Short:        Paint program made with Hollywood
Author:       anbjorn.myren@gmail.com (Anbjorn Myren)
Uploader:     anbjorn myren gmail com (Anbjorn Myren)
Type:         gfx/edit
Version:      1.046
Requires:     util/libs/codesets-6.22.lha; util/libs/ReqToolsLib.lha
Architecture: ppc-amigaos

PolarPaint v1.0 (r46) by Anbjørn Myren (anbjorn.myren@gmail.com)

This is an experimental Paint program made with Hollywood.

Requirements:
A fast computer with RTG, minimum 1440x900x16 (Program window is 1400x820)
Minimum 40MB of free ram, 64MB or more recommended
More memory or diskspace might be desirable (read below for memory notes)

Versions for 68k, AmigaOS4, MorphOS and AROSx86 available

Functions in brief
The painting area is 1280x720. Up to 8 Workspaces can be used for separate 
drawings.
There is an Undo/Redo funtion. By default this is set to maximum 10 levels,
but can be set as high as 100.
Each Workspace have its own Undo buffer, so in theory there might be 800
undo's present.
At program start, only Workplace 1 is in use. Another Workspace is initiated
by selecting on its Tab at the topp of the window. Then a new empty brush is
created for this workspace.

Memory notes
Each brush initiated will take about 4MB of memory. Opening a new workspace 
consumes 4 MB per Workspace (unless diskbuffer is used).
The Undo / Redo system will also require memory since each Undo is a full 
brush stored in memory. 
If you set the Undo buffer to max (100) and use all 8 Workspaces you will in
theory have 800 undo operations available. Needless to say this will require
massive amounts of RAM available.


Diskbuffering
As a workaround for the memory issues mentioned above I made an optional
setting that allows you to enable DiskBuffering. This means that all Undo 
buffering goes to your hardrive instead of using RAM. Also when opening a 
new workspace the previous workspace is saved to disk and freed from memory.
By default these files are stored as PNG images which means they only take a
fraction of the space compared to the memory they would need.
The downside is that the undo/redo will be slower, because it needs to load
the files from disk and convert the png files into brush data.
If you suspect you might get short on memory, run the program first time and
press the Quit button, at the requestor select to Enable DiskBuffer before
quitting. Next time you launch the program diskbuffer will be enabled.
When DiskBuffer is active you will be asked on Exit if you want to keep the
buffer files. If you do so, they will be loaded automaticly on next start and
you can keep on working where you left off.

Help
There is an Information icon that will display some basic information about
the program, and while the icon is highlighted (info mode) the user can click
any icon to get some pop-up information about each button. 
Click the info icon again to exit information mode.

Flood Fill
Regular floodfill is an in-built Hollywood command that works well in most
cases. But if you want to floodfill an area that has gradients of colors you
might experience that not all areas are filled as expected. An image saved
with JPEG compression will most likely have this issue. 
To overcome this there is a custom fill command that uses a threshold setting
to determine how colors are filled. By default threshold is set to 0 and then
the in-built fill command us used. Setting threshold above 0 will make use of
the custom fill operation. The setting is quite sensitive so depending on 
your image there could be a huge difference between 0 and 1. 
You can use decimal values, eg. 0.01 or 0.5 so just try until satisfied.
The custom fill operation is much slower than the regular fill, specially on
low end computers. The way it works it will read the color form pixel by
pixel and create a table of pixels to fill, so it may seem unresponsive for a
long time if trying to fill larger areas.
Smaller areas of color are faster to process, but if you set the threshold to
high it may fill the whole drawing area which will take long time on even
accelerated classic Amigas.
Custom fill operation also may consume a lot of memory and may cause the
program to quit prematurely if you run out of memory while processing. 
To avoid this there is an option to restrict the maximum area to be 
floodfilled. This is set to 5 (percent of full image) by default.
With 256MB or more ram 100% should be possible, but will take some time.
Use ESC to interupt an ongoing floodfill operation.

Transparency
There are two modes for transparency available. Default and Instant. The 
default mode with process your whole line before applying transparency, 
making it more smooth. The line will appear solid while the mouse is pressed. 
The Instant mode will apply transparence as you draw, but will leave "dots" 
along the line. This is because you really is drawing many short connecting 
lines and the "dots" appear where these lines overlap.
For Lines, Boxes and Circles transparency is only available in Default mode. 

Notes:
The iocn is from the aminet archive pix/gicon/glowcollection.lha