NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

In the default configuration, the main window presents a garden image on the left, a control panel on the right and a list of gardens underneath. Gardens can be loaded and saved using the menu, these then appear in the list below. The insert option loads a file into the copy buffer. It can then be dragged to the desired place in the garden list.

To edit a garden (or comment, or include), either select it with a button press and release, or with a drag and drop into the edit box at the lower right. The drag and drop will remove it from the garden list, selection will copy it, and the source garden will be updated too. To delete gardens, drag them to the copy buffer. The main garden display will be updated, if it was a garden being moved to the edit box. The box on the lower right is a copy buffer. You can drag and drop into and out of this to the garden list or one of the edit boxes. Similarly you can drag and drop from the edit boxes to the garden list, and within the garden list itself. Note that drag and drop always removes the source, if it is within the garden list, whereas selection does not delete the source.

The control panel shows a set of options, which can be bound to buttons. This can be done either by press and release with the required button, or drag and drop onto the required button's icon. You can bind an option to more than one button. However, press and release on the apples option will simply change the currently selected explicit apple, not necessarily bind that option to a new button. The fill pattern and color can be select by pressing on them. The current garden will be updated. The list of buttons shows which options are bound to which buttons. You can also change button bindings by pressing the destination button with the pointer over the button with the required option's icon, or by drag and drop from button to button.

The six options are,

Apple

This selects where apples from one of the four sets of explicit apple locations are placed. To select which set is being controlled, press on the relevant quadrant of the icon. One of these sets is used when Mr Is is used with the +random option. You can place apples anywhere there isn't a path, even in an unstable location, which will immediately fall. Placing an explicit apple on a path, will fill the path.

Random

This controls where apples may be placed randomly, if Mr Is is started with the -random option. Apples will only be placed on the specified locations, or where ever an explicit apple could be located. Unless you specify otherwise, random apples may be located anywhere there isn't a path, even unstable locations which will immediately fall. Placing a random apple on a path, will fill the path.

Cherry

This controls where cherries are located. There must be at least one cherry on a garden. Cherries may be located anywhere on the board.

Path

This controls where the initial path is. Each location on the board consists of a centre and four edges. Depending on the exact location of the pointer, you will select either the centre, or an edge. Filling a path will place a random apple in the filled location. The four locations immediately below the EXTRA letters must be clear.

Player

This controls where the player starts from. There must be exactly one such location.

Den

This controls where the monsters start from. There must be at least one den.

The list of totals show the counts for the explicit apples, cherries, random apples required, apple spaces, unstable apple positions, dens and player positions. A warning is shown on the left of any which are inconsistant, or out of range. The number of apples for a garden can be set by moving the scroll bar at the left of the apple icon. Note that when you change the number of apples, or add or remove explicit apples, a warning will change on on some or all of the explicit apple counts. This is just to remind you that you must do some more work on the garden, before it is consistant. There are two types of random apple spaces, stable and unstable. The unstable space count is shown with an arrow in it, the other apple space count shows the total number of apple spaces. The hazzard warning on the unstable count, just shows that you have some unstable apple positions (this may be intentional on your part). The hazzard on the total apple space count indicates that there are less spaces than the number of apples you specified for the garden.

Below this is a comment box for the garden. Selecting this will pop up a dialog which you can enter information about the garden.

At the lower right of the control panel is a display mode selector. There are three display modes. The first shows all the explicit apple positions, 4 to a cell when required. The second shows only one set of explicit apples, the set selected using the apples option quadrant. The final mode shows none of the explicit apples, just the random apple spaces.

The garden display is on the left of this. It shows the currently edited garden. Clicking or dragging a mouse button on this area will perform the option currently bound to that button. You will notice the totals change when you do this.

Mr Ed will use colour sprites, if the visual permits it (has a colour map size of more than 15, and you haven't forced monochrome). All the colours bar black and white are user definable. There are four sets, one for each of the four combinations of gender and swap flag. The colours are allocated in reverse order of their distance in colour space, from currently allocated colours (the most distant colours are allocated first). That way, if allocation fails because the colour map is full, an allocated substitute colour, which is nearest the desired colour, can be used and the allocated colours are kept maximally distant. You can limit the number of distinct colours with the -distinct option. A warning message is sent to stderr, if a colour allocation fails. The -colours argument shows how these are allocated, and -help -colours can be used to get the colour resource names.

OPTIONS

-help

Lists the command options, application resource fields and some other information to stderr. Does not start the game. If the -colours option is supplied too, then the colour resource classes are listed instead, with their default values. The format of this list is suitable for inclusion in a resource file. Note, this does not list out the colour values that you would get if you ran the game, as it does not read the color resources.

-swap

-rv

-reverse

Normally the foreground is black and the background white, this swaps them round. On colour systems, this may also alter other colours.

+swap

-noswap

Override a swap resource in your resources, to force unswapped colours.

-mono

Use black and white, even on colour displays. (Unfortunately, the obvious option, '-bw', is already nabbed by the toolkit as borderwidth.)

