 March 28, 1994.

Fractal Design Dabbler(tm) version 1.0 for Windows

This "Read me" file contains information regarding the following:
-Compatibility
-Getting Optimal Performance from Dabbler 1.0
-Plug-In Support
-Undocumented Dabbler features
-Troubleshooting
-Printing Notes
-General Notes
-Dabbler 1.0 Manual Addendum

Compatibility:

- Dabbler is compatible with Microsoft Windows 3.1.

- Dabbler requires SVGA display of at least 8-bit/256 colors and will
not run in standard VGA 16 color mode. Dabbler runs best with 16-bit
color.

- A sound card is required to hear Dabbler's sounds, but the program
will run fine without one.

- You can use Dabbler with a Microsoft-compatible mouse or a stylus
and tablet.


Getting Optimal Performance from Dabbler 1.0:

- Run Dabbler by itself. Do not use Dabbler while other applications
are running in the background. An application is running in the
background if it is "minimized." Press Ctrl+Esc for a task list
showing all of the open applications. Click on any application you
are not currently using and click "End Task."

- Set the disk cache to a low setting. Consult your Windows manual
for details.

- Turn off Dabbler's sounds. While running Dabbler, open the Tools
Drawer and click on the Sound icon. Press the drawer and tool icons
without sound waves to turn off sound.

- If you experience very slow opening and closing drawer animation,
reinstall the version of Windows you are using. This will reset the
Timer and Dabbler's drawers will animate at the proper speed.

- Control Panels that center Alert dialogs can cause Dabbler's Record
Instructions dialog to display in the middle of the screen instead of
at the bottom.

Plug-In Support:
- Dabbler supports third-party plug-ins that conform to the Adobe
Photoshop for Windows acquire, export and filter interfaces.
- When Dabbler first starts it will display an Open File dialog with
the title "Choose One Plug-In from your Plug-In Directory".  If there
are any of the plug-ins mentioned above on your system, select one of
them with this dialog; Dabbler will thereafter automatically load all
plug-ins from that directory every time Dabbler starts up. If you
have no plug-ins, click "Cancel".
- To change your plug-in directory (or to select one if you
previously Canceled) restart Dabbler and hold down the Ctrl key until
the dialog appears.

Undocumented Features:
- Ctrl+.(period) will cancel most operations.

- On an extended keyboard, Page Up and Page Down keys allow you to
flip through the pages of the Sketchpad. Pressing the Home key will
display the first page in the Sketchpad; pressing the End key will
display the last page in the Sketchpad. This works in the Sketchpad
Utility Drawer and with the actual image on the screen.

- Ctrl+T turns Tracing Paper on and off.

- Pressing the Esc (escape) key while any Utility Drawer is opened
(Sketchpad, Recorder, Sound and Type) will return you to the opened
Tools Drawer. Pressing the Esc key while the Color Wheel is opened
will return you to the opened Color Drawer. The Esc key will not do
this while the Type Tool is selected.

- Double clicking the Type Tool while it's on the outside of the
Tools Drawer opens the Type Utility Drawer.

- You can apply graduated paint bucket ramps, motion blur, text and
stencils to varying angles by rotating the page before rendering
these effects.

Troubleshooting:

*** "Dabbler requires a single plane display driver that supports 256
or more colors." 
  - You do not have an 8-bit/256 color DRIVER loaded. You may have a
monitor and display card capable of 8- bit display, but if the
standard "VGA" 16 color driver is loaded Dabbler will not run. Go to
Windows Set Up and load the correct driver. If you don't have the
correct driver check the documentation that came with your display
system or contact your dealer. Dabbler runs best with 16-bit color.

***  "System error. Can"t read from drive D." 
  - Place a CD in the CD-ROM drive and choose "Retry." You may choose
"Cancel" if you have no CD-ROMs available.  

