TCE: The Color Editor Version 1.01 April 12, '91 Another BirdWare product by Dan Farmer ("Its as free as a bird!") Well, actually, you *could* send me some money to get a math chip! It would still be cheep! (ugh! boo!) Copyright Dan Farmer, 1991. All rights reserved. BirdWare Software 1001 E. 80th St. Apt#102 Bloomington MN 55425 (612) 854-6209 All the usual legal disclaimers pertaining to everything under the sun regarding the use of this software are true with this program, also. The author is not responsible for anything whatsoever, whenever. This program is freely distributable, however, if you make any changes to the source code, please DOCUMENT the hell out of it if you upload it anywhere. This program may NOT be sold for any amount. The Color Editor is a tool for use by DKBTrace users to preview and design colors for inclusion in their data files. (It also gave me an opportunity to play around a bit during working hours while IBM was busy trying (unsucessfully) to recover our LAN server drives!) As you will see, I got a bit carried away with GUI interfaces during this project. No, this is NOT an Amiga port. Environment / Commandline options: ---------------------------------- TCE looks for your COLORS.DAT file in the current working directory unless you tell it to look elsewhere. There are two ways in which you can do this: 1) You can set an evironment variable DKB to the path to COLORS.DAT SET DKB=C:\DKB\DATA\COLORS.DAT - or - 2) You can tell TCE on the commandline: TCE c:\dkb\data\color.dat - or - TCE mycolors.dat How it works: ------------- 1) Upon startup, the program will pause for a few seconds while it generates a gray palette and paints the preview image. 2) If you didn't specify a color data file, and TCE can't find one in the current directory, it will ask you for the path and name of your color file. 3) Viewing COLORS.DAT: Once the color file has been loaded, TCE will display the first color in your file. You can scroll through the file with your up/down arrow keys. Press "P" or "V" to project the color onto the preview image. 4) Keys: R G or B (Upper Case) Increase Red, Green, or Blue. r g or b (Lower Case) Decrease Red, Green, or Blue. D or d Darken the current color. L or l Lighten the current color. C or c Clear all values to white,gray,or black. V,v,P,p PreView color on a shaded sphere. S,s,W or w Save/Write the color to COLORS.DAT + Toggle Fast/Slow step rate. ESC Quit the program. F Specify Input/Output filenames. Editing/Creating Colors: ------------------------ Existing COLORS.DAT color declarations will NEVER be over-written by TCE. You can, however, scroll to a color in the file and then modify it, and save it with a new name (or the same name, for that matter. See section below about saving colors). Fine / Course Tuning: ----------------------- On startup, changes are stepped by +/- 0.01, so you can make very fine changes in hue or saturation, but at the same time, it may seem sometimes like nothing is happening. Pressing the + key will toggle to a fast mode where changes are stepped +/- 0.1. A panel in the lower right displays either "Fast" or "Slow" to show which mode you are currently using. Saving a color (S,s,W, or w keys) ----------------------- Pressing the "S" or "W" key puts you into save mode. You will be prompted for a descriptive name for the new color. Pressing without entering a name will abort the save operation and you will be returned to the color editor. Color names are NOT checked for duplicity, but at the same time, colors are never over-written. If you do have duplicate color names, I believe DKB will use the last declared definition. There is no delete function, so you will have to use a text editor to remove unwanted color declarations. There is a limit to the number of DECLARATIONS that DKB can use, so you may wish to store new colors to a separate COLORS.DAT file until you want to use them. Spherical Preview (V,v,P or p keys) ----------------- This is, admittedly, a hack. It's sorta slow generating the palette, and the way I draw the sphere leaves a bit to be desired, and it is only an approximation of the way the color will look on a rendered object, but it got the product out of the door and into your hands. (Besides, it's really kinda neat!). That's about it. Pretty easy, huh? But I think you'll find it helpful when you're looking for that illusive color for bread dough! What's new: Version 1.01 Doesn't really DO anything new, just what it does, it does better. Better palette scaling for the preview window. Nicer preview image, too, with a sky and a shaded background. Also, the preview image now is drawn only once, at load time. This gives two benefits: 1) You only have to wait once for it to draw. 2) Since the palette is not updated in the image until you press "Preview", you can compare a previously previewed color against one in the window. Now if only I can come up with a quicker palette loader! (I'm looking into it) The original release allowed you to specify a PATH to your color file, either on the command line or with a DOS environment variable "DKB". Both methods still work, but must have the filename, too. This is because DKB Version 2.10 looks for a file named COLORS.DAT, where earlier versions looked only for COLOR.DAT (singular). But wait... it gets better! You can now specify from within the program the name of your input file and optionally a name for a separate output file. What used to be the Help button (who needs help when you have a document file, right?) is now the "Files" button. Press "F" and you will be asked if you wish to specify an Input file or an Output file. Pressing will abort the process. CREDITS: DKB is a superb (by far the best for PC's) ray tracing program written by David K. Buck with Aaron Collins. DKB is freeware, not shareware or crippleware. (Motto: "It's free, and well worth the price") DKB is available on CompuServe (tm) (GO COMART) and the "You Can Call Me Ray" BBS in Chicago (708) 358-5611.