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xmred - garden editor for xmris
xmred [-option ...] [-toolkitoption
...]
Mr Ed is a tool for creating and editing alternate gardens
for Mr Is. Hopefully its user interface is intuitive enough that most of
this manual page need not be read by a casual user.
In the default configuration,
the main window presents a garden image on the left, a control panel on
the right and a list of gardens underneath. Gardens can be loaded and saved
using the menu, these then appear in the list below. The insert option loads
a file into the copy buffer. It can then be dragged to the desired place
in the garden list.
To edit a garden (or comment, or include), either select
it with a button press and release, or with a drag and drop into the edit
box at the lower right. The drag and drop will remove it from the garden
list, selection will copy it, and the source garden will be updated too.
To delete gardens, drag them to the copy buffer. The main garden display
will be updated, if it was a garden being moved to the edit box. The box
on the lower right is a copy buffer. You can drag and drop into and out
of this to the garden list or one of the edit boxes. Similarly you can drag
and drop from the edit boxes to the garden list, and within the garden
list itself. Note that drag and drop always removes the source, if it is
within the garden list, whereas selection does not delete the source.
The
control panel shows a set of options, which can be bound to buttons. This
can be done either by press and release with the required button, or drag
and drop onto the required button's icon. You can bind an option to more
than one button. However, press and release on the apples option will simply
change the currently selected explicit apple, not necessarily bind that
option to a new button. The fill pattern and color can be select by pressing
on them. The current garden will be updated. The list of buttons shows which
options are bound to which buttons. You can also change button bindings
by pressing the destination button with the pointer over the button with
the required option's icon, or by drag and drop from button to button.
The
six options are,
- Apple
- This selects where apples from one of the four sets
of explicit apple locations are placed. To select which set is being controlled,
press on the relevant quadrant of the icon. One of these sets is used when
Mr Is is used with the +random option. You can place apples anywhere there
isn't a path, even in an unstable location, which will immediately fall.
Placing an explicit apple on a path, will fill the path.
- Random
- This controls
where apples may be placed randomly, if Mr Is is started with the -random
option. Apples will only be placed on the specified locations, or where
ever an explicit apple could be located. Unless you specify otherwise, random
apples may be located anywhere there isn't a path, even unstable locations
which will immediately fall. Placing a random apple on a path, will fill
the path.
- Cherry
- This controls where cherries are located. There must be
at least one cherry on a garden. Cherries may be located anywhere on the
board.
- Path
- This controls where the initial path is. Each location on the
board consists of a centre and four edges. Depending on the exact location
of the pointer, you will select either the centre, or an edge. Filling a
path will place a random apple in the filled location. The four locations
immediately below the
- Player
- This controls where the player starts from.
There must be exactly one such location.
- Den
- This controls where the monsters
start from. There must be at least one den.
The list of totals show the counts
for the explicit apples, cherries, random apples required, apple spaces,
unstable apple positions, dens and player positions. A warning is shown
on the left of any which are inconsistant, or out of range. The number of
apples for a garden can be set by moving the scroll bar at the left of
the apple icon. Note that when you change the number of apples, or add or
remove explicit apples, a warning will change on on some or all of the
explicit apple counts. This is just to remind you that you must do some
more work on the garden, before it is consistant. There are two types of
random apple spaces, stable and unstable. The unstable space count is shown
with an arrow in it, the other apple space count shows the total number
of apple spaces. The hazzard warning on the unstable count, just shows that
you have some unstable apple positions (this may be intentional on your
part). The hazzard on the total apple space count indicates that there are
less spaces than the number of apples you specified for the garden.
Below
this is a comment box for the garden. Selecting this will pop up a dialog
which you can enter information about the garden.
At the lower right of
the control panel is a display mode selector. There are three display modes.
The first shows all the explicit apple positions, 4 to a cell when required.
The second shows only one set of explicit apples, the set selected using
the apples option quadrant. The final mode shows none of the explicit apples,
just the random apple spaces.
The garden display is on the left of this.
It shows the currently edited garden. Clicking or dragging a mouse button
on this area will perform the option currently bound to that button. You
will notice the totals change when you do this.
