mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) (06/14/88)
> *Excerpts from ext.nn.comp.sys.amiga: 4-Jun-88 Re: Fixed (mostly)* > *doug-merritt@cup.portal. (718)* > Chuck McManis writes: > >There was another program on the net, but I don't know if it is on a > >fish disk, that will change the "type" of an icon from TOOL, to PROJECT > >to DISK etc. Any one of the icon tools should be appropriate. > I'm pretty sure it *was* on a fish disk, but I don't recommend it; > there are two formats for icon files, and the utility in question will > only change the type field, without concern for the rest of the format. > Thus it will certainly break some things. It'd be easy to fix if anyone > cares. There are actually three versions of "IconType" on the Fish Disks. One of them is included as part of the "XIcon" distribution on Fish Disk 120, and was written by Pete Goodeve. Another version is on Fish Disk 69 and was written by Larry Phillips. The third is on Fish 137 and is written by Stephen Vermeulen. I tried the Fish Disk 69 version on an icon I had constructed from a Dpaint brush to change it to a Drawer. The resulting icon crashed Workbench every time I clicked on it (frozen mouse pointer, reboot time). As a public service, here is a list of all icon-manipulating programs on the Fish Disks, courtesy of Carolyn Scheppner's GetFish command: ================ DISK: 12 IconExec Tools which allow execution of a program from an icon without having to recompile the program. Author: John Toebes VIII SetAlternate Merge the images from two icons to produce one icon with a primary image, and a possibly completely different image to display when selected. Author: John Toebes VIII ================ DISK: 56 Icon2C Reads an icon file and writes out a fragment of C code with the icon data structures, for inclusion in a larger program. Author: Carolyn Scheppner ================ DISK: 69 IconType Change the type of an icon after editing with IconEd. Types are Disk, Drawer, Tool, Project, Garbage, and Device. Includes source. Author: Larry Phillips ================ DISK: 71 IconMk Iconmaker builds icons for files that were created without them. Version 1.2a, binary only. Author: Eric Levy ================ DISK: 85 ImageTools A set of shareware tools, submitted by the author, to do various manipulations on IFF images, including comparison of the color palettes of a pair of IFF images, filtering an IFF image in various ways, producing a color usage frequency chart for an IFF image, reducing the size of an IFF image to produce a miniature to use as an icon, converting an icon to an IFF image, and recoloring an IFF image using the palette of a second image, in a least squared error fashion. Shareware, binary only. Author: Stephen Vermeulen ================ DISK: 87 AutoIconOpen Example code to fool WorkBench into thinking it is receiving mouse inputs that select and open icons. This is version 1.2, an update to the version on disk number 73. Includes source. Author: Tony Wills ================ DISK: 101 IconAssembler This program loads existing WorkBench icon files and allows you to change either the primary or alternate images to another image loaded from an IFF-brush file. Binary only. Author: Stefan Lindahl ================ DISK: 102 Xicon Xicon lets you use icons to call up scripts containing CLI commands. This is version 2.00, an update to the version first released on disk 31, and includes close gadgets, window size specification, text display capability, plus more. Binary only. Author: Pete Goodeve ================ DISK: 113 NoIconPos This program clears the position info of any of your icons to allow WorkBench to pick a reasonable place for the icon again. Useful for disk and drawer icons where Snapshot rewrites the icon and the window information. Written in Modula-2, another demo for M2Amiga, showing the simplicity of programming with this Modula-2 compiler. Author: Markus. Schaub ================ DISK: 120 IconImage Program to replace an old icon image with a new image, without affecting icontype, drawer data, etc. Includes source. Author: Denis Green ================ DISK: 137 Sit An update to the Set Icon Type program from disk 107. Version 1.10, includes source. Author: Stephen Vermeulen ================ Michael Portuesi / Information Technology Center / Carnegie Mellon University ARPA/UUCP: mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu BITNET: rainwalker@drycas "if you ain't ill it'll fix your car"
phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) (06/25/88)
