Files:
Artwork - BASIC
SHOWPIC - BASIC
JoyDriv - BASIC
LoadROM - BASIC
MOU/KEY - BASIC
RUN.ART - BASIC
stART_M - BASIC
stART_J - BASIC
C.FAlogo - Cutout
D.24PIN - Printer dump
D.9PIN - Printer dump
R.ArtROM - ROM image
R.ArtROM2 - ROM image
P.Example - Screen
T.M/J - Textfile
T.Prints - Textfile
T.UG1 - Textfile
T.UG2 - Textfile
T.UG3 - Textfile

Artwork is an immense program. It contains almost 32k of custom written machine-code. In addition to this there is a short, but compact, BASIC program of about 1.5k to control the ROMs.

Artwork contains many of the features you would expect from an art package on a 16-bit computer costing tens of pounds (the art package, not the computer!). For example, you will come across pull-down and pop-up menus, rotation to any angle, fast copying, airbrush, airbrush fill (which I have not seen before), zoom and more.

I strongly recommend that to get the best from Artwork you print all parts of the guide and go through it while using the package. You will get a sort of guided tour of the package. After all, what better way to learn than by doing?

If you have at least two banks of Sideways RAM fitted to your machine (eg if you have a BBC with a ROM/RAM card or a Master) then you can run Artwork straight away. If you have no sideways RAM and you want to use Artwork then you will need to buy the ROM's.

To start the program, place the backup copy of your Fast Access disk in the drive and boot it in the usual way. Select the appropriate "Artwork" icon (see file "M or J?" if you are unsure).

If the ROM images haven't been loaded then the program will try to load them for you. If it can't then it will tell you so. If this happens, then you should refer to your Sideways RAM manual to see how to load ROM images. Do so manually then start again. The program will not try to load an image if it is already present (clever stuff, eh?).

When the ROM images have loaded the screen will clear and tell you which input device drivers have been installed (eg mouse & keyboard or joystick). But such is the speed of your computer that if you blink you will miss them! And if you thought that that was quick...

There are a few terms which you will need to become familiar with to understand this manual properly.

"Press (button)"
Usually you will have to release again before anything happens.

"SELECT"
Either the RETURN key, the left mouse button or the joystick fire.

"MENU"
Either the SPACE key or the middle mouse button.

"CANCEL"
Either the DELETE key or the right mouse button.

"Click on (option) with (button)"
Move the hi-light bar over the option specified and press the named button.

"Select the area"
Move the cursor to one corner of a box, press SELECT then move the cursor to the opposite corner and press SELECT again. Pressing MENU any time before the second SELECT will (usually) take you to the menu bar. After you have pressed SELECT once, pressing CANCEL will "undo" that point and allow you to select a different place for it.

"Drag the box"
Move the box to the area you want the result of the action to go and press SELECT. With the exception of "Rotate", you can't push any part of the box off-screen.

"Move the mouse"
Either move the mouse or joystick, or press a cursor key. When using the menu system, I recommend holding down SHIFT while using the cursor keys.

If an error occurs, a window will appear to inform you of it. Press any button to get out of this window.

You should see in front of you a black screen with a red bar accross the top. This red bar is the main menu and one of the options "Action" should be hi-lighted. Try moving the mouse left or right. The hi-light bar moves along with the mouse.

Move the mouse right so that the "Special" option is hi-lighted once again. Now press SELECT. As if by magic, you have "pulled-down" a pull-down menu. This is a submenu. As you can see from the main menu there are 6 submenu's. Try moving the mouse about. You now have control of the hi-light bar on the submenu. It moves up and down with the mouse. Press CANCEL and the pull-down menu will disappear. You now have control of the main-menu again.

Move the mouse to the left so that the "Actions" option is hi-lighted. Pull it down (by pressing SELECT). Move the hi-light bar down to the "Air" option. You can see that at the right is an arrow. This indicates that a further menu can be accessed.

Press MENU. A window will appear in the middle of the screen. The Actions menu will disappear due to lack of memory. You are now looking at an options menu. This is the third type of menu. Moving the mouse left and right will move the hi-light bar. Pressing CANCEL will return to the Actions menu. Press CANCEL again and only the main menu will be visible.

