IE - The Complete Icon Editor by Peter Kiem 15 Penfold St Hillcrest, QLD 4118 Australia (07) 800-8459 kiem@splat.paxnet.com.au FidoNet: 3:640/304 ABOUT IE -------- IE is a shareware program which allows the creation and editing of icons on the Amiga personal computer. Using IE you can make icons much larger and easier than using the supplied icon editor on your system disks. You do not have to mention in your documentation that the icons were created with IE, but it would be nice for you to include a message like: Icons created with IE - The Complete Icon Editor DEMONSTRATION VERSION CHANGES ----------------------------- The demonstration version of IE is fully functional so you can test all the functions of IE and determine if you wish to register or not. To encourage you to register IE, the demonstration version also has a few changes: - After starting the demonstration version of IE two requesters will be displayed giving information about the demonstration version and about obtaining a registered copy of IE. These requesters will disappear after 30 seconds each and you can then continue with IE. - The demonstration version will also exit after any "save" operation is performed. This is done so you can see the effects of changing an icon with IE rather than totally disabling the save functions as some demonstration programs do. When you register your copy of IE you receive a registration number and a fully operational copy of IE with your name coded into the title bar as proof of your registration. You will also be entitled to upgrades (for a small fee) if I create new versions of IE. I am not making a living from writing IE so I have not charged as much as I could had I marketed it commercially. A fully registered version of IE will only cost you AUD$20. Please respect the amount of time and effort I have put into IE and consider the small fee asked if you continue to use this program. Updates are available to registered users by returning your ORIGINAL disk to me at the above address along with a postage and handling charge of: Australia AUD$ 5 Overseas AUD$10 DISTRIBUTION OF IE ------------------ You can freely distribute the DEMONSTRATION version of IE as long as the following is observed: - The program and documentation must be distributed together and are not modified in any way. The only exception is that the program and documentation may be compressed into an archive for uploading to Bulletin Boards or for other electronic transmission. - The program is not used commercially or included in a commercial package for profit unless written authorisation from me is obtained first. The demonstration version of IE may be freely included on public domain library disks or compilation disks provided only a small fee is charged for the service. A REGISTERED version must NEVER be distributed in ANY way. (after all, you paid for it - so should others). IE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ---------------------- IE requires Workbench 2.04 or later. The functions used for IEv4.0 are not available in Workbench 1.3 or earlier. If you require a version of IE for Workbench 1.3 or earlier then you can obtain IEv3.0 from me at the above address. A demonstration version of IEv3.0 is on Fish Disk 621. IE also requires "asl.library" and "diskfont.library" to be present in your LIBS: directory. Unless you have removed libraries from your boot disk you will not have to worry about this. IE will now quite happily run in 1/2 Meg memory using the default image size, screen resolution and number of colours unlike IEv3.0 which required 2 Meg of memory. WHAT ARE ICONS? --------------- Icons are the pictures on Workbench that allow you to start a program, select a document or examine the contents of a disk. These icons can also have a second picture which is displayed when the icon is selected giving the appearance of motion etc. Icons can also pass information to the tool called through the use of "Tool Types". IE will also allow you to edit these and more. There are five different types of icons representing the different types of files on the Amiga: DISK ICON - To represent disks or harddrive partitions. (NOTE: A disk icon will only be displayed when it is named "disk.info" and is in the top directory of a disk or HardDrive partition). DRAWER ICON - To represent a drawer (directory) on a disk. TRASHCAN ICON - To represent the special drawer known as the Trashcan which is used for deleting files. TOOL ICON - To represent an executable program. PROJECT ICON - To represent a document, drawing, picture etc that is passed to the tool for being edited. INSTALLING IE ------------- IE can be simply installed on your system by dragging the IE icon into window on your disk that you wish to place IE into. No special assigns or "hidden" files are used by IE. It is recommended however, that the entire IE drawer is copied so you can always find the documentation files. STARTING IE ----------- The simplest method of starting IE is by double-clicking on the IE icon from Workbench. This will start IE ready to create an icon. Another method of starting IE from Workbench is to single-click on a project icon, hold down the "shift" key and double-click on the IE icon. This will start IE and automatically load the