Below is a list of paint programs and related applications, not in any
particular order, with their main characteristics.
Assuming the server is running Apache, you can solve this by creating a
file called .htaccess in the same directory as that containing the
dolls. The .htaccess should contain a single line as below:
During the 0.6 or 0.7 GnomeKiSS development cycles I discovered that a
small number of dolls in my collection of test data could not be opened
at all, the version of 'lha' I was using was too old.
I upgraded LHA and was able to access the majority of the affected dolls
OK, the new version reported that the rest were incomplete or corrupted.
That's fine for me, but what about in Windows???
It turns out that the new -lha7- compression method has some problems,
which mean that I must recommend against using it for KiSS dolls. The
current batch of Windows KiSS viewers can't handle -lha7- properly
and don't understand what's happened so Bad Things Happen
In WKiSS and KiSSLD the effect is as if there was no doll - the viewer
remains empty but it doesn't crash. In PFK 0.8x the viewer crashes
immediately with an Access Violation.
Paint programs
Two very important features of any paint program used to make KiSS
set images are layers and easy palette editing, with as optional
third feature the ability to transform the images into KiSS cels and
palette files, either inherently or through a plugin. That said, most
image editors used by KiSS artists don't have these features; some
people happily use MS-Paint. My personal favourites were Neopaint
for DOS (works on even the slowest computer) and Paint Shop Pro 3 to
save the palettes to editable ASCII files. (Neopaint palettes can be
saved to ASCII files too, but, being 32-bit colour, they use the
range 0-63 as opposed to 0-255, and saving an image alternately
in Neopaint or PSP will subtly change its palette.) Then Paint Shop
Pro 5 with its layers and transparent selections came out, and I've
never used anything else since (except on those slow computers).
It was followed by versions 6 and 7 which included vector graphics,
a must for any modern paint program, although for KiSS I'd call it
overkill. (By now it's at version X which requires Windows XP.)
Other popular programs are Adobe Photoshop (Mac users) the GIMP
(Linux users), and DPixEd, a W95 editor which was written especially
for KiSS artists.
This will work on an XT (remember those?) but expect performance to
suffer; especially colour-flooding operations will take forever.
No layer support, obviously, and limited functionality by modern
standards, with a maximum colour depth of 64K (just one step away
from truecolour), ugly error diffusion, many tools that don't
work in magnified mode (but it does magnify beautifully, unlike
PSP where the magnified picture develops stray pixels) limited format
support (no .jpg) and an annoying interface for opening files, although
it does have a search file option. This may sound very negative, but I
absolutely love this program. It's not sold any more, but
Neosoft
does sell registration codes (just drop them a mail),
and unregistered copies of the program can be downloaded from many places.
Extras: free fonts (npfnts01.zip) can be downloaded from
this page
(just copy the font files into the NEOPAINT directory). There is
also an appealing set of
shareware fonts which can probably be found at most DOS
shareware sites.
Stamps (PCX files, despite the ".st" extension) are the user-editable
Neopaint equivalent of Paint Shop Pro's "picture tubes". Click
here to download the hearts, diamonds,
clubs and spades stamps I made for the FKSolitaire set.
Sorry to be disappointed at what is still a very good program, but
this is just the DOS-Neopaint adapted to Windows, with extras
like more stamps and fonts flung in and extra functionality of the
kind that I precisely wasn't looking for - to heck with colour
channels, why doesn't it support layers? The program uses the windows
fonts, and I'm not sure how to add any. The new Neopaint palette has a
double set of colour values to make it compatible with Paint Shop Pro;
this is buggy in 4b, so always save an image after loading to make
sure both palettes are filled. It is a nicely small program with
clever options, though - statistical colour reduction with a preview
window, a "mouse camera" - and still for sale at the NeoSoft site.
The last version to still work under Windows 3.1x. Paint Shop
Pro was the image editor for the lesser mortals who cowered before
Photoshop; it was cheaper and easier and is much superior to
Neopaint for palette editing and colour manipulation (especially
colour reduction), although Neopaint did have the very important
feature of adjusting selection positioning with the cursor keys,
where in PSP it was a matter of mouse dragging and praying.
Version 3 does have its quirks, and be careful when
saving, as your file may not wind up where you thought it would.
Not sold any more, but the evaluation copy (nags but doesn't
expire) can be downloaded from many places.
