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PicArt Package & PicArtScript V0.044 - Copyright (c) 1997, 1998

written by René K. Müller

Last update Sat Sep 26 18:56:27 EDT 1998

LATEST VERSION OF THIS DOCUMENT YOU FIND HERE.

1. Idea
2. Disclaimer
3. Installation
4. The Glory Details
5. Fonts
6. Graphic Links
7. History
8. Todo

PicArt is a collection of standalone programs (like NETPBM), but additionally there is script-interface to each program: PicArtScript. It is loosely based on PostScript (stack-oriented) whereas also function-call with arguments approach can be chosen as illustrated in the graphic above. If you are familiar with Photoshop or GIMP, and you are experienced with programming languages, you will like PicArt and PicArtScript very much.

PicArt 2. Disclaimer

This package comes WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY AND SUPPORT. We are very busy with other projects and do have really no additional time to provide support of any kind; I provide this source and this page as I know many people looking for packages like that, most of the c-source code is written straight forward without any consideration of optimization, speed or minimal use of memory, but solely by thoughts of simplicity and fast implementation.

Please consider to check out www.gimp.org, they actually put together the best drawing tool for UNIX called GIMP, which has also script interface (tcl and perl as well).

PicArt 3. Installation

Look at the Makefile and edit installation directory in case you don't want them in /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/lib/phtml/*

Create a link within the directory of PicArt called libjpeg pointing to the actual directory where libjpeg.a resides.

Run make and then make install to instal all pa* to /usr/local/bin directory.

PicArt 4. The Glory Details

Consider to look at the overview of all programs and its script-interface.

• Program List (short overview)
  All programs listed and command-line options

  Script Language Reference (comprehensie overview with examples)

  Detailed programming reference

  PicArt Cookbook (comprehensie overview with examples)

  More in-depth information of how to use PicArt

  PicArt Script Collection

  Collection of stand-alone and shader scripts

PicArt 5. Fonts

There are two formats supported: PostScript Type1 (using t1lib), and TrueType (using freetype-lib), two public-domains libraries, the source-code is copyrighted. Check also TTFtoType1 to convert TTF to Type 1.

The most common asked question, where do I get the free fonts:

• Internet Font Archives provided by O'Reilly.
  Has all the references, explore it.
• TrueType/Type1 Fonts on mac.archive.umich.edu
  Direct download zipped fonts
• TrueType/Type1 Fonts [2] on mac.archive.umich.edu
  Direct download zipped fonts, even more.

Please note, I cannot provide direct download as some fonts need to be registered with the authors/copyright holders.

PicArt 6. Graphic Links

GIMP Free graphic program with layers, a must to visit	Kai's Power Tips and Tricks For Photoshop 4	Photoshop 4.0 Tricks Some tricks how to do effects, useful to re-implement using PicArt ;-)
IconBazaar Collection of icons and tiles	SUNET Pictures Good collection of pics

PicArt 7. History

       Aug 10, 1998

            contrast and hsl

       Jul 12, 1998

            further wavy support

       Jul 10, 1998

            smear, spread and rotate implemented (without pbmpackage)

       May 26, 1998

            paste & scale some more sophisticated args available

       May 12, 1998

            map either with color or image

       May 10, 1998

            grabage collector started (not fully finished)

            xv call now handles images with alpha-channel too

       Apr 19, 1998

            cleanup allowed, removes all tmp-files (usually only done at exit)

       Apr 13, 1998

            function calls recursive, [a]sin, a[cos], [a]tan, abs and rand

            also 'for' fixed to be called recursive too

       Apr 3, 1998

            * + - / added

       Mar 19, 1998

            function-calls and assignments allowed

       Dec 29, 1997

            minor changes

       Dec 25, 1997

            draw and light sub-functions implemented

       June 29, 1997

            no pnmprgs used anymore (except rotate and scale)

       June 21, 1997

            misc improvements, { } multi-line, # comments, etc.

PicArt 8. Todo

1. Shared library support
2. Shared memory for pictures handled by pascript
3. Graphical front-end tcl/tk or perltk

                                                                                                                                   

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