The Devil's Doorknob BBS Capture (1996-2003)/devilsdoorknobbbscapture1996-2003.iso/Dloads/MISSING/LOGOMA.ZIP/LOGOMA.TXT

Text File | 1997-02-21 | 9KB | 190 lines

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Logomania (VERSION 1.00) by  Neil J. Rubenking
Copyright (c) 1997 Ziff Davis Publishing Company
First Published March 25, 1997
________________________________________________________________
About  Logomania...
Purpose:  When you start Windows 95, it displays a picture of
clouds with a floating Windows 95 logo. Blue and gray color bars
pulse across the bottom of the screen, so you won't think the
computer is stuck. But why should you gaze at a Microsoft logo
every time your computer starts? LogoMania lets you replace the
standard logo with your own animated logo bitmap.
The files LOGOSAMP.ZIP and LOGOTUT.ZIP contain sample
logo files.

Usage:  To install LogoMania, simply copy the files LOGOMANI.EXE,
LOGOMANI.HLP, and LOGOMANI.CNT to a directory (or "folder") on
your hard disk. You may wish to place a shortcut to LOGOMANI.EXE
in one of your Start Menu folders. To uninstall LogoMania, delete
the three files you originally copied to your hard disk,
LOGOMANI.INI, and also the LOGOMANI.GID and LOGOMANI.FTS files
that WinHelp may have created.

To create an animated logo bitmap, you start with a bitmap that
includes just the animated portion of the desired result. You can
optionally add a second bitmap defining the non-animated portions.
From your input bitmaps, LogoMania will build a new bitmap with
the very particular internal structure required for a Windows 95
animated logo bitmap. Only the basics of LogoMania are described
here. For more detail or advanced features, consult LogoMania's
comprehensive online Help file.

The first step in creating an animated logo bitmap is to select
or generate the animation bitmap; LogoMania's Animation bitmap
pageAnimation_bitmap_page contains tools to do this. You have
three main choices:

   1. Choose an existing bitmap and, if necessary, force it into
      the size required by LogoMania
   2. Let LogoMania generate an animated background for you by
      pressing the Generate... button
   3. Use Windows Paint to create the animation bitmap.

The first two options are by far the easiest, and can produce
striking results. If you want to create your animation bitmap from
scratch using Windows Paint, you'll find instructions for doing so
in LogoMania's online help system.

When you first launch LogoMania, you'll be looking at the Animation
bitmap page. Press the Choose button to select a bitmap. It must be
a 256-color bitmap, and it must have the standard extension .BMP.
It also must be precisely 320x400 pixels in size. (Upon display,
Windows 95 stretches it to 640x400). If the selected bitmap is not
320x400, LogoMania will enable the Tile/Chop... button. Press this
button to save a new version of the bitmap at the correct size.
If the wrong-sized bitmap is smaller than 640x400, the Center...
button will also be enabled.

When the loaded bitmap is precisely 320x400, the Tile/Chop... and
Center... buttons will be disabled and LogoMania will scan all the
pixels in the bitmap, counting how many are assigned to each
palette color. At this time the Palette... button is enabled.
Pressing this button brings up the Palette Adjustment
FormPalette_Adjustment_Form, which lets you change the colors
associated with each in-use palette entry. Adjusting the palette
isn't normally required, but it allows advanced users to achieve
impressive animation effects. See the online Help for details.

To have LogoMania generate an animated bitmap for you, press the
Generate... button. Three of the controls on this form determine
the pattern that will be used to fill the bitmap. Shape defines
the overriding pattern such as circle, square, or stripe.
Direction is the direction of apparent motion when the bitmap is
animated. And for most shapes, a larger Width produces a coarser
pattern with faster apparent motion. The remaining controls in
the Generator dialog box define the color palette that will be
used. Click one of the three color boxes, or press Alt+1, Alt+2
or Alt+3 to set the fixed colors. Choose a total number of
colors for LogoMania to generate, and select one of the four
gradient styles.