Mr Ed will use colour sprites,
if the visual permits it (has a colour map size of more than 15, and you
haven't forced monochrome). All the colours bar black and white are user
definable. There are four sets, one for each of the four combinations of
gender and swap flag. The colours are allocated in reverse order of their
distance in colour space, from currently allocated colours (the most distant
colours are allocated first). That way, if allocation fails because the
colour map is full, an allocated substitute colour, which is nearest the
desired colour, can be used and the allocated colours are kept maximally
distant. You can limit the number of distinct colours with the -distinct
option. A warning message is sent to stderr, if a colour allocation fails.
The -colours argument shows how these are allocated, and -help -colours can
be used to get the colour resource names.
Mr Ed accepts the standard
X Toolkit options, as well as these.
- -help
- Lists the command options, application resource fields and some other
information to stderr. Does not start the game. If the -colours option is
supplied too, then the colour resource classes are listed instead, with
their default values. The format of this list is suitable for inclusion
in a resource file. Note, this does not list out the colour values that
you would get if you ran the game, as it does not read the color resources.
- -swap
- -rv
- -reverse
- Normally the foreground is black and the background
white, this swaps them round. On colour systems, this may also alter other
colours.
- +swap
- -noswap
- Override a swap resource in your resources, to force unswapped
colours.
- -mono
- Use black and white, even on colour displays. (Unfortunately, the
obvious option, '-bw', is already nabbed by the toolkit as borderwidth.)
- -mris
- -msit
- -gender gender
- Mr Ed has two sets of sprites. Mris selects the
classic sprites, while msit selects a more modern set. Valid genders are
'he', 'she', 'female', 'male', 'msit', 'mris', 'boy', 'girl'.
- -depth depth
- Mr Ed will use the default depth of the screen. You may wish
to override that by using this option. Selecting a different depth may affect
the visual selected.
- -visual visual-class
- Mr Ed will pick the default visual, but you can override
that by specifying a particular visual class. Valid visuals are 'PseudoColor',
'DirectColor', 'TrueColor', 'StaticColor', 'GrayScale', and 'StaticGray'. To see which
one is picked, you can use the -colours option. If you do select a non-default
visual, you may have to specify a private colour map too, due to limitations
of the server or display.
- -private
- This forces Mr Ed to allocate a private colour map. Normally Mr
Ed will share the default colour map of the selected visual, but if that
does not have enough free colour cells then some colours will have to be
shared.
- -colours
- -colors
- Show how the colours are allocated, and which visual
has been selected. The allocation is listed to stdout. When allocating each
colour, its resource name and rgb values are listed together with the nearest
already allocated colour and the distance between them in colour space.
The allocated pixel number is printed last. If given with the -help option,
the colour resource classes are listed, and the game does not start.
- -distinct n
- Sets the number of distinct colours used. This can be used to
limit the number of colours used from the colour map. Black and white are
not included, and neither are the two writable colours used for the garden
backgrounds on dynamic visuals. Note that -distinct 0 is different from -mono,
even though both will only use black and white.
Mr Ed uses the
X toolkit application resource mechanism for setting up the environment.
Application resource items start with 'Xmris', so that Mr Ed will pick up
your defaults for Mr Is. The resource name can be derived from the given
resource class by decapitalizing it. For example 'cherryStalk' is the resource
name for the class 'cherryStalk'. The following classes are used (choices
in '{}' and defaults in '[]'.)
- Xmris.ReverseVideo: {yes, no} [no]
- Specifies whether to use swapped colours
or not.
- Xmris.Mono: {yes, no} [no]
- Whether the default is for monochrome on colour
displays.
- Xmris.Gender: gender [he]
- Sets the default game gender. Valid genders are
'mris', 'msit', 'she', 'he', 'female', 'male', 'boy', 'girl'.
- Xmris.Depth: depth
- Set the required screen depth to use.
- Xmris.Visual: visual-class
- Set the required visual class to use. Valid visuals
are 'PseudoColor', 'DirectColor', 'TrueColor', 'StaticColor', 'GrayScale', and 'StaticGray'.
