Bitmap Character View

The bitmap view is vaguely similar to the outline view. It is also designed for editing character shapes, but here bitmap character shapes.

At the top of the view is a small region showing an unmagnified view of the character, to the right of that are two information displays, the first shows the current location of the mouse pointer, and the second shows (if the mouse button has been depressed and not released yet) the offset from the place where the mouse was pressed to the current pointer location. The coordinate system here is in pixels with the origin at the character's origin. Next to this is a button (here truncated) that allows you to recalculate the bitmap (rasterize the outline and place the result in the window for editing).

Underneath is the main display, showing the bits in the image, the outline of the character and a grid.

Layers

There are three layers to the bitmap view, the bitmap itself, the outline character and the grid lines. You are always editing in the bitmap layer so there is no control over what layer is editable, just which ones are visible.

Tools

There are only six tools on the bitmap palette (there are some others available by right clicking in the view, this generates a popup menu.

The pointer tool allows you to select a region of the screen, and move it around or copy it (a copy when nothing is selected copies the entire bitmap). The arrow keys will also move the selection around.

The if you click with the magnifying tool the view is magnified, centered around the point at which you clicked. If you hold down the Meta (or Alt) key during the click then the view will be minified.

The pencil tool allows you to set or clear bits. If you depress the mouse button then the pencil will toggle the bit under the cursor, if you then drag it over other bits they will be set if the first bit was set, and cleared if the first was cleared.

The line tool (the pencil with the line beside it) will draw straight lines. It behaves like the pencil tool on whether it sets or clears a line. The Shift key does not constrain this window.

The four-arrow tool moves the entire bitmap.

The hand scrolls the screen.

Additional tools from the popup menu.

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