Now press CANCEL again. The main menu will disappear. A cross should appear in the centre of the screen, but ignore it for now. You are in action-mode. The whole screen is avaliable for drawing. To get into the menu system while in drawing mode, press the MENU button.

So to summarise: We have met three types of menu. The main-menu, the submenu and the options menu. We have seen how moving the mouse moves the hi-light bar. When in action mode, pressing MENU will call up the main menu. From the main menu, SELECT will call up a submenu. From some options of the submenu's, pressing MENU will call up an options menu. Pressing CANCEL will take you back down the menu a level.

Call up the "Actions" submenu. Move the hi-light over any of the options and press SELECT. See what happens? A tick appears next to that option. The tick in the actions submenu shows you which drawing function will be selected when you return to action-mode. For now, select "Line" - the one at the top. Move the hi-light bar over it and press SELECT. Now go into action-mode by pressing CANCEL twice.

A small cross will appear in the centre of the screen. Moving the mouse will move the cross. Try it now. As you can see, one end of a line is attached to the cross. The other end is attached to the centre of the screen. Move the cross away from the centre and press CANCEL. The line seems to have disappeared! Move the mouse, and you will see that the start of the line has actually moved. Quite entertaining, isn't it? Move the mouse again, but this time press SELECT. As if by magic, the line is "fixed" on the screen, and the start of a new line has appeared at the end of the old one. This new line can be controlled in the same way as before. Try drawing a few lines.

Now select the "box" option from the actions menu and return to action-mode. You will see a large cross-hair. Select the area for the box (see "terms" above). A box will be drawn. Try this a few times so that you get used to it.

Now select the "circle" option from the actions menu and return to action-mode. Select an area in the same manner as for a box. This time a circle will be drawn inside the area chosen. It is a good idea to practise this a few times as it may seem strange at first. With practise, though, you will be able to predict where the ellipse (to give it its proper name) will go.

The next basic drawing tool is "triangle", so select it from the actions menu. On returning to action-mode, you are given a large cross hair. This can be moved as for the box and circles. Pressing select will "fix" this point. You will then be given something that looks like the line option. This line will be one side of the triangle. It can be moved anywhere with the mouse. Pressing SELECT again will fix this line. Now when you move the mouse about, you will be moving a cross which has the other two sides stuck to it. Pressing SELECT now will fix the triangle on screen. If you are not happy with the first or second points, pressing CANCEL will take you back to setting the first point. This also works before setting the second point (first line).

The final drawing tool is "polygon". Select it and return to action-mode (a short delay may be experienced while a table is calculated). The now familiar cross-hairs are shown. Pressing SELECT will fix the centre of the polygon. A small circle is shown around the centre. Moving the mouse will move this circle. Try it now. As you move the circle, a regular pentagon is formed. At all times, you are controlling the point with the circle around. The rest of the polygon is calculated from this point (on the radius) and the centre. Pressing SELECT will fix the polygon, whereas CANCEL will allow you to move the centre.

As you can see, it would appear that only pentagons can be drawn. This is not the case. Any regular shape from 3 to 19 sides can be drawn. Let's try that now. Enter the main menu, then "Actions" submenu. Click on "Polygon" with MENU. An options menu appears. This allows you to alter the number of sides the polygon has. Move the hi-light over "Less" and press SELECT. The number of sides will decrease. Clicking on "More" will increase the number of sides. As usual, CANCEL leaves the menu. Try drawing some different polygons.

Summary: Pressing SELECT while in the "actions" submenu will place a tick next to that option and select it as the current drawing tool. When drawing lines, CANCEL moves the start of the line, SELECT fixes it. When drawing boxes or circles, SELECT fixes the first, then second points of an area in which the box or circle is drawn. CANCEL allows you to reset the first corner. While drawing triangles, SELECT fixes the first, second and then third corners. Pressing CANCEL allows you to reset the first. While drawing polygons, SELECT fixes the centre, then the radius of a circle in which the polygon is drawn. CANCEL allows you to reset the centre. The options menu avaliable through the "Polygon" option of the "Action" submenu allows you to select the number of sides that the polygon has.

