Aus Zeitgründen sind hier zunächst im wesentlichen Kurzbeschreibungen
bzw. die originial Bedienungsanleitungen der Programme wiedergegeben, um eine
Orientierung über die allgemeinen Möglichkeiten zu geben.
1
Bearbeitung
von Graphiken
1.1 Grafikkonverter
Aktuelle Version: 2.4.3 (deutsch)
Auszug aus der README-Datei von Grafikkonverter:
Es ermöglicht die Konvertierung von Bildern aus ATARI-, Amiga- und
IBM-Formaten in MAC-Formate und umgekehrt.
Zusätzlich stellt Grafikkonverter Werkzeuge zur
Bearbeitung von Bildern zur Verfügung. Dies sind u.a. Werkzeugkiste,
Farbreduktion, Dithern u.v.a..
Als besonderes Schmankerl bietet Grafikkonverter die
Mehrfachkonvertierung. Dies ermöglicht z.B. die Wandlung von kompletten
Ordnerinhalten von einem Format in ein anders Format.
1.2 Interaktive Karten mit Webmap
Aktuelle Version: 1.0
Orig. Beschreibung:
WebMap reads GIF and PICT files, and allows you to draw
out the various graphic primitives (rectangle, circle, and polygon) that
represent the hot areas on an html image map.
WebMap supports both the CERN and NCSA imagemap formats.
To use WebMap, open an image file, and draw the graphic
primitives over the areas of the image that should be clickable in an html
browser (Mosaic, etc.), set the URL for each object, and export the marker
definitions into a .map file.
Using WebMap is fairly straightforward.
It allows you to draw rectangles, circles, and polygons, move them (1 or
more at a time), and resize them.
Option-click on an object to edit it's URL (I will get
double clicking going as soon as possible).
Undo is supported for creating, deleting, moving and
resizing objects when you use the mouse (not the keyboard).
Below is a description of how to tweak the objects with the
keyboard.
1.2.1 Resizing:
Modifier Key(s)
= Command
= Command-Control
Left Arrow
Shrinks Horizontally 1 Pixel
Shrinks Horizontally 10 Pixels
Up Arrow
Shrinks Vertically 1 Pixel
Shrinks Vertically 10 Pixels
Right Arrow
Grows Horizontally 1 Pixel
Grows Horizontally 10 Pixels
Down Arrow
Grows Vertically 1 Pixel
Grows Vertically 10 Pixels
1.2.2 Moving:
Modifier Key(s)
= None
= Control
Left Arrow
Moves Left 1 Pixel
Moves Left 10 Pixels
Up Arrow
Moves Up 1 Pixel
Moves Up 10 Pixels
Right Arrow
Moves Right 1 Pixel
Moves Right 10 Pixels
Down Arrow
Moves Down 1 Pixel
Moves Down 10 Pixels
*NOTE: At this time, you cannot resize or reshape polygons. If the polygon
is not drawn right, you must delete it and draw it again. Sorry about that, but
it may change in the future.
List Pane: On the right hand side of the window, there is a list of URL's,
1 for each object. Just double click an item, or select the item and type
`return' to edit the URL.
See WebMap's online help for more information on using
WebMap, and on the NCSA and CERN .map file formats.
Weitere Informationen beim Programmautoren:
Rowland Smith,
City *Net 627 NE 18th, #2, Portland, OR 97232 rowland@city.net
1.3 Animierte Graphiken mit GifBuilder
Aktuelle Version: 0.3.2
Orig. Dokumentation des Programmes
(gekürzt!):
GifBuilder 0.3.2 Documentation
GifBuilder is a scriptable utility for creating animated GIF
files. Its input is an existing animated GIF, a bunch of PICT, GIF and/or TIFF
files or a QuickTime movie, and its output is a GIF89a file with multiple
images.
Options include pixel depth, color palette, interlacing, transparency,
interframe delay, disposal method, frame offset, looping and dithering.
GifBuilder should ultimately be placed onto many ftp archives,
including Info-Mac (in gst/grf), Umich (in graphics/graphicsutil) and their
mirrors.
Please read this document carefully if you want to get the best of
GifBuilder. There are several shortcuts which can make your
work much easier.
1.3.1 Usage
Draw each frame Use any drawing program able to save as PICT, GIF or
TIFF. Save frames in a new folder to make their retrieval easier. If you name
them in alphabetical order (e.g. 0001.tiff, 0002.tiff, etc.), you can easily
sort them later.
