                   Recoloring WordPerfect

                       by Dave Senger

   Do you still use WordPerfect, even though you have one of
the new operating systems?  So do I.  If you need graphics, and a
wide variety of fonts, sizes, and styles, there are better
choices.  But if you are a fast touch-typist, and you just want
to enter and edit a lot of manuscript text in a hurry,
WordPerfect is still the one to beat.  WordPerfect programmers
stopped working on the Amiga version a couple of years ago, and
though the program still works well, even on the new operating
systems, it is showing a few grey hairs.  But after a little
recoloring, it will look as good as ever.
   The `grey hairs' show up every time you save a document
icon.  The famous white scroll with lines of blue ink on it has
been replaced with grey ink on black paper, which looks terrible. 
So I wrote a program to fix it.  You can see `before' and `after'
versions of the icon the program makes in the screen shot. 
   NewIconWP.rexx is listed at the end of this article.  You
can use this program to recolor the original WordPerfect doc
icon, or to replace it with any other legal icon image small
enough to fit into the program's available space.  You can copy
to WordPerfect any of the icons you see in the screen shot.  You
can copy an icon you made yourself.  You can even copy the first
image of a dual-image icon, such as the Workbench Drawer icon. 
The hardest part of the job is typing in the listing.
   When you have typed in NewIconWP.rexx, using a text editor
such as Ed, save it to your Rexxc directory.  This is an ARexx
program, so when you use it, ARexx must be running on your
system.  If you haven't used ARexx yet, check your Commodore
manual to see how to set it up.  Both rexxsyslib.library and
rexxsupport.library need to be in your Libs directory.  If your
Startup-Sequence doesn't start the ARexx interpreter for you,
double-click on RexxMast in the System drawer. 
rexxsupport.library must be loaded before you run the program. 
If your Startup-Sequence doesn't do this for you, enter `RXLIB
rexxsupport.library 0 -30 0' in a Shell.
   CD a Shell to your WP directory, and make a backup copy of
your WordPerfect program, which is called `wp'.  You can try to
copy the first image of any legal icon to WordPerfect.  If the
image is too big, NewIconWP.rexx will refuse to copy it, and no
harm will come to your program.  Icons are stored in .info files,
so enter, for example:

      rx NewIconWP wp MyDir/MyFile.info

or just enter `rx NewIconWP', and follow the prompts.
   After the drive stops running, start WordPerfect, type a few
characters, and save a dummy file.  The icon you get should look
exactly like the one you copied.
   There are four versions of WordPerfect for the Amiga.  They
are:  4.1.9, 4.1.10, 4.1.11, and 4.1.12.  If you have the second-
oldest, 4.1.10, you will have to edit one line in NewIconWP.rexx
to make it work.  You will find instructions in the script.  The
script will work as is for the other three versions.

>>> Recoloring and Editing Your Icon

   If you want to recolor the original WordPerfect icon, run an
unedited copy of `wp', and save an icon.  Start IconEdit, in the
Tools drawer, and drag your icon into the large editing window. 
Select Recolor from the Extras menu, or use <Right Amiga>-M to
recolor the icon, then save it.  Next, copy your recolored icon
image back to `wp'.
   You may want to edit an icon, as I did to make the `DAVE
DOC' icon in the screen shot.  Use WordPerfect to make an icon,
then recolor it.  Save your icon image as a brush by selecting
`Save IFF Brush' from the Images menu of IconEdit.  Start a
Deluxe Paint-style program, and select a two-bitplane, four
color, 320x200 screen.  Set the Palette to the new Workbench
colors, which are:

                        Red    Green   Blue

      Color 0 (Grey)    10     10      10
      Color 1 (Black)   0      0       0
      Color 2 (White)   15     15      15
      Color 3 (Blue)    6      8       11

   Import your IFF brush, stamp it down in a few places, and
edit your icon images until you get one you like.  Cut it
carefully as a brush, so that your edited image is no wider or
taller than the original, and save it as an IFF image.  Select
`Load IFF Brush' from the Images menu of IconEdit, to load your
edited image.  Select Backfill from the Highlight menu, then save
your icon by selecting `Save As' from the Project menu.  Finally,
copy your edited icon image to WordPerfect.
   Similarly, you can also make and install a brand-new icon,
using IconEdit alone, or with a paint program.

>>> For Techies...

   I am not going to explain the technical details of how
NewIconWP.rexx works, since that would take up far more space
than I have.  Besides, I have done the job already.  My article,
`Re Color', which was published in the recent Volume 3, Number 4
issue of AC's TECH, explains the design of .info files, which are
the files containing the data that the system uses to draw icons. 
The article also presents RecolorIcons.rexx, an ARexx program you
can use to recolor all those pre-OS 2 icons you have on your old
disks.  My follow-up article, `Re Color Revisited', which will
probably appear in AC's TECH, Volume 4, Number 1, presents
NewIconWP.rexx, along with several other ARexx scripts you can
use to recolor or replace the icon images generated by
WordPerfect and several other programs, plus some other ARexx
scripts that will help you write scripts of your own to do the
same job with most other programs which generate icons.  In
addition, there are several other pieces of software, along with
a technical description of the editing process, plus an
explanation of how to use all this material to make your own
ARexx scripts to edit the icon images in programs.  If you are
not interested in programming, you can just use the scripts to
replace the icon images in some of your programs.  All the
software is on disk, so you won't have to do any typing.
   That about covers it.  Have fun.
