Icons and  Pums - the Vapor Paint parameter interface

A Pum is a Pop Up Menu .  I didn't like the usual requesters and
intuition stuff so I wrote my own (which looks suspiciously but
coincidentally like WB 2.0).  Pums usually take over the entire
screen and fill it with text, icons, buttons and numericals.  Pum
buttons can have keyboard equivalents.  A numerical looks like a
numeric string gadget, but you can click on the top or bottom of a
digit instead of typing in a new value.  You can also hold the
mouse down and move left and right to advance or decrease the
Pum's value in the "column" you have clicked on.  i.e.  if you
clicked on the 3 in 12345.67, it would advance or decrease by
100's. Typing will also work, and you can tab to the field you want
to change. Backspace will erase the current value. Note: SMPTE
time fields re-interpret your keys as frames, thus typing "100"
shows as "3:10". There's also a color bar which is under color
numericals which will poorly clue you into the color you have chosen.
This color is meant for the color render  modes, not the normal "B&W".

       The Icons and the Icon Bar

Much tougher to understand is the system of Icons, which is one of 
the most important concepts of Vapor Paint. Each move or action
which you hope to use to construct a finished frame (or sub frame) in
an animation is registered as an Icon on the screen. Thus, each
mouse move which is converted to a vector shows up there as as
Vector Icon.  By convention , I'll refer to them in square
brackets,e.g.  [A]. Each of the Icons has two parts, the "Picture"
part ( which usually looks like a big letter) and a "Number" above it.
The "Number" identifies the icon among others of its type, which is
indicated by the "Picture".  Even though the number goes up to 9999,
there's really a longword there - so feel free to overflow past 64K!

  When you click on the Number with the left button, the Icon becomes the
Current Icon.  Doing the same with the right button will bring up the Pum
associated with it.  Clicking on the Number of an icon is not the same as
clicking on the Picture  of the icon (see below).

            The Icon Bar

The left part of the row of Icons at the bottom of the screen is
really a flattened out section of a tree which is traversed to create
each frame!  It's flat in order to give more drawing space. 
 Here's how to read it - it looks sort of like this:

[1]  [2][2][2]    [3] [->] [4][4][4]  [5]  [M][M][M][M][M][M]

[1] is the parent of the "current" Icon.  [2]s are left siblings of
the current Icon, [3] is the current Icon.  [4]s are right
siblings of the current Icon, and [5] is the first decendent of
the current Icon. Ignore the "Arrow" Icon (aka the Poke Arrow) for now.
In your mind, you'd have to think of it as:

                  [1]
        ...[2]....[3]....[4]...
                  [5]
The [M]'s are macro buttons and have nothing to do with the Icon tree.
See "ARexx Help" for info on those icons!

Of course, there is more of the tree outside of the range of this
view. If the current Icon is a Vector [V] or a note vector [Nv]
then a bounding box will appear around it. A square-ish mark is
put at the start of the vector and a round-ish mark is put at the
end. These marks may clutter up the screen, so you can use another
feature to highlight the current vector: ALT-Enter will run a sprite
along the length of the vector in the order of its vertices. This
sprite "parks itself" in the upper left corner is the current Icon
is not a [V] or [NV]. You now can turn the "box feature" off by using
the "5" key.


To build a frame, the tree is traversed in a top to bottom , left
to right fashion, executing some action or setting at some SMPTE time,
and interpolating vectors, views and colors when not on a key frame.

            Icon Navigation

You can navigate through the tree in several ways:  with the arrow
keys or by clicking on the Icon numbers themselves.

  The unshifted arrows act in a straightforward way.  "Up" moves you to the
parent, "down" to the child, "left" left and "right" right.  Shifting
"left" and "right" takes you to either end of the current level.  Shift
"up" puts you at the top Icon, while shift "down" brings you back to the
place you were when you shifted "up".

Other operations are put on the angle brackets.  The left angle "<" puts
you at the last key frame, if you are at or below the key frame level.  The
right angle ">" brings you to the next key frame.  Note that the current
time and the key frame times change with this operation.  Shifted angle
brackets do the same, but for sequences instead of key frames.  Alt-ed
angle brackets will take you to the last or next instance of the current
Icon in numeric (creation) order.

You can make a vector current from the screen by clicking with
the right mouse button on one of its endpoints.

To look at the current icon's Pum, you can click on its Number with either
button, or use the handy key equivalent "ALT-Return".  

          Hiding and Selecting Groups of Icons

Icons are also the easiest way you can change the hidden and selected
properties of objects.

 Selected objects are used in some group transformation operations.
Selected objects' icons are yellow.  You can select an object by clicking
on the "Letter" part of the Icon with the left button.  When an object is
selected, it selects all its decendents.  Clicking again deselects it.

 A hidden vector is not rendered.  A hidden keyframe is not rendered but
its delta-time is used.  Hidden Icons are displayed "ghosted".
  Clicking with the right mousebutton will hide an Icon.  The same effects
are available as "alt-up arrow" and "alt-Down arrow".  Note the vectors
involved will change their selected status if visible and on the screen.
Hidden vectors will hide on the next refresh.  To help you hide all but
some related material, the H key will hide all siblings and their children
except for the current one, the previous and next Icons.  This is useful
when you have scads of keyframes to hide.

To select a contiguous group of the same-type of icons, use the " key
(ARexx:SelPals).  This way, you can select a series of vectors between
Pens or Colors.

 There are 3 Pums which are not associated with any Icons at all.
The "Main Pum" or "Top Pum" appears when you click on the very top of
the screen with the right button.  It also can be called up with the
keyboard command "Shift Space".  The top of the screen has some stats
about the size of the current tree:  number of links, number of
vertices, number of vectors...  The default settings for many things
can be found under this line:  such as the current time, default pen
dimensions, default color, edge color, pen , number of frames for Key
Frame Icons [Kf] and View Icons [Vw].  See the "AREXX" help file for
special instructions under ARexx, and also the "Main Pum" help file.

The Right Pum (click on the right of the screen, or alt-space) allows
you to set the work screen colors - converted from 64-bit to 3 bit!

The Left Pum (click the left of the screen) is a screen full of 80
programmable macro buttons.

The arrow in the icon bar tells Vapor Paint where to put newly created
Colors and Pens, that is, to the left of the current Icon or to the right,
which is the default.  In some rare situations, the left is preferable.
Click on the empty space to the left of the Current Icon to move the arrow
to the left. This same arrow denotes the insertion point for moving the
marked icon. This way, you can change the order of vectors, sequences
and key frames.(Mark with alt-", move with shift-")

Henry Lowengard, jhhl-at-panix.com / 324 Wall St. Apt 5 / Kingston NY 12401

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© 1998-2022 Henry Lowengard