By this time, you are probably getting bored with drawing white outline shapes. So we are going to progress.

Hopefully the screen will be full of your doodlings. So we are going to learn how to clear it. Enter the main menu and pull-down the "Special" menu. Click on the "CLS" option with the SELECT button. The fourth and final type of window will appear. It is called an input window. It may appear similar to the options menus, but it is selected by pressing SELECT and not MENU. As clearing the screen is a destructive option, you are asked to confirm it (you are also given an audible warning). Move the hi-light over "YES" and press SELECT.

Oh dear. The screen has turned white! Don't worry, this is perfectly normal. "Why white?" you may be asking. The answer is simple. It's because white is the currently selected drawing colour. So now we are going to see how to change the drawing colour. Go into the main menu and pull down the "Style" menu. Move the hi-light over "colour" and press SELECT. Another input-window appears. You are in control of the arrow at the bottom. It moves when you move the mouse. Move it under the black box. Press SELECT. The large white bar has turned black! Press CANCEL twice to go to the main menu, and clear the screen as you did before. This time it turns black! Now select another colour in the same way you did black. Now get yourself back into the "style" submenu. There are three options under "Colour", and one of them is ticked. They dictate which style the shape is to be drawn in. It can either be a solid shape, an outline shape (as we have been using) or a dotted outline. Experiment with drawing a few boxes with each of the options ticked.

Summary: The screen is cleared to the current drawing colour. Shapes can be drawn in any of the four colours. Shapes can be drawn in any of the three styles.

Now we are going to see how to use the airbrush. So select "Air" from the Action submenu, and return to action-mode. Now select an area in the way you would for a box and see what happens. Impressed? Try using different sized areas and different colours, too. Do you remember seeing the "Air" options menu when we were looking around the menu system? Call it up now. Clicking on "More" with select increases the density of the spray whereas clicking on "Less" will decrease it. The white bar shows the intensity of the airbrush. Try brushing some areas with different densities. It is possible to do this effect with shapes other than rectangles, but that involves a slightly different method which we will meet in a minute.

It's about time I let you loose with the spray can. You're going to enjoy this! Select "Spray" from the Actions submenu and return to action-mode. You have a diamond to move about with the mouse. Try moving it about. Quite entertaining, but it doesn't do a lot for the picture, does it? Now press and hold SELECT while moving the mouse. That's better, isn't it. As long as you don't move the mouse too fast you will have a line of brick-wall following the diamond. Let go of SELECT and find a fairly clear part of the screen. Move the diamond there and press and release SELECT. As you can see, the shape of the spray is the diamond. It is possible to use a different shape spray. Let's try that now. Select the options-menu next to the "Spray" option of the Action submenu.

Just look at the window to familiarise yourself with it. At the top is a large representation of the brush. At the bottom right is a real size picture of it. At the bottom left are 8 brushes which are supplied with the program. Now you should see somewhere a small cross. Moving the mouse will help you find it. The cross is only allowed to move inside the options menu (there is a large invisible electric fence to prevent its escape). Click on one of the 8 brushes with SELECT. That brush is copied over the diamond, and appears as the large and small pictures. This is the brush that will now be used when you return to action-mode. Try it now.

That's all very well, but what if you want to use a brush that is not one of the 8 supplied. Easy. Call up the "Spray" options-menu. This time move the cross over the large picture. Click on one of the "boxes" therein with SELECT. It changes colour - either from red to white or white to red. The small picture changes accordingly. Any changes made here will also affect the brush used.

It is also possible to change the pattern used, but that will be explained later...

Summary: Pressing SELECT will spray with the current brush in the current pattern. The current brush can either be chosen from 8 standard ones or edited by inverting individual pixels - by clicking on the large representation of it with SELECT.

Select the "Swapcol" option from the action submenu. Return to action-mode. Select an area of the screen which has something on it. As you can see, the colours in that area have been changed. This utility is in fact more powerful than you may realise.