Collect frames in GifBuilder Launch
GifBuilder, be sure that there aren't frames from a previous
animation in the Frames window (if that's the case, choose New in the File
menu), and drag the frames from the Finder into the Frames window. If you don't
have the Drag Manager (standard since MacOS 7.5), you can add each frame by
choosing Add Frame in the File menu. You can also copy a picture from another
application, or drag it. Then, check that they're in the correct order and, if
necessary, change their order by dragging frames. You can also remove the
selected frame(s) by choosing Clear in the Edit menu or hitting Backspace, sort
them and reverse their order. Double-clicking a frame will open it in its own
application; if you modify it, save it and choose Reload Frames in the File
menu to update your changes (the Save command always use the disk copy).
Set the options Set the standard graphic options (pixel depth, color
palette and dithering); the GIF options (size, interlacing, transparency); and
the animation options (interframe delay, disposal method, frames position and
looping). Some of these properties (transparency, interframe delay, disposal
method and position) are attached to individual frames; select the frame or
group of frames before changing them. If no frame is selected, the settings
will apply to the default values used for images you import. You can save
the default options by choosing Save Options in the Options menu. Tip: Most
options displayed in the Frames window can be changed by clicking or
double-clicking them.
Check the animation Choose Run in the Animation menu. To display a
specific frame, stop the animation and select it in the Frames window. You can
also use the Home, End, Up and Down keys. To start from the first selected
frame, choose Continue. In the Animation window, you can move a frame by
dragging it, or select the transparent color by Shift-clicking it (you can do
it even when the animation is running, but depending on the speed, you'd better
stop it first!).
Build the animation Choose Save As in the File menu.
Add an image tag to your HTML page Choose Copy HTML Image Tag in the
Edit menu, and paste the resulting IMG tag in your HTML page. IMG fields
contain a relative URL with the current name of the animation as well as the
width and height. Of course, you can edit the tag to change the path of the
image or add optional fields like ALT and ALIGN.
1.3.2 Options
* Interlaced: With interlacing, a first rough image is loaded first, and then
the vertical resolution improves in three additional passes. It isn't very
useful for animations. Colors and Depth: For cross-platform web animations,
the 6x6x6 color table is recommended. The system (or grayscale) 1 bit/pixel
table should be used for black and white images. Images created with other
settings are likely to be dithered on color-table-based machines.
* Dithering: Dithering is a way to simulate intermediate color shades with
clouds of points. It should be used with continuous-tone images. With
dithering, the color table should be chosen so that the image isn't dithered a
second time on the target machine (see above), and transparency should be
off.
* Image Size: When Minimum Size is on, the size is calculated so that the
animation's bottom right corner corresponds to the rightest lowest frame.
Frames are always cropped to fit in the animation bounding box.
* Background Color: The Background Color is the color used to paint the
animation bounding box where no frame is displayed. With some Web browsers, the
page background is used instead.
* Loop: The Loop option specifies how many times the animation is repeated.
Some browsers don't recognize this option, while others loop an unlimited
number of times if the setting is more than 1.
* Transparent Background: All pixels wich have the color specified by the
Transparent Background are left untouched when the frame is rendered.
* Frame Position: Each frame can be shifted by an arbitrary amount. The Frame
Position specifies the horizontal and vertical distances between the top left
animation corner and the top left frame corner. Positive values push the frame
to the left and to the lower part. Negative values result in a cropped
frame.
* Interframe Delay: The Interframe Delay is the delay between the current frame
and the following frame renderings. It's specified in hundredths of seconds
(i.e. 100 means 1 second).
Disposal Method: The Disposal Method specifies what each frame becomes once
the interframe delay is elapsed. Use Unspecified when transparency is off and
each frame covers the whole animation, Do Not Dispose when you want to add some
bits of image to the previous animation state, Revert to Background for moving
objects on a transparent background, and Revert to Previous for moving objects
on a background you've drawn with an earlier large frame. Note that Revert to
Background isn't supported by some browsers.
* Frame Optimization: The Frame Optimization option crops each frame (but the
first one) to the part that has changed. This can result in tremendous file
size savings. If some, but not all, of the frames have the Disposal Method set
to Revert to Background, you are warned that this may give unexpected
results.
1.3.3 Remarks
New:
After asking you if you want to save your previous animation, New removes
all the frames and reads the default settings from the Preference file.
Open:
You can open an existing animation, or append to the end of the current
animation by holding down the Shift key and choosing Open in the File menu or
typing Command-Shift-O. Frames displayed in italic are loaded in memory,
while those displayed in roman correspond to separate files.
Convert:
You can convert a QuickTime movie directly to an animated GIF without
opening it, by choosing Convert in the File menu. This saves a lot of
memory.
Clear:
Clear (in the Edit menu) or the Backspace key deletes the selected frames.
To preserve the timing, hold down the Shift key and choose Special Clear or
type Backspace. Example:<gestrichen>
Undo:
Undo allows to return to the state just before the last operation which
changed the frames or frame order.
