NEOPIC V2.0 16th February 1992 (By G.Gregson 1992) What is Neopic? --------------- Many moons ago I wrote a small GFA program to randomise the desktop picture Neodesk III displayed on boot up. Such a program is needed as Neodesk can only choose a single picture on boot for any given resolution. (The picture being held in the Neodesk folder as: NEOPIC_L.xxx - for low res NEOPIC_M.xxx - for medium res NEOPIC_H.xxx - for High res where xxx is either NEO, PI? or PC?. Additionally if the picture was changed manually then the Neodesk pallette also required updating. This program was rather basic (excuse the pun!) and relied upon copying the new picture from a fixed folder and then updating the NEO.INF file. Recently I discovered Borlands excellent TURBO C for the ST (now PURE C ) and was keen to get into C programming. I decided to use an upgrade of Neopic to pick up the language and hopefully provide some more features. The result is NEOPIC V2.0 a freeware utility offering the following functions:- - Neodesk III compatible accessory as described in the Neodesk developers kit. - Automatically randomly selects a picture for the desktop on boot. - Randomly chooses a new picture after each application is executed from the desktop. - Pictures can be displayed randomly by clicking on the Neopic desktop icon (or using keyboard shortcut). - Picture(s) may be displayed by dragging file(s) to the Neopic desktop icon. - Automatic update of picture pallette. - Picture directory may be located on any drive as specified by NEOPIC environment variable. - Allows the use of PI?, PC? Degas pictures, .NEO neochrome, plus GEM .IMG files in mono. - Supports Overscan and Bigscreen in all resolutions, with automatic replication of the selected picture to fill the whole screen. Tired of creating those little icon pictures? Neopic also provides the following icon grabbing functions:- - Selective enabling of icon grabber, plus dialog help menu. - Any area of screen may be captured and used as an icon even within applications (grab your favourite software logos for use as icons!) - Supports reduction of grab area to icon size up to x8 using Floyd-Stienburg dithering. - Allows icon colour and contrast to be adjusted prior to saving. - Icons saved as .RSC files for inclusion in your own programs or for import and touch up within the Neodesk Icon Editor. - Full Overscan and Bigscreen support plus moveable icon display dialog. How to Install Neopic --------------------- Neopic is a Neodesk III compatible desktop accessory. As such, prior to use, Neodesk must be informed of its presence. To do this, go to the Neodesk OPTIONS menu and select Set Preferences. Click on the box labeled Accesories.... and type NEOPIC in a spare slot, then click OK to exit. In order that Neopic knows where to look for pictures you should now move to the Environment selection in the OPTIONS menu and enter:- NEOPIC=x:\dir1\....\pictures\ Where x is the drive letter,\dir1\... is the directory path and pictures\ is the directory containing PI?,PC? or .IMG picture files. Once this is done return to the options menu and select save configuration. Finally, copy NEOPIC.ACC to the root directory of your boot drive and re-boot the machine! If all goes well, when Neodesk loads you should be presented with a picture from your chosen directory as the Neodesk desktop. Using Neopic ------------ To use Neopic for displaying pictures other than randomly, you should drag the NEOPIC.ACC file from the root directory to the desktop. Once here the following actions may be performed. 1) Double click the icon to randomly change the desktop picture. (Or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+number. Where number is the slot number where you entered NEOPIC in the preferences menu). 2) Drag file(s) to the icon for display. Multiple files will be displayed in quick succession. To alter Neopics operation select Neopic from the desk menu. A dialog will appear with the following options:- 1) The left hand buttons allow selection of what types of files are selected for random display. Note only the kind applicable to the current resolution are enabled ( .GIF is only there for future versions...work in progress). Also .NEO is always enabled but never selected on boot, as it is not possible to determine the picture resolution from the extender. For this reason .NEO files should not be used in random mode, unless you are sure they are of the current resolution (or you don't mind getting error alerts!) 2) The Random button enables/disables random picture loading after each application is executed. 3) HELP provides help on the Icon grabber keys. 4) Icon enables/disables the icon grabber. 5) OK or pressing return dismisses the dialog. Icon Grabber ------------ To enable icon grabbing select Icon as described above. Now load up a suitable picture on the desktop or switch to the application which contains the image you want. To start capturing press both mouse buttons simultaneously and a small icon sized box will appear. Additionally a small dialog box will appear showing the captured icon. (If you are using Bigscreen, the dialog may not be visible but may be found by scrolling to the upper right of the screen). If the dialog box is off screen or obscuring the part of screen you wish to capture, then it may be moved. This is achieved by clicking anywhere within it with the left mouse button and dragging the outline box to its new position. To move the icon capture area a similar procedure is used, this time