project icon for editing. IE can also be started from the CLI by typing "IE" optionally followed by the name of the icon to load. This icon can be of any type and the ".info" suffix needed not be included in the name. The tooltypes and CLI parameters that IE accepts are listed at the end of this document. These allow you to select the screen resolution and interlace settings for the IE screen, the number of colours the icon should contain and to increase the maximum image size that IE works with. THE ICON DISPLAY WINDOW ----------------------- On the main IE window there is a large square region on the left hand side. In this window the icon being edited is displayed 8 times normal size. This magnification can be changed by moving the slider gadget above the display window. This slider does not actually change the size of the icon but how large each pixel is displayed in the edit window. To see different parts of the icon simply click, or slide, the horizontal and vertical scroll bars next to the display window. This allows you to move quickly around the image. Alternatively you can click on the arrow gadgets next to the scroll bars to shift the display one pixel at a time in the direction of the arrow. Holding down the left mouse button on one of these arrow gadgets will continuous scroll the image a pixel at a time in that direction. The "H" gadget in the top-right corner of the display window returns the horizontal and vertical scroll bars quickly to the "Home" position (that is, with the top-left corner of the icon being displayed). Underneath the display window are the current coordinates of the pointer within the icon and the name of the icon currently being edited. SELECTING WHICH ICON IMAGE TO EDIT/DISPLAY ------------------------------------------ Icons can be made of one or two images. The first image is the image displayed on the Workbench screen before any selection is made and is called the "Normal Image". The second (optional) image is displayed when the icon is selected and is called the "Selected Image". To the right of the "H" gadget is the Image Select gadget. This gadget allows you to select which image you are displaying/editing. Click on this gadget to switch between the two images. THE UNDO EDIT GADGET -------------------- Just underneath the Select Image gadget is the Undo Edit gadget. As the name suggests, this gadget will "undo" the last editing operation. This enables you to reverse the effects where the edit you performed was incorrect (e.g. If your Flood-Fill leaked and destroyed your image, then click on the Undo Edit gadget and the image will be restored to before the Flood-Fill). The Undo Edit gadget will only undo the changes of the LAST edit and not previous ones. Certain operations likewise will not be able to be undone and the gadget will be disabled to inform you of this fact. SELECTING A DRAWING COLOUR -------------------------- To select a colour to draw in, click on one of the colour gadgets down the right-hand side of the main IE window. The brush pointer's tip will change to the selected colour to remind which colour you are using. AGA users (A1200/A4000) take note: If you are editing an icon with more than 16 colours then one of the colours in the palette will change when you select a colour to use. This is because non-AGA machines use colour register 16 to 19 for the mouse pointer. Apparently the AGA machines use the full 256 registers and I don't as yet have the Workbench3 docs to fix this bug. This shouldn't affect your icon at all it only affects the IE display colours. CHANGING THE ICON'S IMAGE ------------------------- To change the colour of a pixel in the icon's image simply position the pointer in the display window over the pixel you want to change and click the left mouse button. The pixel will then change to the currently selected colour as denoted by the pointer's brush tip. By holding down the left mouse button and moving the pointer within the display window the pointer will continuously draw into the image changing the pixels moved over into the currently selected colour. THE EDIT MODE GADGETS --------------------- These gadgets allow you to select what type of drawing action is being performed. The selections are described below: DRAW Freehand drawing as described in the "CHANGING THE ICON'S IMAGE" section above. FLOOD FILL A mouse click within the display window will initiate a "flood" paint. The pixel under the pointer is changed to the currently selected colour and this continues for all pixels of the same colour "connected" to the selected one. Only horizontal and vertical "connections" are checked for flood fill, diagonals are ignored. This can be used to quickly fill in an area instead of painting all of it by hand. Remember that the Undo-Edit gadget will restore your image if the flood fill "leaks" and destroys your image but it must be done straight away. WRITE TEXT A mouse click within the display window will initiate a text write. A requester is displayed asking for the text to write into the image. The string gadget is automatically activated for you so you can just start typing and press the return key when finished. If you wish to use a different font, style or colour than the default (Topaz/8 - Text Only - White Text) then