Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!amiga!jimm
From: jimm@amiga.UUCP (Jim Mackraz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Icon manipulation programs.
Message-ID: <2507@amiga.UUCP>
Date: 26 Jun 88 19:55:20 GMT
References: <5956@cup.portal.com> <6790010@hpcllld.HP.COM> <6172@cup.portal.com> <55354@sun.uucp> <6224@cup.portal.com>  <1554@kalliope.rice.edu>
Reply-To: jimm@cloyd.UUCP (Jim Mackraz)
Organization: Commodore-Amiga Inc, Los Gatos CA
Lines: 61

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
)			


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.