-mris

-msit

-gender gender

Mr Ed has two sets of sprites. Mris selects the classic sprites, while msit selects a more modern set. Valid genders are 'he', 'she', 'female', 'male', 'msit', 'mris', 'boy', 'girl'.

-depth depth

Mr Ed will use the default depth of the screen. You may wish to override that by using this option. Selecting a different depth may affect the visual selected.

-visual visual-class

Mr Ed will pick the default visual, but you can override that by specifying a particular visual class. Valid visuals are 'PseudoColor', 'DirectColor', 'TrueColor', 'StaticColor', 'GrayScale', and 'StaticGray'. To see which one is picked, you can use the -colours option. If you do select a non-default visual, you may have to specify a private colour map too, due to limitations of the server or display.

-private

This forces Mr Ed to allocate a private colour map. Normally Mr Ed will share the default colour map of the selected visual, but if that does not have enough free colour cells then some colours will have to be shared.

-colours

-colors

Show how the colours are allocated, and which visual has been selected. The allocation is listed to stdout. When allocating each colour, its resource name and rgb values are listed together with the nearest already allocated colour and the distance between them in colour space. The allocated pixel number is printed last. If given with the -help option, the colour resource classes are listed, and the game does not start.

-distinct n

Sets the number of distinct colours used. This can be used to limit the number of colours used from the colour map. Black and white are not included, and neither are the two writable colours used for the garden backgrounds on dynamic visuals. Note that -distinct 0 is different from -mono, even though both will only use black and white.

RESOURCES

Xmris.ReverseVideo: {yes, no} [no]

Specifies whether to use swapped colours or not.

Xmris.Mono: {yes, no} [no]

Whether the default is for monochrome on colour displays.

Xmris.Gender: gender [he]

Sets the default game gender. Valid genders are 'mris', 'msit', 'she', 'he', 'female', 'male', 'boy', 'girl'.

Xmris.Depth: depth

Set the required screen depth to use.

Xmris.Visual: visual-class

Set the required visual class to use. Valid visuals are 'PseudoColor', 'DirectColor', 'TrueColor', 'StaticColor', 'GrayScale', and 'StaticGray'.

Xmris.Private: {yes, no} [no]

Set whether or not to use a private colour map.

Xmris.Distinct: n

Set the number of distinct colours allocated from the colour map.

In addition, you have the normal resources such as '*Font'.

COLOUR RESOURCES

WIDGET RESOURCES

There is an additional composite resource for children of composite widgets (Paned and SimpleMenu), called 'attach'. This allows you to change the ordering of sibling widgets. Mr Ed uses this resource to determine the correct order to create the sibling widgets. For instance, to get the control panel on the left of the garden widget, use the constraint '*one.garden.attach:panel'. In addition, the widgets are created in such an order that Form constraints 'fromHoriz' and 'fromVert' can be specified in any order.

There are four new widgets used for Mr Ed, 'Icon', 'Drag', 'Garden' and 'PixmapList'.

The Icon widget is a subclass of Simple. It displays a pixmap and allows its selection with any button press. If a button is dragged on it, it may invoke a drag widget to perform a drag operation. It has the following new resources of interest.

dragSensitivity: pixels [4]

Sets the minimum drag which must occur, before a drag widget is popped up, to take over the dragging. When set to zero, dragging is disabled.

flashDelay: delay [100]

Sets the time for which the widget is highlit after selection. This time is in milliseconds.

highlightThickness: pixels [1]

Sets the thickness of the highlight box.

foreground: color [default foreground]

Sets the color of the highlight box and block.

The Drag widget is a subclass of OverrideShell. It displays a pixmap, and follows the pointer until a button is released. Its use is for drag and drop. It has no additional resources of user interest.

The Garden widget is a subclass of Simple. It performs the garden editing. It has no additional resources of user interest.

The PixmapList widget is a subclass of Simple. It displays a list of pixmaps, and permits them to be scrolled. Each pixmap may be selected by a button press on it, or a drag widget invoked by dragging on a pixmap. In addition to the Icon widget additional resources, it has the following additional resources of user interest.

distance: pixels [4]

The distance between each pixmap.

pixmapBorderWidth: pixels [1]

The border width for each pixmap.

pixmapBorderColor: color [default foreground]

The border color for each pixmap.

ENVIRONMENT

DISPLAY

The default display to connect to. May be overridden with the -display option.

FILES

~/.Xdefaults

.../app-defaults/Xmris.ad

.../app-defaults/Xmris-color.ad

You can place you favourite key bindings and stuff in an application resource file, and Mr Ed will use them, rather than its compiled defaults. See X for information about how these are searched.

.../app-defaults/xmris/<gardens>

Search path for loadable gardens used by Mr Is.

SEE ALSO

ERRORS

BUGS

The Drag widget should perhaps just be a shell, having a single child of Icon, to do the rendering.

The PixmapList widget should perhaps be a composite widget with Icon children. However when I tried this using a Box widget, it didn't work with the insert function.

COPYRIGHT

AUTHOR

Additional sprites by Stefan Gustavson <stefang@isy.liu.se>