*** "Insufficient Space on Disk to Open New Picture." 
Check the number of floppy disk drives in your system. 
  - If you have a single floppy drive you must create a phantom drive
for Dabbler to place its temp file on the C drive. Exit to DOS. From
the "C:" prompt type "edit autoexec.bat" and hit "enter". Use the
arrow keys to scroll past the last line of the autoexec.bat file and
type, "SUBST D: C:\" Save the file and exit to DOS. Restart your
computer. Dabbler will now work properly.
  - If you have two floppy drives, go to File Manager and check the
C: #,###KB free in the lower left hand corner. This value must be at
least twice as large as the Sketch Pad Size. You may set Dabbler"s
temp file to a drive with more free space by choosing Set Preferences
under the Edit menu. Click on the pop-up menu for Temp File Volume
and choose a new drive. If no other drive is available, you may need
to free up space by backing up then deleting unwanted files. 
 
*** You are not receiving pressure from your pressure sensitive tablet. 
  - CalComp tablet driver software (latest rev. 1.8.2) does not
support pressure in Dabbler. Contact the manufacturer for information
on the latest release.  
  - You are using a CIC Handwriter which does not support pressure.
  - The stylus you are using is not a pressure stylus. For the
CalComp Drawing Slate, a stylus with a purple ring has a click tip.
An orange ring indicates a pressure tip. For the Drawing Board II, a
stylus with a triangular shaped end is a non-pressure pen. Contact
the manufacturer of the tablet to acquire a pressure pen.
   - The batteries in the stylus may be low. Replace the batteries.
   - The tablet driver may be corrupted or improperly installed.
Reinstall the tablet driver according to the manufacturers
instructions. 

   *** You can paint with the mouse but not with the tablet.
   - Dabbler is not receiving pressure data. See above note regarding
pressure. OR you are using a CIC Handwriter which does not support
pressure. Contact CIC for pressure pen or tablet driver "tablet.zip".


Printing Notes:

- Dabbler uses the standard Device Independent Bitmap (DIB) printing
technique (the GDI Printing option) as well as direct generation of
Postscript. This should print to most raster printing devices, but
will not work for daisy wheel printers or pen plotters. The quality
of printed output is dependent on the printer device driver for the
specific printer; make sure you have the latest/best driver to get
the best output.

- If errors occur during printing, try changing the Windows Setup
parameters for printing (see "Printing:" below).

- There is a bug in HP 550C DeskJet print driver that causes output
in the 4-color mode to print out in grayscale if banded printing is
selected. To get color from the HP 550C DeskJet, either use Color
Only or select No Print Banding in the Windows Setup dialog inside
the Set Preferences dialog in the Edit menu. If No Print Banding is
selected, use Portrait mode only; Landscape does not work.

- The printing option "Free Memory for Printing" transfers the image
to disk during printing so that more memory is available for the
Print Manager and printer driver. This may result in faster printing
or may even allow printing to work in cases where it otherwise might
fail.

- The option "No Print Banding" disables print banding for devices
that support it. This may be required to make some printers work, but
will hurt performance of bitmap printers like the HP PaintJet. This
option is required to make color printing work on the HP DeskJet 550C
in 4-color mode due to a bug in its driver. The option affects only
GDI printing.


General Notes:

- Dabbler requires 10 MB on your hard disk to install, but will
usually need much more temporary space while it is running. Also,
once Dabbler has run, prebuilt brushes will add several megabytes to
the size of the brushes file. We recommend that you have at least
20MB free, and more to create very large images. Use the Set
Preferences dialog in Dabbler to select the temporary drive,
preferably the drive with the most free space. Avoid a network drive,
compressed drive or one with very slow access speed.