you can click on the Text Options gadget which will then bring up a Font Requester. This requester allows you to scroll through the list of available fonts, select one and apply any combination of the style changes bold, italic and underline. The highlighted font name represents the current font. A sample text in the selected font and styles can be seen in the requester to enable you to make your decision before leaving the requester. The selected font and style then becomes the default for further text writes. The Text colour gadget selects what colour to draw the text in. The Field colour gadget selects what colour to draw the background in. The Mode gadget allows you to select the text drawing mode as detailed below: Text Only - Draw the text but do not disturb the background. Text+Field - Draw the text but use a coloured rectangle as a background. Complement - Draw the text without disturbing the background. The selected colours are ignored and the text is written into the image using colours that depend on the background colours it is writing over. THE MOVE IMAGE ARROW GADGETS ---------------------------- Below the Edit Mode gadgets are the Move Image Arrow gadgets. These gadgets move the whole icon image in the direction of the gadget. If you move the image outside of the boundaries then the image will be trimmed to fit. These are not to be confused with the arrow gadgets next to the scroll bars as those gadgets are only for fine-tuning the scroll bars. These gadgets are most useful when you wish to create extra room on top of, or to the left of, your image in order to do more drawing. They can also be used to eliminate "blank" space to the left of your image. IE will automatically strip the image to the smallest possible size when saving the icon so it may be faster to save the icon temporarily and reload it and only use these gadgets to remove the "blank" space that IE could not remove automatically. The "PROJECT/NEW" menu item (Right-Amiga N) ------------------------------------------- This menu item resets IE to it's defaults for creating a new icon. It clears the data in both images and resets the InfoEdit window parameters. The "PROJECT/LOAD" menu item (Right-Amiga L) -------------------------------------------- This menu item will display the file requester to allow you to select which icon you wish to load. See the section on the File Requester for details. The "PROJECT/LOAD DEFAULT" menu item ------------------------------------ The sub-menus of this menu item allow you to select which default icon you wish to load. Default icons are used by Workbench to display icons for files that don't have icons already defined for them. Workbench has the five icon types already defined but these defaults can be changed by supplying a new icon as the default. The "PROJECT/SAVE" menu item (Right-Amiga S) -------------------------------------------- This menu item will save the current icon, or if you haven't selected an icon name it will display the file requester for you to select one. See the section on the File Requester for details. IE will automatically strip the imagery you designed for the icon to the smallest possible size, eliminating as much "blank" space as possible, before saving. The "PROJECT/SAVE AS" menu item ------------------------------- This menu item will display the file requester to allow you to select a name to save the icon under. See the section on the File Requester for details. The "PROJECT/SAVE AS DEFAULT" menu item --------------------------------------- This menu option will save the current icon to be used as the Workbench default icon for that type. The type is determined by the Icon Type selection in the Edit Info window described later. Basically you load a default icon, change the imagery and parameters, and then save as default so that icon will be used by Workbench in the future. NOTE: This menu option will require the icon be saved to your Workbench disk and will not work if the disk is write-protected. Also default disk icons may not take effect until after a system reboot. The "PROJECT/SAVE & QUIT" menu item (Right-Amiga F) --------------------------------------------------- This menu item will save the current icon, or if you haven't selected an icon name it will display the file requester for you to select one. See the section on the File Requester for details. After saving the icon IE will then automatically quit. It is a shortcut to using the Right-Amiga S and Right-Amiga Q menu items. The "PROJECT/ABOUT" menu item (Right-Amiga A) --------------------------------------------- This menu item will display information about the program and show you where you can contact the author. Press the "OK" gadget when finished reading each requester. The "PROJECT/QUIT" menu item (Right-Amiga Q) -------------------------------------------- This menu item allows you to quit IE (what else?). The "ICON/EDIT INFO" menu item (Right-Amiga E) ---------------------------------------------- This menu item displays the icon information editing window. This window allows you to change the various "non-graphical" options of icons. Click in the close gadget at the top left when finished. The options are summarised below: ICON TYPE - Simply select the gadget corresponding to