The most important thing about this form is that almost any
combination of option settings will produce an interesting
background. Feel free to experiment! The bitmap created using
this form is always stored as LogoMania_Gen.bmp, in the same
directory as LogoMania itself. If you produce a totally awesome
background that you want to save for future use, simply copy or
rename LogoMania_Gen.bmp.

Static bitmaps can be placed in the foreground or the background;
you can use any bitmap. Like the animation bitmap, the static
bitmap must be a 320x400 image. The animated logo bitmap generated
by LogoMania can have at most 256 different colors, so the total
number of colors used by the animation and static bitmaps can't
exceed 256. If the static bitmap uses too many colors, LogoMania
will enable the Fewer Colors... button.

The animation bitmap page and the static bitmap page both have
check boxes labeled Foreground. Checking one of these
automatically un-checks the other. When LogoMania merges the two
bitmaps, it looks at the pixel in the bottom left corner of the
foreground bitmap and treats all pixels of that color as
"transparent". Each pixel in the final image is copied from the
corresponding pixel in either the foreground or background
bitmap. If the foreground pixel matches the transparent color,
the background pixel is copied; if not, the foreground pixel is
copied.

The foreground check box serves a purpose even when you are not
using a static bitmap. When it is not checked, all colors in the
image will be animated. When it is checked, the transparent color
will not be animated. If you've centered a bitmap on a single-
colored background, you'll want to check the Foreground box.
Otherwise the background will flash wildly as the bitmap
animates!

Creating The Animated Logo

Once you have selected an animation bitmap and (optionally) a
static bitmap, flip to the Logo bitmap page,Logo_Bitmap_Page,
press the Create... button, and save the animated logo bitmap.
If the resulting reduced-size thumbnail view looks totally
wrong, you may have put the wrong bitmap in the
foreground(toggle the value of the Foreground checkbox on either
the Animation bitmap pageAnimation_bitmap_page or the Static
bitmap pageStatic_bitmap_page and press Create... again. If the
Create... button is not enabled, it means something is wrong
with at least one of your bitmap selections. Correct the problem
and try again.

Activating The Animated Logo

As long as your system is running in 256-color mode, the Preview
button will be enabled any time an animated logo bitmap has been
created or loaded. Press this button for a preview of the logo,
animated in the same way Windows 95 will animate it at startup.
If your system's display adapter and drivers support changing
video resolution on the fly, the Preview at 640x400 check box
will be enabled. Checking this box before pressing Preview
causes LogoMania to display the logo animation at 640x400
resolution, giving a very accurate preview.

If the file LOGO.SYS is present in the root directory of the
boot drive, Windows 95 loads it as the animated logo bitmap.
To install your own animated logo, copy it to the root directory
of the boot drive. Then rename LOGO.SYS (if present) to
LOGO.OLD, and rename your new logo to LOGO.SYS. Note that the
two screens that Windows 95 displays at shutdown are also
320x400 bitmaps. The one that asks you to wait while
Windows 95 shuts down is LOGOW.SYS; the one that informs you
it's now safe to shut the computer off is LOGOS.SYS. You can
use any bitmap that has been "right-sized" by LogoMania in place
of either of these shutdown bitmaps, which reside in the
Windows 95 directory.

Support for Logomania:
Support for the free utilities offered by PC Magazine
can be obtained electronically  in the discussion area
of PC Magazine's Web site and in the Utilities section
of ZD Net's TIPS Forum on CompuServe. For PC Magazine's
Web site go to the URL http://www.pcmag.com/discuss/
and select the Utilities area. You can also access the
Utilities discussion area from the utility's download
page.  The authors of current utilities generally
monitor the discussion area every day.  You may find
an answer to your question simply by reading the
messages previously posted. If the author is not
available and you have a question that the sysops
can't answer, the editor of the Utilities column, who
also checks the area each day, will contact the
author for you.

For ZD Net's TIPS Forum (GO ZNT:TIPS). The authors of
current utilities generally visit this forum daily.
You may find an answer to your question by reading the
messages already posted in the forum. If the author is
not available and the forum sysops can't answer your
question, the Utilities column editor, who checks this
forum each day, will contact the author for you.

Neil J. Rubenking is a contributing technical editor of
PC Magazine.
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