1.3.4 Color palette
System Palette and Gray Shades are fixed palette. Best Palette is optimized for
all the frames simultaneously. Load Palette allows to use a
Photoshop-compatible palette file. Four such palettes are included with
GifBuilder. The first one, named "6x6x6 Palette", is a subset
of the System palette where each component takes the six values 0, 51, 102,
153, 204 and 255; it has 6x6x6 = 216 entries. It's the palette used by NetScape
for Windows, so you might want to choose it to avoid additional dithering on
both Macintosh and Windows machines. You can also use subsets: "Gray from 6x6x6
Palette" (six gray values of the 6x6x6 palette), "2x2x2 Palette" (eight basic
colors where each component is 0 or 255), or "16 from 6x6x6 Palette", superset
of the previous one with eight additional colors: (153,153,153), (0,153,255),
(255,51,0), (51,153,0), (255,153,255), (153,204,255), (255,255,153) and
(204,204,204) (see below). All of them should give good results on both the Mac
and Windows.
Note that the 4-bits-per-pixel System palette has some intermediate colors and
shouldn't be used if you're concerned about cross-platform issues.
To reuse the color palette of an existing GIF, open the GIF file with Open (in
the File menu) and save the palette with Save Palette (in the Colors submenu of
the Options menu). The GIF file doesn't have to contain multiple frames.
The format of palette files is 256 entries of three bytes which represent the
red, green and blue values of the corresponding index. 0 is black, and 255 is
the maximum intensity. For palettes of less than 256 colors, fill the unused
entries with the last used one. The file type is '8BCT', and the file creator
should be 'gfBr' (GifBuilder's) to have a nice icon. Note that
in AppleScript, RGB values are in the range 0-65535; to convert them from a
byte value, multiply them by 257.
When you load a palette, you can't choose the depth anymore. Choose a System,
grayscale or best palette before changing the depth.
Scripting (gestrichen!)
1.3.5 Frequently Asked Questions
1.3.5.1 About Animated GIF
Local animations are ok, but when I use an HTTP server, they don't loop and
the end of the last frame is corrupted. What happens?
You probably corrupted the file when you uploaded it to the server. Be sure
that you choose the binary mode (not MacBinary) for your file transfer.
Can I choose which frame is displayed by old browsers? No. Some GIF
decoders display only the first frame, while others render all the images but
don't recognize the looping NetScape 2.0 extension.
Netscape doesn't display correctly transparent animations. Is there a
trick? Try to set the Disposal Method of all the frames to Revert to
Background, and specify a background GIF to be tiled behind the HTML page with
the <body> tag: <body background=tile.gif>.
Is it possible to have an animated background? Not with the current
versions of Netscape (2.0(x)).
Should I put the original images on my server?
No. Animated GIFs are completely self-contained. They don't contain any
references to the original files.
How can I stop animations in NetScape 2.0 for the Mac?
You should hold down the Command key and hit the dot key exactly when
NetScape reloads the image from its cache.
1.3.5.2 About GifBuilder
I want to keep the color palette of my frames, which are GIF files. What
should I do? Open one of your frames in GifBuilder with
Open, add the other frames and set their options, and save the result.
Why can't I choose a System Palette with a depth of 3, 5, 6 or 7
bits/pixel? Because the Mac doesn't define such palettes.
Why is the transparency set to First Pixel even if I specify a color? In
GIF files, the transparency is always based on a color. When
GifBuilder reads an animation, it looks at the first pixel to
see if it's the transparent color, and if so reports that the transparency is
based on it.
How can I choose the comment displayed by JPEGView and other
utilities? You can't. GifBuilder adds a fixed comment
containing its and my names. This is deliberate.
I've found a GifBuilder bug! Revert to Previous doesn't
work! If your browser doesn't handle correctly a feature, this isn't
necessarily a GifBuilder bug. This one, for instance, is most
probably not.
Images are dithered even if I don't select it in
GifBuilder! Why? Images are usually dithered by the browser
if its palette isn't the same as the GIF's. You'd better use the 6x6x6 palette
provided with GifBuilder, which is used by several browsers on
the Mac as well as on alien machines, and let GifBuilder do the
dithering if you need to.
I don't use Windows 3.1 anymore. Are you working on a Windows NT
version? GifBuilder runs on the Mac. I don't intend to port
it to any currently available operating system (I might have ideas about new
ones, however).
1.3.6 Small Print
This document is Copyright 1995-1996, Yves Piguet. All rights reserved. The
author makes no warranty with respect to this document, its quality, accuracy,
or fitness for a particular purpose. As a result, this document is provided "as
is", and the user is assuming the entire risk as to its quality and accuracy.
Author:
Yves Piguet <piguet@ia.epfl.ch>
Av. de la Chablière 35
1004 Lausanne
Switzerland
