IconPainter is shareware written by Colin Mummery who can be contacted at
equitysoft@iname.com and whose homepage is
www.kagi.com/equitysoft.
IconPainter installation notes
The IconPainter ZIP file name indicates the date that the product version in the file was built in day/month/year order.
The IconPainter ZIP file contains 5 files.
- This file
- The Changes file
- The license
- The IconPainter JAR file
-
A registration program for Windows
- A windows bat file for running IconPainter if double clicking is disabled
IconPainter requires that the Java 2 virtual machine be installed on your machine (Sun calls this the JRE). This
is available free at Sun's website.
The program is packaged into the single JAR file. This can be run by either double clicking on it
in Windows (or a single click in Solaris) or alternatively with the command
java -jar IconPainter.jar
The IconPainter JAR file is self-contained and should not be unzipped. This JAR file cannot be run as an applet
in a browser, instead it must be run as a standalone application (similar to a '.exe' file on a PC).
It can be placed in any directory on a users
machine. When it runs it will create two directories as subdirectories to the directory where
it resides. These are called "props" and "myicons". The directory "props" contains files for saving
session information as well as registration information. The directory "myicons" is the default directory for saved icons.
If the user saves the current palette a third directory called "palettes" will be created. Erasing any
of the directories is not critical as they will automatically be recreated by IconPainter however they also
contains registration information so the registrattion code may have to be re-entered.
The user manual for the product is accessed via the help menu.
The minimum recommended PC for the product is a Pentium 233 with 24 MBytes of RAM.
It is written entirely using the Sun Java 2 JRE and users must have this installed on their machine.
PNG and TIFF support
PNG and TIFF support is now included in IconPainter and this is done using the free Java Advanced Imaging libraries
available for free from Sun. IconPainter automatically
detects if JAI is installed and adjusts displays accordingly.
Known issues
- The JAI TIFF codec cannot read some TIFFs and saved TIFF are always uncompressed
- Flood filling larger (eg. 150x150+) images can produce a fatal error because of an out of memory condition
- The GIF's produced by default have a maximum of 128 colors due to a bug in the code to write
256 colors. This code does not use the LZW compression algorithm.
- The top-most images displayed in the help box are sometimes distorted - this is a java bug
- With antialiasing turned off and gradient fill turned on outlined shapes
are moved up and to the left one pixel - java bug.
Display problems
If you use a Windows PC and the IconPainter windows are not repainting properly then right
click on the desktop and select properties. This gives you the Display properties dialog. Select
Settings then Advanced and turn down the graphics acceleration. Turning down the acceleration may
also cause the cursor to flicker in which case turn off IconPainter's animated logo by using
the appropriate option in the "Settings" menu.
Paying for IconPainter
IconPainter is shareware and the idea is that you have 30 days to play with it and after that you should
either register the software or delete it from your machine. To encourage
payment IconPainter puts two crossed lines through any images saved until the software key is entered.
These lines ruin the image but at least image saving can be demonstrated. In addition, while the software is
unregistered the text "Evaluation software" will appear in the frame title.
Registration is done through the KAGI software registration service. The small Windows program
included can be run to generate a form that can be e-mailed, faxed or posted to Kagi. They should
then automatically issue a registration code which is entered through the option in the help menu.
If a code isn't forthcoming then e-mail the author to find out what's going on. If payment must be made
by credit card over the phone ring Kagi in the US on (510) 658-5244 (5 dollar surcharge for phone orders).
For more information about paying as well as online registration go to the EquitySoft
pricing page.
The policy on new revisions of products
Products are regularly updated with new features. My policy is not to charge any fee for new releases which
may only include bug fixes, cosmetic changes and minor functional changes. In general therefore, the original
registration code that you receive on paying the initial license fee should be kept and reused after downloading
a new product version. Do not pay for another license unless you're sure it's absolutely required.
Installing the latest IconPainter over older versions.
If you want to preserve the "myicons" directory from an older version then it's quite ok
simply to replace only the old version's JAR file with the newer JAR file. In this case it's
quite probable that most settings from the last session eg.current color, will be reset.
Bugs and feedback
Bugs should be sent to EquitySoft@iname.com and
product news can be found at
http://www.kagi.com/EquitySoft. All feedback is most welcome.
© 1998, 1999, 2000 all rights reserved, Colin Mummery.