type of icon you wish to create (DISK, DRAWER, TOOL, PROJECT, TRASHCAN). HIGHLIGHTING - Select which type of highlighting the icon should have when it is selected from Workbench. COMPLEMENT is to reverse all the icon colours within it's select box. BACKFILL is to reverse all the icon colours but only in the image not the background. ALT RENDER is to use the second image (Select Image). HORIZONTAL POSITION - Select the AUTOMATIC gadget if you wish Workbench to automatically try to find a place to fit the icon in. If the AUTOMATIC gadget is turned off then the number in the string gadget specifies the exact horizontal placement of the icon. This can be a negative number if the window that the icon is displayed in has been scrolled to the left. VERTICAL POSITION - Same functionality as the Horizontal Position gadgets except it is for controlling the vertical placement. This can also be a negative number if the window that the icon is displayed in has been scrolled upwards. DEFAULT TOOL - Type the name of the tool (executable program) which this icon is associated with. The effect of double clicking on this icon will be the tool is started and the file associated with this icon will be passed to the tool. The file associated with this icon will only be passed to the tool if the tool is set up to receive parameters from Workbench otherwise the tool will start as if you selected it directly. This gadget will only work with DISK or PROJECT icons. DISK icons should specify a disk copy program for their default tool. TOOL TYPES - Up to 40 tool types can be specified in this area with the scrolling controlled by the scroll bar and arrow gadgets. Tool Types are parameters which are passed to the tool such as "PRINTER=LPT". The tool must be written to accept Tool Types and the tool documentation should be able to inform you of the format to use. Simply click the left mouse button over the tooltype line you wish to change and it will be copied into the string gadget underneath allowing you to modify it. To add a new tooltype, select a blank line for changing. OPENED WINDOW - These gadgets enable you to specify the position and size of the window which is displayed when the DISK, DRAWER or GARBAGE icon is selected. NAME OFFSET - This enables you to specify a +/- value with which to offset the vertical positioning of the icon name. By specifying a positive value the name is moved downwards. The more usual use is to specify a negative value which moves the name upwards. This can be used to centre the icon name within the image of the icon. NOTE that if the name is moved into the icon image only the image portion ABOVE the name can be selected with the mouse. STACK SIZE - This enables you to specify the stack size for the tool which is started by the TOOL or PROJECT icon. A stack size of 0 means to use the default stack size (around 4000 bytes), otherwise the stack size you specify will be used. Workbench 2.04 and later has the ability to detect when an icon has been changed and the change will normally take effect immediately after saving. The only exception is that when the Opened Window parameters are changed the icon has to be reloaded by closing the window that contains the icon and reopening it. If the icon was a disk icon then you will have to close all windows from that disk, remove the disk and reinsert the disk. The "ICON/PREVIEW" menu item (Right-Amiga P) -------------------------------------------- This menu item displays the icon preview window. This window displays as much of the icon image as possible with no magnification to give you some idea as to how it will be displayed on Workbench. Clicking the left mouse button in this window will toggle the display between the Normal image and the Selected image. NOTE - The preview window will only display alternate pictures, the Complement and Backfill select options cannot be displayed in the preview window. Clicking the right mouse button will close the window. The window can also be closed by the close gadget in the top left of the window. The "ICON/RECOLOUR" menu item (Right-Amiga R) --------------------------------------------- This menu item will cause second and third colours (usually black and white) in the icon to be reversed in both icon images. This is a shortcut to using the "ICON/SWAP COLOURS" menu item for each image and is provided especially for changing icons that were created using Workbench 1.3 or earlier for Workbench 2.04+ usage. The "ICON/SWAP COLOURS" menu item (Right-Amiga W) ------------------------------------------------- This menu item will display a requester where you can choose two colours to be reversed in the CURRENT image being edited (e.g. you can swap black with white). The "IMAGE/COPY" menu item -------------------------- The sub-menus of this menu item allow you to select an image copy function to use on the loaded icon images. Using these sub-menus allow you to duplicate an image into the other icon image or even swap the images around. The "IMAGE/SCALE" menu item --------------------------- The sub-menus of this menu item allow to increase or decrease the current icon image. This can be used for loading a picture and then shrinking it to make an icon to represent the picture. Naturally, decreasing an image will lose