hull@hao.ucar.edu (Howard Hull) (02/05/88)
While preparing a backdrop suitable for use on an A1000 with 1 Meg Insider I have here at work, I stumbled across a method of using DPaint II to clean up the .pic file so that it can be used with a 640X400 interlaced workbench dropcloth without having the bottom half of the image all garbaged up (as was mentioned in the bug report for Dropcloth 2.0 (Article 4904@well)). Likely it will work even with a 512K Amiga, as it was ok with use of FastMem, which limits memory use to only Chip memory. You may have to Control-D the initial CLI early in the boot to assure having some room if you are going to do anything with DPaint II brushes, though. The procedure does not require use of brushes, per se, though. The steps are as follows: 1. Bring up DPaint II w/ four colors, in Med-Res mode (640X200 / 4). 2. Load the picture. 3. Activate the "Screen Format" item in the Picture menu. 4. Select Hi-Res with 4 colors (640 X 400 / 4). 5. Select OK 6. After the screen is redrawn, again select the Screen Format item. 7. Now select Med-Res with 4 colors (640 X 200 / 4). 8. Select OK 9. Activate the "Save" item from the Picture menu. 10. Save the file under any name that pleases you. 11. Select "Quit" from the picture menu. That's all there is to it... Brushes are useful for "resquaring" the pixels. Make a brush from a portion of the image while in 640X200 / 4 (or make a brush the whole thing, if you have enough memory!). Select the Size item from the Brush menu. Select half size from the sub-menu, then select double vertical. Clear the screen and paste in the brush (leftward, so as to leave room for Workbench icons that'll come along the right side after invocation). Save the file under any desired name... There are other means, as well, as specified in the articles about the use of PixMate; see the other references: 2029@gryphon.CTS.COM 2039@tekred.TEK.COM. As for using a 640X400 full backdrop, I can make one by writing the file with DPaint II in 640X400 / 4 mode, but I get a title bar across the lower portion of the image, and, as mentioned in previous discussion, a Guru on next running of dropcloth. As was also pointed out before, DropCloth 2.0 does not support the 640X400 Workbench, so don't flame Eric Lavitsky if it doesn't do what you want it to. But you can still have the top half, and even proper behavior of windows (except for the top-level E/F gauge) all over a 640X400 Workbench by using the procedure outlined above. Howard Hull hull@hao.ucar.edu