There's at least one icon manipulation program that hasn't been written yet. If no one else does it anytime soon, I may set out to do it (but I don't have much Amiga hacking experience---maybe it would be a good "first real project" right after "hello, world"). There are a few crazed loonies out in the real world that like to read black characters on a light background. No, I'm not a Mac user...I'm primarily a Sun user. As a result, my workbench colors are completely different from the "standard" set. I use a black foreground and a light tan-colored background. I have my other colors set to red and blue. That makes my text windows look okay, but the icons look terrible! I have edited the more common ones using iconed to make them look better. But what I would really like to see is an icon tool that shuffles the colors around. For example: swap colors 1 and 3 and colors 2 and 4 (or more accurately, swap the pixels associated with those colors), or any user specifiable permutation. This would make it easy to "import" icons into my non-standard environment and have them look reasonable. The program wouldn't change the shapes, just the "color value" for each pixel in the image. It should be able to handle merged icons as well (those with a completely different "selected" bitmap). Did that make sense? Has anyone ever thought of this before? It doesn't sound very hard to me. Does everyone *really* use white on blue? By the way, I have also changed the cursor colors so that the snooze cloud is pure white. Looks great on a tan background! Now if I could just change the cloud itself......(and if it could just be available to everyone).....Isn't that coming in 1.4? William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University <phil@Rice.edu>
jimm@amiga.UUCP (Jim Mackraz) (06/27/88)
In article <1554@kalliope.rice.edu> phil@Rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
)There are a few crazed loonies out in the real world that like to read
)black characters on a light background. No, I'm not a Mac user...I'm
)primarily a Sun user. As a result, my workbench colors are completely
)different from the "standard" set.
)That makes my text windows look okay, but the icons look terrible!
)edited the more common ones using iconed to make them look better. But
)what I would really like to see is an icon tool that shuffles the colors
)around. For example: swap colors 1 and 3 and colors 2 and 4 (or more
)accurately, swap the pixels associated with those colors), or any user
)specifiable permutation. This would make it easy to "import" icons into
)my non-standard environment and have them look reasonable. The program
)wouldn't change the shapes, just the "color value" for each pixel in the
)image. It should be able to handle merged icons as well (those with a
)completely different "selected" bitmap).
)Did that make sense? Has anyone ever thought of this before? It doesn't
)sound very hard to me. Does everyone *really* use white on blue?
Another big advantage of dark on light, is that the dark horizontal
inter-line gaps only dice up light things. So rather than having
striated characters that look like something from CGA, you get a
horizontal texture to your background and full characters: looks real
sharp.
I have thought about an icon manipulation program. If you are starting
on one, consider adding a feature to mix an icon image down to two
colors, in case you ever wanted them to look good on a two-color workbench.
'Nuff said.
I wonder if Butcher would handle this.
)By the way, I have also changed the cursor colors so that the snooze cloud
)is pure white. Looks great on a tan background! Now if I could just
)change the cloud itself......(and if it could just be available to
)everyone).....Isn't that coming in 1.4?
Dunno. Too soon to tell. ;^)
) William LeFebvre
) Department of Computer Science
) Rice University
) <phil@Rice.edu>
Department of CS? You should be able to get the icon munger written.
If you're faculty, tell a graduate student to write it, or tell an
undergraduate that he'll get "extra credit" if he writes it. If you're
an undergraduate, ask a faculty member if they'll give you extra credit
to write it. If you are a graduate student, write it because it is
good for your soul, and you're supposed to be able to do anything, on
any computer. If you're a non-teaching employee, try this approach on one.
--
Jim Mackraz, I and I Computing
amiga!jimm BIX:jmackraz
Opinions are my own. Comments regarding the Amiga operating system, and
all others, are not to be taken as Commodore official policy.hull@hao.ucar.edu (Howard Hull) (07/04/88)
It would indeed be nice to have light-on-dark to dark-on-light general purpose object color shuffler for icons. More so even than that, I need a color shuffler for Digiview. I acquired the par port plug-in module (dongle), the documentation, and a disk (which upon close inspection seems to have a label made on a black and white electrographic copier) as used "software" for my A1000 from a Denver dealer. The order in which this version of Digiview (2.0) places the colors is absolutely terrible! Why did they do it that way? (It's interleaved). Does anyone know if this is any different in the new (RSN) version of Digiview (3.0)? Does "Butcher" fix up this kind of mess? If so, who markets Butcher? Howard Hull hull@hao.ucar.edu