Select the "Special" submenu, and click on "Swop ? col" with select. An input menu pops up, and you have control of the arrow at the bottom. Pressing SELECT changes the colour above the arrow. Try it now. Now set all the colours to black, except red which should be set to red. The line of colours should be black, arrow, black. Red, arrow, red. Yellow, arrow, black. White, arrow, black. Go back to action-mode and select any area which contains all four colours. As you can see, everything except the red parts is turned to black. This has many uses.

Summary: "Swapcol" allows you to swap any colour for any other. The swaps are controlled by the "Swap ? col" input menu via the "Special" submenu. It can be also be used as a "mask" to erase selected colours.

Select the "Zoom" option from the action submenu. Upon returning to action-mode, you have a square to drag around. Move this over an area with something in and press SELECT. A large window appears in the bottom left corner of the screen.

Look at the window and you will see that it has three distinct sections. At the top is the x6 zoom window. The bottom-right has the x1 window. The bottom-left has the colour selection boxes. You have control of the cross.

There are 4 colour boxes and a "current colour" bar. The bar shows the currently selected drawing colour. Try clicking on one of the four smaller colour boxes. The bar changes colour accordingly. Note: this also changes the colour that would be used for the other drawing functions!

Select any colour and move the cross over the x6 area. While on this area, you don't have to release the mouse button for something to happen. Clicking on a square with SELECT will turn it to that colour. Try it. The x1 window changes accordingly.

Now you must decide that you are not happy with your edit and want the original back. Clicking on the x1 area with SELECT is an undo, and returns the original picture. Try it to see what happens.

When you have finished editing, pressing CANCEL will return to action-mode and copy your revised section to the screen. Then you can select another area to zoom in on.

In summary: the "Zoom" option allows you to change the colour of individual pixels. It contains an undo in case you make a mess. Pressing SELECT calls up the zoom window and CANCEL leaves it.

First, prepare the screen for this demonstration in the following way. Clear the screen. Now select another colour. Draw some circles (6 should do).

Important: If the fill leaks - i.e. goes in the wrong place, press and hold ESCAPE until it stops.

Select "Fill" from the action submenu. Return to action-mode. Move the cross to somewhere near the middle of one of the circles. Press SELECT. The circle should fill with... a brick wall! If not all of the circle has been filled, move the cross into an unfilled part and press SELECT again.

Enter the main menu, now, and pull down the "Paint" menu. There are three options. "Pattern" is ticked, and that is the type of fill you just used. Click on "Random" with SELECT. This will become ticked. Return to action-mode and fill another circle. The effect is the same as using the "Air" action, but in this way any shape can be given the effect. Call up the "Air" options menu, and select a completely different density. Make sure that the tick is still next to "Fill" and return to action-mode. Fill another circle, and you will see that the density of the fill is controlled in the same way as the airbrush.

There is one more type of fill. Select the "Paint" submenu and click on "Solid" with SELECT. Now select another colour in the usual way. Now fill two circles. We'll see how you can paint over any colour. So select another colour (not the background for this demonstration, please!). Now try re-filling one of the two circles you just did. It changes colour!

By this time there are likely to be two questions on your mind. What is the other circle for, and what if I want another pattern other than that brick wall?

The answers will now be revealed. Pull down the "Paint" menu and click on "Pattern" with MENU. An options menu appears. In it is a captive cross just like the one in the brush-editor and zoom. There are 16 patterns. Any of these can be selected by clicking on them with SELECT. As if by magic, the area to the right of them changes to show an area of the current pattern.

Try filling a circle with the new pattern. Then go back to the options menu. There are three words at the bottom. Working upwards, the first is "Clr.". This clears the pattern. Try it. The next word is "SCOL". This is a very powerful utility, and I will now show you how to use it. Suppose you want to fill an area with alternate red/yellow pixels. If you look at the 16 patterns, that is not one supplied. Go back to the main menu and select the "Special" submenu, and click on "Swap ? col" with SELECT to bring up that input menu. Change the first two (resultant) colours to red and yellow respectively. Now go back to the pattern options menu. Select the pattern which is black/red alternate pixels. It is on the top row, third from the left. The large area will fill with black/red. Now click on "SCOL" with SELECT. As if by magic, the pattern changes to red/yellow. In fact, SCOL operates on the pattern in the same way as "swapcol" does on an area of the screen.