some of the finer details of the image. The "IMPORT/EXPORT /OUTPUT C CODE" menu item (Right-Amiga C) ------------------------------------------------------------ This menu item will display the file requester to allow you to select a filename to write the C language code for the icon. See the section on the File Requester for details. One use of this is for your programs to generate their own icons. The following code example shows how to write an icon file. This assumes you generated the C Code to a file called "c-code" and are generating the icon "test.info": #include #include #include #include #include "c-code"; /*ALTERNATIVELY COPY THE CODE HERE FIRST*/ extern struct IconBase *IconBase; void main() { IconBase = (struct IconBase *) OpenLibrary("icon.library", 0); PutDiskObject("test", &Icon); CloseLibrary(IconBase); exit(); } Another use for the generated C code is for creating gadgets for your programs. You can create the gadget image using IE, or load in an IFF image into IE, and write the C code to a file. The image data and image structure generated can then be copied into your program as the data for the gadget. The "IMPORT/EXPORT /IMPORT IFF" menu item (Right-Amiga I) --------------------------------------------------------- This menu item displays the file requester to allow you to choose an IFF picture file to load into the CURRENT image being edited. This allows you to use pictures (generated by packages such as DPaint) in your icon images. If importing an IFF file ensure that your icon has at least the same number of colours as the IFF image or some detail will be lost. The "IMPORT/EXPORT /EXPORT IFF" menu item (Right-Amiga X) --------------------------------------------------------- This menu item displays the file requester to allow you to choose the name of the IFF picture to be created from the CURRENT image being edited. This allows you to export your image to packages with more sophisicated editing features (such as DPaint) to edit your image and then later import the edited image back into your icon image. The "IMPORT/EXPORT /IMPORT FROM ICON" menu items ------------------------------------------------ These menu items allow you to grab images directly from other icons. "NON-SELECT IMAGE" (Right-Amiga 1) allows you to load the Non-Select image of an icon into the CURRENT image being edited. "SELECT IMAGE" (Right-Amiga 2) allows you to load the Select image of an icon (if there is one) into the CURRENT image being edited. "BOTH IMAGES" (Right-Amiga 3) is a shortcut that allows you to load both images from an icon into the icon you are currently editing. FILE REQUESTER -------------- IE utilitises the standard file requester provided by Workbench 2.04 whenever a filename is needed for various activities. The parts of the file requester are detailed below: PATTERN GADGET - This gadget allows you to specify a mask which hides files that you are not interested in. For example, the load function will only display icon files and directories so you don't accidently select a file which isn't an icon. You may wish to clear the contents of this gadget for two reasons: Saving an icon - By displaying all files you can select the filename of the program that you wish to attach the icon to. This will save you typing in the program name! Speed - The Workbench 2.04 file requester can be slow to read the filenames off the disk if pattern matching is being used. The file requester has less work to do if there is no pattern matching and hence will be faster. DRAWER STRING GADGET - This gadget is to display the current drawer of which the file requester is displaying the names of files in. You may type a new drawer name in here and press return to quickly move to another drawer. FILENAME GADGETS - These display the names of the files in the current drawer. The highlighted gadgets represent drawers and the rest are ordinary files. To select a new drawer to examine just click on the drawer name with the left mouse button. Selecting a filename by clicking the left mouse button on the required file will copy the filename into the filename string gadget. Selecting the filename again will act like the OK gadget has been pressed and accept the filename as final. FILENAME STRING GADGET - This gadget displays what the current file is. You may type a filename directly in here to quickly select a file or to specify the name of a new file. This gadget is always active and at any time you can just start typing in the filename and press return when finished. PARENT GADGET - This gadget will change the current drawer to it's parent drawer (that is, the drawer that contains the current drawer). Selecting this gadget when at the top most drawer of a disk will have no effect. VOLUMES GADGET - This gadget will cause the file requester to display the list of volumes instead of files. The non-highlighted gadgets represent disks or harddrive partitions available. The highlighted gadgets represent logical volumes created by the use of "assign" statements. Selecting one of these gadgets will set the current drawer to the assigned logical volume or disk. IE'S AUTOSAVE FUNCTION ---------------------- To try to prevent you from losing your work (from power loss, system failure, etc) IE will automatically try to save your