This has everything PSP3 missed, and then some: layers,
different gradients and blend modes, infinitely adjustable
paintbrushes (but no buttons like "Crayon", "Charcoal"; these
options are hidden in the Tool control box), superior selection
handling (selections can be grown, inverted, pasted transparent,
made into masks etc.), textures, "tubes" (the PSP version of
the Neopaint stamps) and so on and so forth. Very (to me)
importantly, this version does allow positioning a selection
with the cursor keys, and its text tool has line-wrap. (Again
one of those things that Neopaint had and PSP3 didn't.)
The program comes with a gif animator, and an update to version
5.03 could be downloaded from Jasc, before they merged with Corel
and ditched their pre-Corel products. Sadly, this version has had to
make way for the memory hog version 7, which has many pretty
extras (that's why I bought it) but is not kind to older
computers. So whoever would use this perfect balance of
features and compactness that is version 5 will get one
shot at an evaluation copy downloadable from, er, somewhere
which expires, irrevocably, after 60 days.
This application, which is part of any self-respecting "GUI" Linux
distribution, has layers. It also has many, many other features, which
sadly I can say nothing about because I've never used it, not even the
version for Windows 9xx. (Actually, there's a port for OS/2 too but I
think that requires the OS/2 X-windows port.) I have started it, and it
works with one drawing window and lots of separate tools and options
windows. It's totally free, and the latest version can be downloaded
from here.
A heavy-duty commercial application, with layers. There are several
cel-making plugins for this one.
This program, freeware, written by a KiSS artist and generally hard
to find, comes in a Japanese and an English version. It has layers and
possibly many other features which again I can't comment on, since I
never use the program. (It only works in 256 colours which is an advantage
over Paint Shop Pro which insists on 16-bit colour before it will let me
use layers.) There is a cel-making plugin for DPixEd
at EMK's page.
Sometimes, old versions of a program are given away for free so that
the consumer may use them, grow to love them, and update to the newer
paid versions for all those extra features that the old version sadly
didn't have. As modern-day graphics programs suffer from feature
overkill anyway, the free versions will be quite sufficient for the
average artist. These are no longer for download, but might still be
found on old shareware CDs:
Looking a little out of place in this list is
IrfanView, a multiformat
free/donationware viewer. It is emphatically not an editor, but does
display and save image palettes, and can be used for colour reduction,
tricks with RGB values and simple effects like "Oil painting".
Ditto Display, a freeware image manipulator
which may be much appreciated for its effects of auto-crop and
statistical colour reduction, two features I don't find in the glossy
big applications.
LHA archivers
Most of these can be found at
LHAWorld,
which also has the LHA-related DLL files that some viewers need to open a KiSS archive. See
also Datacompression.info - LHA, an
English page listing LHA archivers for all OSes.
Still the most solid archiver I know. It does have an option for long
filename support, although I never use that.
Uses the DOS LHA executable.
Uses the DOS LHA executable which means long filenames are
shortened and the maximum path-plus-filename length is 66
characters. Under Windows 9xx it will display long filenames, though.
Not recommended! Archive files may be unreadable (PA 6.0 archives were reported
to be readable in PlayFKiSS 0.83 but not 0.81), and when deleting a selected file in
an archive, the program may delete the whole archive. It may also hang on archives
with long filenames (that the DOS LHA program has no problems with). It's best to use
version 6.11, and that only for browsing, as PowerArchiver doesn't have the 66-characters
limit.
Not recommended! I thought it was fine for archiving, if a little slow,
but KiSS sets compressed with this program may report CRC errors with
programs that use UNLHA32.DLL and show up as garbage when reopened in
UltimateZip itself. Such sets are best uncompressed and re-archived with LHA
for DOS. Maybe future versions will handle LZH better.
Be very sure to turn MacBinary off! For a non-Japanese page on how to use
MacLHA, check tea's tutorial for Mac users.
Two LHA issues:
Although the standard format for KiSS sets is LZH, on some servers a set has to be
uploaded as a zipfile (all files put in an LZH archive and this archive zipped, so
that the server will recognize the format) because it can't be downloaded otherwise.
This is a question of sloppy server configuration, but here's a possible solution
(quoted straight from a mailing list post, I can't remember the author):
AddType application/octet-stream .lzh
There is also a problem with the newest LZH compression format for Unix/Linux.
I'll quote the post sent to the mailing list by Nick Lamb:
To this I'd like to add that when offered a choice of LZH compression
algorithms, it's best to choose Frozen5 (which I assume is the same as
-lh5- in Unix). Older viewers with internal LZH support can't handle
anything else.
