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.