Changes with 7.2.7 (2020-08-23)

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Added shortcuts to toggle color drag modes in palette window.

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Improvements to frame resize dialog concerning size definitions. The changes include percentage edits as well as a new adjustment button containing different predefined width/height adjustments.

Fix: When modifying a halftone pattern slot value in the paint mode settings and closing/starting PM again then it selected the dither pattern you had in your last session, but it did not load the individual slot settings. Instead it used the default values.

Fix: When using the hue slider in the square color selector pad and moving to the fare right position it turned the color to black.

Pipette options for “pick once” and “pick opacity”.
If enabled “pick once” returns to the previous tool after color pick up.
If enabled “right Ctrl picks opacity” picks opacity with alpha transparent projects.

Fix: Clicking minimize icon of PM directely when another app is active, left main window open.

Added name labels for color harmonies.

Added shortcut to toggle layer solo mode.

Fix: If you have layer effects in two projects that display each other then you could not load them again in PM. An endless internal loop occurred.

Fix: If a brush whose colours have been remapped gets resized using shift++ or shift+- its colours get reverted to the originals unremapped state.

Fix: Create animation from color cycling lost transparency.

Added option for TGA compression.

Added crop to selection feature in menu “Frame”.

Shortcut entry to send current brush to brush container.

Function to select everything that has the current foreground color in menu “Selection”.

Fix: Remove files from recent file lists that don’t exist anymore and remove duplicates.

Fix: When having full screen window and closing last project then it stays open leading to crash later.

Allow max pixel scale of 600 on export.

Fix: If a daily update check has been done and a new version is available then the corresponding “New Version available” button shows. If PM was restarted then the button did not show anymore until next day when a new update check was done.

Fix: Loading true color image improvements. Sort palette. White is first color. Select color 0 to be be transparent when using alpha transparency.

Fix: The function to hold Shift to lock the movement to an axis suddenly stopped working. Internally it is checked that only Shift and no other key is down. On some Systems a couple of extra keys like “Play”, “Kana”, “Kanji” are always “down” to enable certain special functions. Such keys are now ignored.

Changes with 7.2.6 (2020-04-26)

Fix: Random crash when closing project.

Fix: Loading an (older) tile map project could lead to project corruption.

Fix: Random error when using (e.g.) Ctrl + 1 to unzoom after opening/closing projects.

Increased max layers to 256.

New shortcuts for layer navigation: Move layer up / down, top / bottom, toggle layer lock.

Fix: Right mouse button tile erase not working in tile map pick place mode. When you have a tile as brush and place it with the right mouse button then a full tile erase should be done. This worked with indexed transparency but not with alpha transparency. An “action aborted” message appeared.

Improved keyboard shortcut management. Now keys like “Tab” can be used as well.

Fix: Licensing engine not working with UTF8 characters. Names with Asian characters have been displayed as ????

Free edition project management improvement. Due to a restriction to have two projects open at a time only, certain sample projects could not be loaded. It should be possible to load every existing project while creating a new project is only possible if you have only a single one open.

Fix: Different clipboard transfer glitches. Creating new project from clipboard did not use transparency if an image was copied to the clipboard that used indexed transparency. Getting data from clipboard as brush not working with clipboard image using alpha transparency.

Increased export scale max value to be 20.

Fix: Brush container could not be placed on second monitor. Always returned to top left corner of main window after startup.

Fix: Main window not maximizing again after minimizing all Apps using WinKey + D and switching back to Pro Motion.

More Shortcuts…
Toggle bucket isolated fill on and off
Toggle pen pressure sensitivity (known as ‘brush tip size’) on and off
Toggle brush pattern fill mode (technically, being able to cycle through fill modes on the fly)

Fix: Shortcut using F1 and any extra key opens help instead of when F1 pressed only.

Store option to display or hide home screen for next start up.

Fix: Export only plugins accessed even when only checked for supporting to read a file.

Fix: Outside border selection modification one pixel too small.

Fix: ESC not working with “Create Animation Window”. ESC now stops a running preview and closes the window otherwise.

Fix: App windows not disabled when no project active. If home screen is active the app windows could be used leading to different sorts of errors.

Stencil improved.
Stencil operations now stored in undo history.
Warning message if selection is to be changed while stencil auto update feature is enabled because this reverts the operation so that nothing would happen.
Initially “deselecting” a color must invert stencil first, automatically.

Added message if Windows Ransomware Protection blocks access to documents folder.

Added warning when trying to save alpha transparent image/animation with incompatible file types.

Improved overlay hint texts for the option icons in the layer window. There are a couple of icons in the layer window to show if alpha is enabled, stencil, global palettes and spare frame. Their text descriptions for when these options are active or inactive have been improved to make their state and function more clear to the user.

Added separate white color index for transparent pixels when loading alpha enabled images/animations. When image/animation files (e.g. png) where loaded then there was only a single white color used for fully transparent pixels and opaque white pixels at the same time. Now there is a separate white palette index for the transparent pixels.

Fix: Create project from clipboard contents not working correctly. With alpha enabled images the empty area was not correctly cleared. The palette was not taken/built from the image data but from the current project default.

When creating an alpha enabled project now color 0 is used as white and transparent instead of 255.