- Xmris.Private: {yes, no} [no]
- Set whether or not to use a private colour
map.
- Xmris.Distinct: n
- Set the number of distinct colours allocated from the
colour map.
In addition, you have the normal resources such as '*Font'.
There are many colour name defaults. For a full description see
the xmris(6)
manual page, but note that not all the colors are used for
Mr Ed. Provided that you specified the colour resources for Mr Is loosely
enough, Mr Ed will pick up the same overrides. The foreground color for
the Icon widgets is copied from the apple faint color on color visuals
(this is important for the noswap color scheme).
There are
a few resources which are picked up from widgets within the widget tree.
They are the initial button bindings, colors, fills and mode. The bindings
are attached to the individual button displays. The options are 'apple', 'random',
'cherry', 'path', 'player' and 'den'. The colors, fills and mode are attached to
the color, fill and mode form widgets. The value must be an integer in the
correct range.
There is an additional composite resource for children of
composite widgets (Paned and SimpleMenu), called 'attach'. This allows you
to change the ordering of sibling widgets. Mr Ed uses this resource to determine
the correct order to create the sibling widgets. For instance, to get the
control panel on the left of the garden widget, use the constraint '*one.garden.attach:panel'.
In addition, the widgets are created in such an order that Form constraints
'fromHoriz' and 'fromVert' can be specified in any order.
There are four new
widgets used for Mr Ed, 'Icon', 'Drag', 'Garden' and 'PixmapList'.
The Icon widget
is a subclass of Simple. It displays a pixmap and allows its selection with
any button press. If a button is dragged on it, it may invoke a drag widget
to perform a drag operation. It has the following new resources of interest.
- dragSensitivity: pixels [4]
- Sets the minimum drag which must occur, before
a drag widget is popped up, to take over the dragging. When set to zero,
dragging is disabled.
- flashDelay: delay [100]
- Sets the time for which the widget is highlit
after selection. This time is in milliseconds.
- highlightThickness: pixels [1]
- Sets the thickness of the highlight box.
- foreground: color [default foreground]
- Sets the color of the highlight
box and block.
The Drag widget is a subclass of OverrideShell. It displays
a pixmap, and follows the pointer until a button is released. Its use is
for drag and drop. It has no additional resources of user interest.
The Garden
widget is a subclass of Simple. It performs the garden editing. It has no
additional resources of user interest.
The PixmapList widget is a subclass
of Simple. It displays a list of pixmaps, and permits them to be scrolled.
Each pixmap may be selected by a button press on it, or a drag widget invoked
by dragging on a pixmap. In addition to the Icon widget additional resources,
it has the following additional resources of user interest.
- distance: pixels [4]
- The distance between each pixmap.
- pixmapBorderWidth: pixels [1]
- The border width for each pixmap.
- pixmapBorderColor: color [default foreground]
- The border color for each
pixmap.
A few environment variables are used to locate resources.
- DISPLAY
- The default display to connect to. May be overridden with the -display
option.
- ~/.Xdefaults
- ...-....--.
- You can place you favourite key bindings and stuff in an
application resource file, and Mr Ed will use them, rather than its compiled
defaults. See X for information about how these are searched.
...-<>- Search path for loadable gardens used by Mr Is.
xmris(6)
If
a loaded garden is incorrect, an error dialog is displayed, enabling you
to locate the offending garden and lines.
The visual class name conversion
is performed by a standard toolkit routine. It accepts only American spelling,
the English spelling of 'grey' and 'colour' are not allowed.
The Drag widget
should perhaps just be a shell, having a single child of Icon, to do the
rendering.
The PixmapList widget should perhaps be a composite widget with
Icon children. However when I tried this using a Box widget, it didn't work
with the insert function.
Copyright (C) 1993 Nathan Sidwell.
Nathan
Sidwell <nathan@pact.srf.ac.uk> <http://www.pact.srf.ac.uk/~nathan/
>
Additional sprites
by Stefan Gustavson <stefang@isy.liu.se>
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