next page: As with previous page, but turns to the next page.
There's also a little 'i' on the right hand side of the title-bar. This brings up the About screen.
If you have any requests, or bugs, please email me, and I'll do my best to rectify the situation.
Enjoy the software, and thanks again.
Andrew Empson
Planned for coming versions (who knows when):
Mac/PC Conduit
Greyscale
Legacy support for older machines
More tools
Revision history:
Latest version: 1.40 16th May 2001
Added CustIt - the customizer. Rewrote nearly all of DrawIt to allow for customization reducing the app size by 5kb. Added brush shapes slider. Removed Autohide option. Added Undo button.
1.39 8th May 2001
Added Undo. Write a 'u' in the graffiti area to undo your last brush stroke. The 'Saved Eraser' is now an Undo eraser, and will only undo your last action. Sped up loading of images, fixed a bug involving the mask tool under the toolbar.
1.38 6th May 2001
Added Brush shapes and colour swap.
1.37 1st May 2001
Added image Compression. Wrote a manual. Added graffiti support for tool selection, Shape and mask tools now work Left-Right or Right-Left, added 's' stroke in graffiti area to quick-save.
1.36 29th April 2001
Added Burn and Dodge tools. Now remembers brush size for each tool. Added hardware button support for index screen. Re-introduced new image option for Next and Previous arrows.
1.35 27th April 2001
Reorganised the toolbar icons to be more intuitive. Added arrow indicator to show hidden tools. Added Line, Q-Line, Spray, Smear, Saved Eraser, BG circle and BG Square.
1.3 25th April 2001
Added Page Index screen, removed delete button from main drawing area, re-wrote large parts of the software to make it smaller and less buggy.
1.28 24th April 2001
Added 'Wet Felt' tool - a combination of Pencil and Blur, which feels like a wet felt-tip pen to draw with. See above for instructions.
1.27 21st April 2001
Added Clone tool. See above for instructions. Added Save confirmation.
1.26 20th April 2001
Added Rectangle and Oval tools. Several fixes including problems with the eye dropper switching back.
1.25 17th April 2001
Rewrote Blur tool, no spotting any more, also uses brush size, reworked Mask tool, brush size is now context sensitive, prepared for Import functions of DrawIt Bitmap Exporter for Windows (in BETA from my website)