There is one further way to edit the pattern. Click on "EDIT" with SELECT. The zoom-editor is called up with the current pattern in the top left corner. You can edit the pattern in the same way you would an area of the screen. One thing to note, though, is that the zoom editor allows you to work on all of its 16x16 grid. When you press CANCEL to go back to the pattern options menu, only the top left 8x8 is taken for the pattern. Therefore your pattern must be in the to left of the editor. Try filling over one of the solid circles with your custom pattern.

Summary: Any area can be filled in one of three ways; with the same effect as the airbrush, with a pattern or with a solid colour. The "Random" and "Solid" options fill with the current drawing colour. The pattern can be chosen from the 16 supplied, operated on with a swapcol like function, and individual pixels edited with the zoom-editor.

Now you have been using a different pattern for filling, try the "Spray" function again. The spraycan will now have the new pattern in it! So whatever pattern is chosen through the pattern options-menu is used not just by the fill, but the spraycan too.

There will come a time when you want to put a title or name on your picture. Let's learn how to do that. Select "Text" from the action submenu and try to return to action-mode. You will be given a window which asks for text to be entered. Pressing RETURN with a blank line will take you to the main menu. Type in something and press RETURN. You will be given a box which can be dragged to where you want your text to go. Pressing SELECT will position your text for you. It will be in the current drawing colour. Now, hands up everyone who has the word "Something" written on their screen. Yes, that's most of you...

Now this is not a DTP program, so I haven't included a really fancy text option. But you can write text in any of 128 different styles. Press RETURN to get to the main menu, and pull down the "Text" submenu. Clicking on any option with SELECT will either turn it on or off. Those options turned on have a tick next to them. There are 7 options, and each can be on or off. That's 2^7 or 12 different styles. Turn on a few options and try some more typing. Write your name or something. If you are sick of the BBC system font, try turning on "2nd font". The routine is not the worlds best text display system, but should be adequate for adding titles to your pictures.

Summary: text is typed in and then positioned by dragging a box and fixing with SELECT. Any of the styles can be turned on or off with the "Text" submenu. The text is in the current drawing colour.

Any area of the screen can be stretched into any other area. Select the "Stretch" option from the "Actions" submenu. Return to action-mode. Select the area which you wish to stretch in the usual way. Now select a new area into which the original will be stretched. The new area can be smaller, larger, thinner, taller or whatever you choose. Once the second area is selected, the stretching takes place. It's that simple.

First, we'll copy an area of the screen. Select "Copy" from the action submenu and return to action-mode. Select the area to copy in the same way as you did with the stretch. Now you will be given a box of the same size. Drag this box to the place where you want to copy and press SELECT to fix it. You will still have the box to drag about, incase you want to make another copy. SELECT will make another copy, whereas CANCEL will allow you to choose another area to copy from. Try making a few copies of some areas of the screen.

Now select "Move" and return to action mode. Select the area to move. Now you will be given a box to drag about as before. Pressing CANCEL will allow you to reselect the area to move from, and SELECT will move it. The original area is turned into a block of the current drawing colour. Do a bit of moving to see how it works.

A word of warning: putting the destination box over all or part of the source box can give unexpected results. You can, however, create some interesting abstract patterns by doing this...

Summary: areas of the screen can be moved or copied by selecting the area to be moved (or copied) and then dragging a box to the destination area and pressing SELECT. Multiple copies can be made. When moving, the original area is turned into the current drawing colour.

Select the "flip" option from the actions submenu. Return to action-mode. Select an area, and hey-presto it is flipped from left to right. It's as simple as that!

Now enter the actions submenu. Click on "Flip" with MENU to call up an options menu. Pressing select will alternate between a "left to right" flip and a "top to bottom" flip. Try flipping some areas of the screen with each option.

Summary: the selected area is either flipped left-to-right or top-to-bottom, depending on the option selected from the flip options menu.

