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Matthew Montchalin wrote on Thu, Oct 20, 2005 08:16 AM UTC:
Mike Howe,

Can you suggest a good, inexpensive JPEG, GIF, or PNG editor for either
Windows or DOS?

Although the graphics available here at www.chessvariants.org is suitable
for the purpose at hand, I'm tempted to try my hand at changing some of
the graphics around.  What programs do you use?

Unfortunately, my Windows computer crashes a lot.  That means working on
an ordinary 68000 system (plain vanilla ST, 2.5 megs, but at least it's
stable) or a PC that runs DOS.  Sigh.  If only my HP laserfonts from the
olden days could be modified for use on Internet, or changed around so
they could be imported into Windows - but it seems like 99 out of 100 PC
users have never even HEARD of laser font ID codes, or font management ESC
sequences, it's hopeless to even broach the subject, and have them
understand what I am talking about.)  If you remember seeing my fonts from
1988, they were actually pretty good for 300 dpi laserprinter graphics.

Matthew Montchalin wrote on Fri, Oct 21, 2005 07:34 PM UTC:
What did you use before you had Windows?

Matthew Montchalin wrote on Sat, Oct 22, 2005 08:34 AM UTC:
Well, shoot, I'm not at all familiar with Windows.  I just haven't had
much luck with it.  Using the Microsoft 'paint' program, how on earth
would you get your images cut down the middle so the left side can be
reflected over to the right side?  For instance, most chess pieces are
symmetrical along a vertical axis, and I simply haven't the slightest
idea how to do it with the software that comes with Windows.

Matthew Montchalin wrote on Sat, Oct 22, 2005 07:42 PM UTC:
Black and white seems particularly appropriate to graphics for chess
programs.  What graphics editor did you use for the Macintosh?

Mark Thompson wrote on Mon, Oct 24, 2005 12:31 AM UTC:
'most chess pieces are symmetrical along a vertical axis, and I simply
haven't the slightest idea how to do it with the software that comes with
Windows.'

In MS Paint, make sure you uncheck the option 'Draw Opaque' under
'Image', and then draw the left- or right-half of your image. Leave the
rest of the image white. Then select all, copy, and while the copy is
selected, choose Image / Flip-Rotate / Horizontal. That will flip the
'copy' to its own mirror-image. Then you can adjust its position with
the mouse to line up with the other half.

Matthew Montchalin wrote on Mon, Oct 24, 2005 03:41 AM UTC:
Thanks!  I'll give that a shot.

Say, can you suggest a way for me to strip off the HP laserprinter headers
to arrive at a Windows compatible font of some kind?  Most HP laserprinter
fonts predating the HP3 series were similar to .BMP fonts, and as such
were non-scalable.

Mark Thompson wrote on Tue, Oct 25, 2005 12:44 AM UTC:
Strip off HP laserprinter headers? Sorry, no idea on that one--not even
sure I understand the question. Maybe someone else knows.

Matthew Montchalin wrote on Tue, Oct 25, 2005 09:42 PM UTC:
In a day and age where many people think it too much work to do anything
other than rastering out a single line of pixels to the laserprinter, and
then, as needs be, repeat it, row by row, until the picture is printed, it
might go past some people - the ones that only have Windows - that there
are still some people out there who sit around loading 'softfonts' into
their memory, and then, after exporting those fonts to a laserprinter,
find it convenient to juggle them around with no more than a short ESC
sequence to effect an overall change in printout. (It sure beats having to
reload 64K of bytes every time you want to switch from italic to upright,
or from plain to bold, or large to small, including subscripts and
superscript, just to print out a document of medium complexity.)

Back in the olden days, laserprinters tended to have just enough room for
a few dozen softfonts, and the only way to get them in, was by sending ESC
codes to the laserprinter, almost always with a preliminary 'printer
reset' code consisting of two bytes:  1b 45  - so I was wondering if you
had any tips on how to modify my laserfonts from the olden days for use
with Windows?  Of course, things are more complicated than snipping off
two bytes.  It turns out that there are hosts of other ESC sequences that
need to be fixed up, or turned around.  Like whether a font is
proportional or fixed, upright or italic, that sort of thing.

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 6, 2006 09:38 PM UTC:
The graphics editor I use is Ultimate Paint. It is a very powerful editor with many features, including the ability to write your own filters in programming code. It is inexpensive shareware and is also available in a freeware version.

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