User preferences
The user preferences can be modified from the menu. Currently, three tabs cover several areas of the programme:
User settings are stored in a file named "arabeske.cfg", using a Lisp-like text syntax, located in the directory from which Arabeske is run. This file is plain text and thus readable, but is not intended to be manually modified. Some other things are stored there too, like the history of the most recently opened files.
Display
This tab contains several features related with how Arabeske displays things.
Wysiwyg
The well-known acronym for "what you see is what you get". This legacy switch enables real-time refreshing of the display when the user makes changes to the pattern using the mouse. If it is unselected, the changes are only shown when the mouse button is released. This was introduced in the early ages of Arabeske, when a p200 was a powerful computer. It is on by default, and should not need to be turned off if your computer is less than, say, 6 years old.
Grid
The grid is a way to limit the possible values given through mouse-control through a simple rounding process. Its main purpose is to make it easier to get connected segments. The following settings allow the user to change these roundings and to make the grid visible.
- Linear spacing: concerns the various dimensions. The rounding factor is given in 1/1000th units (just as mouse coordinates). A value of 20 will result in only getting values like 0, 20, -20, 40, -40... for rectangular coordinates, and 0, 20, 40... for nodes radii. A value of 0 disables rounding.
- Angular spacing: concerns only the start and end angles of polar links. The value is of course given in degrees. A value of 0 disables rounding. It is strongly recommended to use a value which divides 360, like 30, 20 or 15 but not 42.
- Displayed: turns on/off the optional grid display. This only concerns the "blueprint", "preview" and "help" modes. The drawing window shows vertical and horizontal lines corresponding to the acceptable values for rectangular coordinates.
- Colour: Clicking on this button allows to choose the colour used to display the grid if the previous option is switched on.
Selection sensitivity
To select an object on the drawing window, the user needs to click "near" it. This parameter, in 1/1000th units, specifies how close the click must be. Setting it too low makes selection difficult, while setting it too high could make it hard to click away from an object. Note that the selected object is always the closest to the click location. The default value is 30, and is nice for the author's working conditions!
Input field auto selection
This feature automatically selects a whole input field (number, string) when you click on it, instead of just putting the input cursor in it. It is quite convenient, but if you don't like it, just disable it.
Anti-aliasing
This controls how lines and patterns will be displayed in "final" and "interlaced" modes. Anti-aliasing is a technique avoiding traight lines to look like stairs when they are not horizontal or vertical. This is done by using intermediate colour values to soften the borders, instead of using pure colours. This user feature can have three value.
- On and Off are quite obvious
- Auto attempts to guess the best solution. If the image contains no bitmap texture, it is supposed to be used as a paletted output with indices, and using blended colours would be a bad idea. Therefore, in this case the AA is turned off. On the opposite, if at least one bitmap texture is used, turning off AA would result in a poor rendering of the textures and their borders. In this case, the AA is turned on.
Files
This tab contains two sections
Auto export filename extension
A few primitive (but still in use) systems need every file name to end with an "extension", that is a ".something" to find out what the file contains. On most modern systems (Un*x, Mac OS...), this is irrelevant and the user is free to name his files as he wants, which is why, by default, Arabeske does not add any form of ".blah" to exported file names. If the user still uses an old-style OS like dos, windows or cp/m, setting this feature on will force the filename to end in ".something".
Note that the extension itself will not be checked. A PNG export file named "mypict~1.doc" will be allowed, while a PNG export with no extension will get a ".png" extension.
Paths
This part allows the user to indicate where some files will be found. Currently, only one such setting exists.
- Image maps: When a bitmap image is assigned to a texture, the image file selector opens in a directory which, by default, is the user's home directory. This very useful field allows the user to customize this behaviour, and to have the selector open in places like "/usr/share/pixmaps" or "C:\My Images".
Messages
This tab contains a list of user error or warning messages, which can be turned on or off. These messages can usually be turned off when they appear, but the prefs/messages tab is the only place from where they can be turned on again.
The current messages are the following.
- Illegal link target value: In the polar coordinates system, the target angle cannot take any random value. The allowed values differ whether the start and end nodes are of the primary or secondary kind. If you manually change one of the nodes for a segment, its type may change too, and this can result in an inacceptable value. This warning cannot be caused by a graphical editing of a segment made with the mouse.
- Texture leak: While painting using a texture, plain or bitmap, Arabeske found an attempt to paint twice the same area with two different textures. The result of such an attempt cannot be predicted, since the final painting order is not known. Moreover, this is likely to happen when the border between two neighbouring areas is not well closed. This is why this message also reports the two conflicting textures and the two "closest but not closed" lines, which are likely to cause the error. When this helpful option is selected, Arabeske adds a step to its texturing process. This step (7/10) can take a very significant time, this is why this option exists to save time when the user does not need this detection.