Now we are going to rotate an area of the screen. Pull down the Actions submenu, and click on "Rotate" with MENU. An options menu will appear. This allows you to alter the angle of rotation. Moving the mouse left and right moves the hi-light bar. Click on "More" with SELECT. When you release the button, the angle increases by one degree. Try pressing MENU. The angle changes considerably faster as you don't have to release the button. The MENU button allows you to select roughly the angle you want, while SELECT allows fine control. For now, set it to 90 degrees. Press CANCEL, then SELECT so that "Rotate" becomes ticked. Go into action-mode. Select an area of the screen to rotate. You will then be given a box to drag about. Drag it to the destination area and press SELECT. The original area will be rotated into the new area.

Now go back to the "rotate" options menu. Select any angle other than 90, 180 or 270. Try rotating another part of the screen. This time the rotation is slower. The program has special routines for 90, 180 and 270 degree rotation which are much faster and more accurate than any other angle. So in theory, rotating by 179 degrees would be nearly the same as 180, but in practise this is not the case!

Be careful when positioning the destination box, as it is possible to drag parts of it off-screen.

Summary: part of the screen can be rotated to any angle by selecting the area to be rotated, dragging the box to where you want the result and pressing SELECT. The angle of rotation can be changed with the "Rotate" options menu.

Now you have learnt to create pictures, you will want to know how to load and save them.

Pull down the "Disk" submenu from the main menu. Click on "Drive" with SELECT. An input window appears and the disk will whirr. The only way to avoid a disk access would be to use illegal code - something I didn't want to do! The message "Using #0" should appear. You can change the drive number by pressing SELECT. Return it to 0 for now, and press CANCEL.

Click on "Load screen" with SELECT. You will be asked for a filename, so type "P.EXAMPLE". Press RETURN. The screen will load. If you try to load a file that doesn't exist, or a file which is not a screen then an error will be produced!

"*L.screen" works in the same way, but the file must be a block of memory not more than &5000 bytes in length. No check is made to see what is being loaded, so be careful!

Click on "Load cutout" with SELECT. You will be asked for a filename, so type "C.FALOGO". Press RETURN and you will be given a box. This box can be dragged anywhere on screen. Press SELECT to position the box, and the cutout will be loaded. Pressing CANCEL will return you to the menu and not load the cut. Again, a check is made to see if the file is present and if it is a cutout.

Now insert a blank disk in the drive. Click on "Save screen" with SELECT. The program asks you for a filename, and the screen is saved. If a file with that name already exists, you will be asked to confirm the save. Click on "Yes" with SELECT to confirm your wish.

"*S.screen" works in the same way, and saves the block of screen memory from &3000 to &8000.

Now click on "Save cutout" with SELECT. You will be asked for a filename. If that file exists, you will be asked to confirm. Then you will be given a cross-hair. You must select an area as if you were copying it, but instead of being given a box to drag, the area is sent to disk. Try reloading the cutout to a different area of screen.

When loading and saving cutouts, you may notice that the cursor moves in character-sized blocks. I'm afraid that that's unavoidable due to the way the cutout routines are written. One other thing to note is that when using the "Save screen" option, the palette and menu colours are saved with the screen. These will be explained in a minute. The "Save screen" usually produces a more compact file than "*S.screen", so you can fit more pictures on a disk.

Pull down the "special" submenu. Click on "*-command" with SELECT. An input window will appear with a "*" prompt. Anything typed here will be treated as any normal *-command. Any resultant display will be shown inside the window, except if the first character of the string is an inverted comma: ". Type CAT and press RETURN. A catalogue of the disk should appear in the window. Now type "CAT and press RETURN. A catalogue of the disk will appear on the picture.

Now select "Pallette". There are 8 colours available on the beeb, but only 4 can be used at once in Mode 1. This is the method used to choose which 4 are used. Move the arrow under the colour that you wish to change and press SELECT. Try it. That colour is changed to the next in the sequence:

Black - Red - Green - Yellow - Blue - Cyan - White - Black.