- DO NOT make Dabbler's temporary space a RAM disk, unless the
temporary space is plentiful (see above) and is expanded memory on
the AT bus that Windows can't use for other purposes. Windows should
be allowed to use all or nearly all of extended memory. Dabbler will
run entirely in RAM if there is enough RAM allocated to Windows. To
allocate maximum memory for Dabbler, choose Set Preferences under the
Edit menu, click on Windows Setup and check "Maximum Memory for
Dabbler". We recommend that you set the second size (in DOS) for disk
caches (like SMARTDRV) to 256K or less, unless you have more than 8MB
of RAM. This is the amount used under Windows. Disable all RAM disks
before starting Windows when running Dabbler.

- Dabbler will run in Standard Mode or 386 Enhanced Mode. Dabbler
uses 386/486 instructions and segment registers and will not operate
on a 286 machine. It is recommended that 386 Enhanced Mode be used
when running Dabbler. For RAM sizes of 4MB to 15MB, a swap file is
recommended. With 16MB and more of RAM Dabbler will run fastest
without a swap file. Dabbler determines the amount of physical memory
Windows has and uses that to determine how many internal buffers to
allocate.  Dabbler running in 4MB to 15MB can benefit from some swap
space for Windows, but excessively large amounts of swap space are of
no benefit, and may use up all the free hard disk space so Dabbler
does not have enough room for its temporary data (see item 1 above).
Dabbler will use an unlimited amount of extra extended memory (when
running Windows 3.1 in Enhanced Mode); 16MB of RAM is faster than 8MB
of RAM.

- Dabbler WILL NOT RUN in standard 16-color VGA mode - you will get
the error "Dabbler requires a single plane display driver that
supports 256 or more colors." Setup your Windows to use 24-bit color
(16 million colors), 16 bit color (32,768 colors), or 8-bit color
(256 colors) to run Dabbler successfully.

- On some 32,768 color displays and 65,536 color displays, Dabbler
may display colors scrambled. If this happens, choose Set
Preferences... from the Edit menu, then click the Windows Setup...
button within that dialog.  When the Windows Options dialog comes up,
check the box "No Device Dependent Bitmaps".

- If you are running Dabbler on a system with 4MB of RAM, it is
necessary to maximize the memory available to Windows and Dabbler in
order for it to work. Set the Windows disk cache size to 0K and the
virtual memory swap file size to 30,72KB (3MB). Do not run any
drivers or TSR's that use up a significant amount of RAM. For
example, a 4MB system running Stacker probably won't work with
Dabbler.  (If you need to run Stacker, get 8MB or more of RAM).


Memory:
There are two memory options in the Set Preferences dialog, Maximum
Memory for Dabbler and Half of Memory for Dabbler.

- For best performance with only Dabbler running, select Maximum
Memory for Dabbler.

- To be able to run a larger number of Windows applications at the
same time as Dabbler, select Half of Memory for Dabbler (the
default).

32,768 Color Displays:
- The option No Device Dependent Bitmaps causes Dabbler to not use
optimized device dependent bitmaps when displaying on 32,768 color
and 65,536 color display cards. This checkbox should be selected if
you have a 32,768 color display or 65,536 color display and the
colors are all scrambled. When checked, Dabbler uses the slightly
slower, but more compatible DIB output.

Dabbler 1.0 Manual Addendum:
We suggest you make the following changes in your manual.

Pg. 7 - COLOR WHEEL- In the second paragraph, the second to the last
sentence should read: The color you select in the triangle is shown
on the selected square on the face of the Color Drawer. 

Pg. 14 - DROPPER- The third sentence in this paragraph should read:
That color becomes the current color or fills a selected color square
if the Color Wheel is displayed. 

REF-4 - SIZE TO FIT PAGE- The first sentence should omit: ...and the
Print Setup... dialog box in Windows,

REF-5 - MEMORY BUFFER (MEMORY SIZE)- Both paragraphs should be
replaced with: In the New Sketchpad dialog box, the Sketchpad size
refers to the size of one page in the Sketchpad. Increasing the
dimensions of the page and/or the dpi will create a larger Sketchpad
file on your hard disk. Also, the more pages you add to the
Sketchpad, the more hard disk space will be required. 



