NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/comp/sys/next/misc/19046

Text File | 1992-08-27 | 11.3 KB | 263 lines

Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!torn!maccs!nextasy!tlm
From: [e-mail] (Tom Marchioro)
Subject: Re: (?) Seeking *ANY* docs for Icon.app
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (News account)
Organization: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 01:46:21 GMT
Lines: 251

[e-mail] (Allen B) writes:
: In article <[e-mail]>
: [e-mail] (Edward Murphy) writes:
: >so... the way i figure it, somebody has had to ask this question before.
: >that being the case, if there are any previous references, i'd appreciate
: >a pointer to them. otherwise, does anyone know of *any* documentation for
: >Icon (i realize it's an unsupported App, so of course i'm speaking of
: >un-NeXT-official docs).
:
: Try looking on sonata/nova in:
:
:     pub/next/Newsletters/VNUS/IconDoc.ps.Z
:
: That's a pretty good piece put together by our friends in
: Vancouver.
:
: ab

Here's an additional document which I grabbed off the usenet a few months
ago.  I repost it "uncredited" since I have no memory who I got it from.

[BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND, THIS CLASSIC OF HARDHITTING
DOCU-SPLANATION ...SR]

Introduction Keith Ohlf's program for creating and manipulating
TIFF images, Icon, is in the NextDeveloper/Demos directory of every
machine shipped. If you do any programming with Interface Builder,
you should definitely use Icon to create the image for your program's
icon. In fact, you should consider using Icon for much more.  Let
me explain.  The NeXT has an sophisticated way of using multiple
images to create a huge variety of effects, called compositing.
The more you know about compositing, the more you will write programs
that really show off the platform's unique abilities.

It is very difficult to understand all of the compositing modes
by reading the documentation provided by NeXT.  You need  experience
with each mode, using actual images.  If you learn to use Icon,
you will also be learning much of what you need to know about
compositing.  There are some problems with Icon. (These comments
apply to the version of Icon released with the 2.0 system software.)
It is officially just a demo, so it is not guaranteed to be robust,
and, in fact, it does sometimes crash. This usually occurs when
you attempt to close a window. It also sometimes takes a very long
time to save an image, giving you a spinning wait cursor for tens
of seconds before finally writing to disk.

These problems are not the biggest obstacle to using Icon. When I
first used the program, it seemed counterintuitive. Perhaps there
are other paint programs on other systems that resemble Icon, but
to me it was sui generis. I didn't understand how the marquee tool
worked, or how to select a color. I didn't understand all those
graphic symbols in the control panels.  I considered including
images of all the relevant panels in this article, but I don't
think that's necessary. If possible, read this while simultaneously
running Icon.

        Colors

As soon as you begin working in Icon, select Colors in the
Tools submenu. (Or select Show Patterns, which will bring up Colors
too.)This brings up the Colors panel, which is indispensable. Most
of the drawing tools require a color to be selected in the Colors
panel. The default color is usually transparent, which means that
if you do not bring up Colors and select a color, your tools will
seem to be nonfunctional. (Although they will be working fine -
just invisibly!) Unless you have a color system, stick to the color
picker mode selected by the button second from the left at the top
of the Colors panel. Notice the row of small color wells along the
bottom of the panel. Put swatches of colors you use often in these
wells. Icon will save your choices, so when you use the program
again you can click on the wells to select your colors.

        Patterns

Show Patterns in the Tools menu brings up an
addition to the Colors panel. The button on the left lifts
whatever is selected in the marquee tool into the left pattern
well. Either pattern well may be selected by clicking on its
broad lip. Click again to deselect. When the well is selected,
the pattern in it becomes the current fill, overriding the color
currently selected.

Detail   Tools-->Detail from the main menu gets you a
detail window. All the tools work in Detail.

    The Inspector Panel

This panel toggles between five
modes: Tools, Gradation, Animation, Image Info, and
Shapes. This means that you can only use one mode at
once, which creates problems (see Animation). The
compositing button is present in all five modes, in the same
place. This button says Sover when you start Icon. Wherever
you are in Icon, whatever you are doing, you can access the
compositing button. It selects the compositing mode used.
Try them all! I find Satop, Dover and Plus widely useful. Xor
is fun - try disabling Always Sover Brush and paint with a
large brush using Xor. Trippy!

        Tools

The Tools mode of the Inspector panel itself
toggles between 14 modes, one for each tool available on
the tool selection panel, which is always visible. I will start
with the most tricky, the marquee tool, selected by the lowest
right button on the tool selection panel.

