Fractal Design Sketcher 1.0 for Windows  -  November 4, 1992


Compatible with Windows 3.0 and 3.1


If you are reading this before installing Sketcher:

If you have already installed a pressure-sensitive tablet driver
through Pen Windows or have installed a pressure-sensitive driver
that uses LCS Telegraphics WINTAB, that driver will work with
Sketcher and you may proceed to install Sketcher. During installation
select the "Use Existing Driver" option.

Otherwise you will want to install a tablet or mouse driver that
ships with Sketcher. To do this, first make sure Windows is running
with a mouse alone, rather than a tablet, if you want Sketcher to
support both mouse and tablet after Sketcher installation.

Start Windows, then "Run" A:\INSTALL or B:\INSTALL (depending on
which floppy drive the Sketcher install disk is in).


Tablet / Mouse Driver Notes:

1. Installing the smoothing mouse driver changes the SYSTEM.INI
[BOOT] section to be mouse=MOUSESPL.DRV after copying the previous
mouse driver (often MOUSE.DRV) into a new file called OLDMOUSE.DRV.

2. The Wacom and CalComp tablet drivers that ship with Sketcher also
copy the previous mouse driver into a new file called OLDMOUSE.DRV if
the option is checked to include the mouse driver as well as the
tablet.

3. If Sketcher aborts with a Divide By Zero error when it first
starts up and you are using a tablet (especially the Wacom tablet)
then the tablet scaling is probably wrong. Run the Wacom Control
program and make sure Enable Pressure and Enable Absolute Mode
are checked and Enable Relative Mode is NOT checked. Also, set the
tablet area to a reasonable value.

4. If you install Sketcher when the SYSTEM.INI mouse= is set to a
non-Sketcher tablet driver, then the Sketcher Installer may copy this
driver into OLDMOUSE.DRV, which may result in erroneous tablet
operation or in Windows simply failing to start up. This will not
happen if you specify "Use Existing Driver" during installation.

5. Once a bad OLDMOUSE.DRV is created, the Sketcher Installer WILL
NOT REMOVE IT. You must exit Windows to DOS (not the DOS box!),
then delete the file manually.

With the bad OLDMOUSE.DRV gone, Windows should start up and the
tablet should work properly. To use both the tablet and mouse with
Sketcher (and all other Windows applications as well) you must create
a new OLDMOUSE.DRV that has the right driver for your mouse (this
really means a mouse - not the tablet emulating a mouse).

For example if you have a simple Windows setup on drive C:

C:>cd C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM>del OLDMOUSE.DRV
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM>copy MOUSE.DRV OLDMOUSE.DRV

6. If you install Sketcher while running the old Wacom-supplied
driver that is compatible with Windows 3.0 (which we specifically
recommend against) the Wacom stylus will freeze up during
installation. At this point either finish the installation using the
keyboard alone (use Tab and Arrow keys to select items, then spacebar
to change them) or reboot the machine, use Windows Setup to select
the mouse driver as pointing device, and repeat the Sketcher
installation.

7. Wacom is now supplying a driver that is compatiable with Sketcher
as well as other pressure-sensitive applications. To use this driver
with Sketcher, install Sketcher and specify the "Use Existing Driver"
option.


General Notes:

1. Sketcher requires 2.5MB on your hard disk to install, but will
usually need much more temporary space while it is running. We
recommend that you have at least 20MB free, and more to create very
large images. Use the Set Preferences dialog in Sketcher to select the
temporary drive, preferably the drive with the most free space, but
not a network drive or a drive with very slow access speed.

2. DO NOT make Sketcher's temporary space a RAM disk, unless the
temporary space is plentiful (see item 1 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. Sketcher will run entirely in RAM if there is enough RAM
allocated to Windows. In this case Sketcher will not even open its
temporary file giving significantly better performance than a RAM
disk configuration can. We recommend that you set the second size (in
DOS) for disk caches (like SMARTDRV) to 256K or less. This is the
amount used under Windows. We recommend that you disable all RAM
disks before starting Windows when running Sketcher.

3. Sketcher will run in Standard Mode or 386 Enhanced Mode. Sketcher
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 Sketcher. For RAM sizes of 4MB to 15MB, a swap file is
recommended. With 16MB and more of RAM Sketcher will run fastest
without a swap file. Sketcher determines the amount of physical memory
Windows has and uses that to determine how many internal buffers to
allocate.  Sketcher 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 Sketcher
does not have enough room for its temporary data (see item 1 above).
Sketcher will use an unlimited amount of extra extended memory (when
running Windows 3.1 in Enhanced Mode, Windows 3.0 and Standard Mode
have smaller limits); 16MB of RAM is faster than 8MB of RAM.

4. Sketcher may fail to start up when running Crystal Fonts and 256 
colors on an ATI graphics board, giving the message "Sketcher 
requires access to the Windows Palette to run properly on 256 color 
devices." This is due to Crystal Fonts making it appear to Windows 
Applications that the graphics board's color palette cannot be 
changed. Until ATI fixes this, uninstall Crystal Fonts to run Sketcher.

5. Sketcher 1.0 has been run successfully under OS/2 Release 2.0
using its Windows emulation. You will need to make sure the Windows
is allocated enough DPMI memory (OS/2 Windows can use up to 16MB of
DPMI memory since it always runs in Standard Mode).  The DPMI memory
limit is a DOS Option under Windows. The Wacom and CalComp tablet
drivers suppied with Sketcher will work under OS/2, but the cursor
tracking may be somewhat inferior even though the drawing works
right. If you change the Windows display driver under OS/2, do not
try to use the OS/2 Icon to switch back to other OS/2 processes while
Windows is still active - it will crash the machine.


Printing Notes:

1. Sketcher uses the standard Device Independent Bitmap (DIB) printing
technique. 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.

2. If errors occur during printing, try changing the Sketcher Set
Preferences: Windows Setup parameters for printing (see your Sketcher
manual for details).


Scanner Notes:

1. Sketcher supports the new scanning standard TWAIN that allows
scanner from many different vendors to work with Sketcher. Sketcher
supports Grayscale scanning mode only, so be sure to select this
when scanning, or an, error will result.


Sketch Files:

1. Sketcher ships with 5 saved sketch files (*.SSK) that may be executed
by selecting the file as a library with Brush Stroke/Playback Session...
and clicking the Open Library... button. Once the library is open select
the name of the sketch and click Playback.

The sketch files may also be invoked using drag and drop in the
file manager.

  
Tom Hedges
Fractal Design Corporation