icon into the file "IE.AutoSave.info" five minutes after a change has been made to an icon without the icon being saved. This file will be automatically deleted if IE is exited with the "PROJECT/QUIT" or "PROJECT/SAVE & QUIT" menu items. If IE finds the autosave file present when it starts it will ask if you want to reload the icon from the autosave file restoring your work. NOTE the autosave file is created in the directory that IE is started from and will require the disk is not write-protected. NOTE also that the DEMONSTRATION version will automatically exit after an autosave. PROJECT ICON HINT ----------------- If you have some icons that you use regularly then you can create a "library" of icons by saving them in a drawer as PROJECT icons. Then by clicking on an icon, holding down the shift key and double-clicking on the IE icon you can start IE and IE will automatically load the icon. You can then change the icon type, and other characteristics, and use the "PROJECT/SAVE AS" menu item to save the icon in the desired place and name. A better method than click, shift, double-click is to change the PROJECT icon's default tool string to be the full path and name of IE. Then you just have to double-click on the desired icon and IE will start and automatically load the icon as above. CONFIGURING IE - TOOLTYPES AND CLI PARAMETERS --------------------------------------------- The various configuration settings for IE are controlled by: TOOLTYPES - For Workbench users. CLI PARAMETERS - For CLI users. To add tooltypes to the IE icon simply use IE. Load the IE icon into IE, select the "ICON/EDIT INFO" menu item and add the tooltype into the tool types list. Close the window and save the icon. Restart IE to use the new tool types. Another method is to select the icon in Workbench and select the "Icons Information" menu option. Click on the "New" gadget, enter your tool type string and click on the "Save" gadget. Note that the supplied icon with IE is 8 colours and IE will default to 4 colours. If you wish to retain the 8 colours in the icon then it is advised that you use the "Information" menu option to add the tool type COLOURS=8 before editing the IE icon with IE. Tool types must be entered each on a different line when adding them to an icon. To add CLI PARAMETERS simply add the parameters anywhere on the CLI command to start IE. The CLI parameter is the same as the tool type but with a "-" immediately before it. This is to stop IE confusing parameters with icon names. For example, "IE -INTERLACE" will start IE using an interlaced screen. The tooltypes and CLI parameters are described below: TOOLTYPE - SUPERHIRES CLI PARAMETER - -SUPERHIRES This starts IE using a SUPERHIRES screen resolution. You need an ECS equipped Amiga to use this resolution. Non-AGA users can only have a maximum of 4 colours while in this resolution. AGA users can have 256. TOOLTYPE - INTERLACE CLI PARAMETER - -INTERLACE This starts IE using an interlace screen resolution. TOOLTYPE - COLOURS= CLI PARAMETER - -COLOURS= This selects the number of colours that will be in the icon. Replace with the number of colours from 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 or 256. For example, "IE -COLOURS=16" will start IE editing icons with 16 colours. TOOLTYPE - DBLHEIGHT CLI PARAMETER - -DBLHEIGHT If you need to create an icon larger than 128 pixels high, this parameter will start IE with a maximum height limit of 256 pixels. TOOLTYPE - DBLWIDTH CLI PARAMETER - -DBLWIDTH If you need to create an icon larger than 320 pixels wide, this parameter will start IE with a maximum width limit of 640 pixels. A FINAL WORD FROM THE AUTHOR ---------------------------- I designed IE to be as simple to use as possible but still possess all the features required for the construction of icons. The Amiga has a far better icon system than ANY of the other machines available and I hope you use IE to utilise the Amiga's icon system to it's fullest. If I can be of any help in your usage of IE or icons then drop me a line. Thanks must go to all the people who have registered. Without this support I would not have made this version. Thanks also to those users who made suggestions for how to improve IE. Here is a count of registrations I have received to date: Country Number -------------------------------------- Australia 41 (To be expected, I guess) Austria 4 Canada 1 France 4 Germany 36 (Hooray for Germany!!!) Holland 1 New Zealand 3 Sweden 2 Switzerland 4 United Kingdom 1 United States of America 13 A very special thanks must go to Leigh Murray of Queanbeyan, Australia for creating the IEv4.0 icons and beta testing IE for me. IE is being constantly updated. If you can think of extra functions that might be of benefit in IE or some ways IE's interface can be enhanced then please contact me and I will seriously consider your suggestions. The best thing about ShareWare programs are that YOU can make input to them which might make your life, and somebody elses, a little easier. If you like IE, or even hate it, please contact me as well as I like to hear what others think about my efforts. I hope that this program is of use to you and if you like it give the demonstration version to all of your friends. Best wishes and happy Iconing... Peter Kiem.