        Marquee

First, you can copy the marquee and paste it into another
window. Try this, because it is important.  The opacity slider on
the marquee tool inspector controls the opacity of the selection.
Use it to make a selection more transparent: it doesn't work the
other way.  The twelve buttons with little pictures on them select
marquee actions. Some only affect the selection; some affect the
underlying image. From left to right, upper row first:

1. Take the image under the marquee and lift it onto
the marquee. The underlying image is "lifted off" and
the area becomes clear (transparent.) Anything on
the marquee before the action is also lost.
2.  Same as 1, except the underlying image is not
disturbed.
3. Composite ("drop down") the marquee onto the
underlying image, using the compositing mode
selected.
4. "Drop down" the marquee onto every frame of an
animation.
5. Paintbucket: I don't use this. It seems to fill the
marquee with the selected color or pattern, making it
equivalent to the Square tool.
6. Magic Fairy Dust Wand. This seems to invoke the
Dropper tool -- but why?
7. Returns the selection to its original size and
rotation.
8. Shear.
9. Rotation
10. Scaling.
11. One kind of flip.
12. The other kind.

To the right of these buttons is a sort of diamond-rosette.
This is composed of four buttons which move the marquee
around in little increments.

Below are two color wells and associated controls. The button on
the left selects the operation. I have only used Replace. It is
very useful. Suppose you have an little image from a scanner. It
is black on a white background. You want black on transparent
instead. What to do? Select opaque white in Colors: drag a swatch
into the lefthand well. Select transparent and drag a swatch into
the other well. Get your image onto the marquee and click Do It.
Make sure your compositing mode is Copy and drop the marquee back
down. Hit command-1 to see your image in glorious transparency
against a moving granite background.

Finally, the bottom button on the marquee inspector panel:
Effects. Most of these seem to be disabled.
A final note about the marquee: "marquee" has the same
first six letters as "Marquette", the name of the obscure
Northern Michigan town I grew up in. My computer-hacking
friend in seventh grade, Ted Vielmetti, is mentioned in
NextAnswer misc.390. Hope this reaches you, Ted.

        Other Tools

Many of the other tools should be familiar.
The paintbrush and airbrush will always be Sovered
unless you disable this feature, which you sometimes will
need to. Several tools, such as Circle, have a big color well
for choosing the outline color. You won't be able to drag a
color in here if the line width slider to the right is set to
minimum width. The Circle, Square, Closed Curve and
Polygon tools will fill with gradation instead of the current
color if you check Gradation. This is a cool effect controlled
by the Gradation mode of the Inspector Panel.
Gradation   Click in the gradation image at upper left and
drag the mouse around. Click Radial and do it again. Makes
me think of butterfly ocelli (eye patterns on their wings.)
Cool, huh?

        Animation

Use Image-->Grab from the main menu.
Grab a fairly small area. Command-a to select the whole
thing. Doubleclick on the first action button to clear the
contents.

Select your favorite paintbrush. Now toggle down from
Tool Inspector to Animation. There is a text field titled
Frames: .  Add a zero after the 1 and hit return. Your image is
now ten images, which Icon will display in succession. Click
the Play button, second from the left, and try to paint in the
image with the mouse. Slow the animation down by clicking
on the minus sign in the film still picture. You can stop the
animation and cycle through one by one. You can paint or
use any other tool -- EXCEPT THE MARQUEE! Why?
Because when you toggle from Animation back to Tool
Inspector, the image snaps to the first frame of the
animation. The marquee cannot be applied to the image
without the action buttons on the marquee Tool Inspector. If
you want to make an animation of the Snark moving around,
you cannot paste him into each frame in a slightly different
spot, unless you do the following:

1. Create your animation with the required number of
frames. Use the marquee drop-through button to put
in any background that will be constant.
2. Save your animation as "snark", and close it. It will
show up as "snark.anim".
3. Go to the Workspace and change the suffix to  ".ani".
4. Open every tiff in the snark.ani directory:
snark.ani/snark.1.tiff, snark.2.tiff, snark.3.tiff . . .
5. Lay them out in order and paint, paste, and
composite into each frame of the animation.
6. Save and close them all and rename the directory
to "snark.anim". Doubleclick on the directory and  voila!

I think this part of Icon could work a little better. The animation
is really neat, though.  Image Info, Shapes  I don't use these
much. They seem self-explanatory.

        Text

The Text panel is called up from the main menu.
Type the desired text into the field provided. When you click
on Set, the text will be rendered in the desired font, size and
so on and placed in the marquee above the current image.
The more fonts you have, the more fun this will be.
A First Project   Even if you aren't writing apps, you can
still install cute little icons all over your file system. Save two
48 * 48 pixel TIFFs (that's the smallest size Icon will let you
work with, so use Image-->Grab and mouse a tiny selection
to get a window this size) in any directory as ".dir.tiff" and
".opendir.tiff". The Workspace will use them instead of the
picture of the folder that opens up, the /me house with the
door opening, etc. for that directory only. By the time you
give every directory on your machine its own two little TIFFs,
you'll definitely be comfortable using Icon!

    A Parting Hint:

If you usually keep your mouse speed
high in Preferences, bring it down a notch. You'll get denser
events on the screen when you draw, which makes some
tools work more accurately.

>>>>>>>>>>Hope this is Helpful ---- Tom