clicking and dragging the small outline box with the left mouse button. Each time the capture box is moved, the dialog icon is updated. The size of the area to be captured may be altered by clicking the right mouse button. This cycles through eight increasing sizes and then returns to x1. You will notice at larger sizes than x1 that the captured icon looks jagged. To improve this, dithering may be turned on by pressing the CONTROL key (Don't expect miracles though as there's only so much detail you can store in 32x32pixels!!). Additionally moving the box a pixel or two either way may produce a better result depending on which parts of the picture are sampled. Similarly adjusting the contrast using the left and right shift keys may also improve the image. This is particularly true with colour images since this alters the thresholding levels of each colour to the monochrome icon. Finally, depending on the picture colour pallette, you may need to adjust the icon mask and data colours. This is achieved using the following keys :- / * - + To exit and save your captured icon, press both mouse buttons simultaneously again. The fileselector will appear and you may enter a filename (note this should have the extension .RSC). To use the icon, either load it into a suitable resource editor for use within your own programs or return to the Neodesk desktop. from here select Edit Icons from the OPTIONS menu and load up the saved .RSC file. The saved icon may be copied from this file to the Neodesk icons window and edited as usual. Note that the Icon grabber may be used wether Neodesk is left resident during application execution or not. In fact, the icon grabber may be used even if you do not have Neodesk and only use the normal ST desktop (although background picture loading only works with Neodesk). Don't forget to disable the icon grabber when not in use to avoid conflict with other applications that may use the L+R mouse click (such as the GUCK file reader). Error Messages -------------- The following alerts may be displayed during picture loading:- Not Enough Memory - Although Neopic is only 26703 bytes in size it requires additional memory for picture buffering. For normal resolutions this will be 64K. However for Overscan and Bigscreen, this can increase to 32K plus the size of the virtual screen memory (i.e. up to 200K). To reduce memory usage Neopic should be ran without a default picture in the Neodesk folder. However if the above message appears it probably means all memory is in use and a reboot is required to remove unnecessary AUTO programs or accessories. Do Not Recognise This Picture - a picture with an invalid extension for the current resolution or wrong extender has been loaded. (This often appears if .NEO is selected, for the reasons mentioned above). No Pictures Here - No pictures can be found in the designated folder. Error in Picture - An error was detected decoding the current image. Known Bugs (Ahem...undocumented features?) ---------- 1) The colours selected within the icon grabber are not always seen within the Neodesk icon editor. Neodesks icon editor obviously doesn't use the documented AES icon attributes. Consequently it may be necessary to adjust the colours using the icon editor tool box, prior to saving in a Neodesk resource or .NIC file. User of resource editors should find that the icon grabber colours are preserved correctly. 2) Overscan - when running multi window applications in Overscan mode the icon dialog box leaves 'copies' if moved. This is due to the way overscan handles the screen. This may be annoying but does not present a great problem, since all copies are removed when icon capture is terminated. Also the larger screen area of Overscan often eliminates any need to move the icon dialog box. 3) Calamus - this program is a master at stealing mouse clicks from other programs, particularly accessories. To avoid this always start icon grabbing outside of the document page window (i.e. over the desktop or icon panel). This accessory has been extensively tested on my 3.5M ST (yes I did say 3.5M) and hopefully no other bugs or undocumented features exist. However if you do find any please drop me a note giving details. Work In Progress ---------------- Other features planned include:- - GIF and XIMG support. - Automatic resolution conversion of pictues to current resolution. (with options for converted picture save). - Larger icon and image capture for resource editing. - Colour cycling support and maybe even Spectrum piccies. General ------- This program is released as Freeware and all the usual conditions apply. i.e. I am not liable for any damage caused to your system by use or misuse of this application as it is used at your own discretion. Furthermore this program may be copied and passed on free of charge so long as all the original files are kept with it, as follows:- NEOPIC.ACC - The accessory program README.TXT - This text file NEOPIC.NIC - Some example icons NEOPIC.IMG - example image If you like this program and/or would like to contact me (donations welcome Ho! Ho!), you can do so via Fidonet or NeST at the addresses provided in the main dialog. Alternatively write to:- G.Gregson 42 Birdhall Road Cheadle Hulme Cheadle Cheshire SK8 5QH England Additionally any suggestions for improvements will be welcomed. Last but not least....many thanks to Daron Brewood of STUN BBS for his support, suggestions and program testing throughout the development of Neopic V2.0. G.Gregson 16th February 1992