If you don't like the colour of the menu or if the pallette you have chosen makes it hard to read, you can change it. Select "Menu cols". You have control over the arrow again. Pressing SELECT changes the colour above the arrow. The menu doesn't change colour instantly incase you choose two colours the same, but the coloured blocks show you what the menu will look like. Pressing CANCEL takes you back to the "Special" submenu with the new colour scheme.

The next menu option is "Spool file". This allows you to load any file which has been saved using "*SPOOL". It was really added for completeness.

Now click on "Gridlock" with select. This allows you to put an imaginery grid on the screen. Move the arrow under the first one and press SELECT until the number is 64. Set the other to 64 and go to action-mode. You will see that instead of moving steadily, the cursor moves in large blocks. This is to assist with accurate drawings. Change the gridlock back to "off" and "off". You will see that the largest grid is 256x256. This is about 1/5th of the screen horizontally and 1/4 vertically. The smallest is 8x8; two pixels at a time.

Screendump allows you to send the picture to your printer. This option is explained fully in the textfile "T.Prints". Basically, you should turn the printer online, and select the appropriate dump - 9pin or 24pin. The system disk must be in the drive as the printer dumps are not in ROM.

"Scan In" is for those of you who own Watford Electronics Hand Scanners. If you select it without a scanner connected or turned on, and error is produced. If you have a scanner, turn it on at the interface, click on "Scan In" with SELECT and scan as if you'd just typed "*SCAN". The picture will not look right at first, but when you have finished scanning the screen will be corrected. Note: the Scanner ROM doesn't need to be present for this.

Clicking on "Version #" with SELECT will just tell you which version of the program is in use - ie 1.00. Press CANCEL to get back to the "Special" submenu.

Finally, clicking on "Quit" with SELECT will ask you if you really want to leave the program. If so, click on "YES" with SELECT. This will reset the computer. Don't press BREAK to get out of the program as you are likely to get a load of rubbish on screen!

In short, I would strongly recommend using ARTWORK_M. This allows control of the cursor using either a mouse or the keyboard.

If you are a joystick user, however, you should try using ARTWORK_J. The following is only relevant to joystick users. Unfortunately due to the way that ARTWORK has been written and the way that the hardware works, the joystick driver has some failings. When using the menu the program attempts to write to the input-device drivers workspace (the position of the cursor). As it is not possible for the software to physically move the joystick (not as far as I know, anyway) the device-driver simply overwrites the overwriting (complicated, eh?)! Now the important bit: If the joystick is not near the top-left hand corner, the hi-light bar will flash. NEVER PRESS A BUTTON WHILE THE MENU-HI-LIGHT IS FLASHING! This can have very unexpected results. If the menu hi-light flashes, move the joystick towards the top-left.

When using a joystick, the button on it represents SELECT, the SPACE-BAR represents MENU and the DELETE key represents CANCEL.

The program comes with two screendumps. The first is suitable for any 9-pin Epson FX compatible printer which accepts "ESC-L" dual density graphics. The other is a 24-pin dump which works on an IBM X24E, and in theory any Epson LQ800 compatible. It uses the "ESC-* 11" command to get 180x180 graphics.

If you wish to use your own screendump, it should be saved as "D.USER". It must be able to be run with the command "*RUN D.USER". It should be assembled anywhere between &2800 and &2FFF. It may use any of that area for workspace, and may freely use zero-page &70-&8F only. It can be selected with the "User: DSK" printing option.

If you use a ROM such as Printmaster, the same memory usage restrictions occur. You should select the "User: ROM" option. You will be given a "*" prompt. Type the command for the ROM (such as "GDUMP") and press RETURN. Do not type the command from the "*-command" window. It's not the same, and if you try it the computer will lock up. That's because the mouse (or whatever) drivers interfere with the printer. They are only turned off by the "Screendump" option.

So that's Artwork. I'm sure you can create some quite detailed pictures with it. There are bound to be other things that you want the program to do. If so, write to Fast Access and tell them. There is a "hook" in the program to allow another ROM to be added with more functions. If there is enough demand then maybe an Artwork upgrade will be published. Don't forget also that Fast Access has a Gallery section - I'm sure they'd like to see any good pictures you create

Happy drawing! Paul.