Fix: Errors in palette window when “alpha only” edit mode is enabled. If you clicked into the alpha palette then an error occurred. Also the vertical size of the alpha gray scale palette was wrong.

Changes with 7.2.5 (2020-03-20)

Drop indicator for dragging layers.

Added shortcus to toggle select/edit area in palette window.

Made F1 key to be available for other functions than help topic only.

Fix: Swap FG/BG color removed transparency pattern of the transparent color swatch.

Added shortcut slot to toggle pixel perfect drawing option. A concrete shortcut must be defined individually. There is no default.

Added functions to modify the current selection, see menu “Selection/Modify”. Grow, Shrink, Inside Border, Outside Border with given size and round or square shape

New function to directly shade a brush. New submenus Brush/Shade/Shade up, Brush/Shade/Shade down added. These functions take the colors of the brush and shade them like the multi shade paint mode.

Fix: Loading a third image in Free Edition led to an error.

Fix: Flipped gradients used wrong order after loading project.

Shortcuts to cycle through color palette rows. A concrete shortcut must be defined individually. There is no default.

Fix: Anti aliasing not working with pattern drawing.

Fix: Tile set export did not correctly remember file type and added two file type extensions. When you repeatedly exported a tile library and reused the previous name like “abc.png” then the extension “png” was added again.
Also when you saved as “PNG” then the next run pre-selected “TGA” as file type instead of using PNG again.

Fix: Swap FG/BG color removed transparency pattern of the transparent color swatch. If you had an alpha transparent project where the (fully) transparent color index is not “0”, you select this as drawing color and use the “flip fg/bg color button” then the color swatch did not show the transparency pattern anymore.

Fix: Random crash when opening gradient editor.

“Home screen” added with recent projects and files to load as well as news display.

When using mouse wheel to cycle through brushes in the container the selected brush is now brought into view area. It is now also in “selected” state.

When the currently selected tile changes then it is now made visible in the tile palette. The tile palette now scrolls to the tile position instead of leaving it out of view.

Changing selected layer with Shift + T now scrolls layer window to the position of the new active layer.

Fix: Undo/redo with single dot tool and paint mode “selection” not working. Also latest changes reverted when you switch to another tool.

Fix: Internal error when picking up tiles in alpha enabled project and moving to non-alpha project where tile index display is enabled.

Changes with 7.2.4 (2020-02-09)

Mouse wheel action to cycle through gradient colors + key shortcuts.

Fix: Random crashes when editing tile map based projects.

Fix: When toggling sync mode by key shortcut then brush preview was baked into the image and turned into tiles.

Fix: Mouse wheel not working in full screen mode.

Fix: Connected tile map projects problem when copying tile map projects. If you created a copy of the a tile map project file, e.g. with “Save Copy as” or by copy/paste in the file system then the connected project settings became wrong. The previous project was added as connected project to the new project file copy.

Fix: Invert selection clashed with stencil. When a stencil is active then Selection/Invert Selection inverted the stencil. This raised problems because the stencil might have been used for the initial selection. After that other selection modifications could have been made. When using the invert selection function then now the stencil definition is removed and the selection is inverted as is. To invert the stencil the invert stencil function in the palette editor must be used.

Fix: Brush alignment with single dot painting sometimes not working. The dot space definition was used a minimum distance, even if “Brush Size aligned” is active which sjould always use the brush size.

Fix: Modifying a mask while stencil auto update is enabled did not revert the change. If you had a stencil mask active and “stencil auto update” option enabled then you may not modify the mask, e.g. by drawing with paint mode “selection”. If you did then an error was displayed but the change was not reverted.

Fix: Sometimes an internal error occurred in palette editor when moving colors. After certain palette operations some function states are updated. Some involve checking if there is data in the clipboard. Opening the clipboard can raise an error. Windows sometimes refuses access to clipboard data randomly (probably due to security checking, virus scanning or something).

Fix: Palette edit allowed even if not all connected tile map projects are loaded.

Fix: Copied tile map projects interfered with each other. If you created a copy of a tile map file then internally a technical project id was copied as well. If you loaded both projects then both used the same id leading to weird effects and even destruction of the projects.

Fix: Brush magic wand cut pickup + undo not working.

Fix: Shade paint modes not working with alpha transparent brushes.

Fix: Some tile set operations always allowed though only valid when sync mode is enabled.

Fix: IFF animation files not loading. A ‘Not a valid IFF(Anim5) Animation!’ error occurred.

Fix: Pipette + Shift to select a color jumped to move/edit area of the palette window even when you wee currently in contrast/brightness area. Now it stays there.

Fix: Tile drag/drop not working when scrolling with mouse wheel. If you dragged a tile in the tile set and used the mouse wheel to scroll then the drop operation was ignored.

When creating to many new tiles, the operation is directly reverted if the user cancels. When creating too many tiles with a single operation (e.g. fill tool) then the user was asked if he wants to create so many individual tiles. If he says “no” now then the operation is reverted directly instead of letting the user hit undo.

Allow layer merge on brush pick up with tile map projects. This was disabled because merged multi layer tile data can’t be placed as tiles. But it can be used as new tiles and it is also useful when not in sync mode, so it’s up to the user to do the right thing instead if disabling that function.

Fix: Shortcuts to cycle through tiles not working correctly. If you used Shift + F and Shift + V to cycle through tiles with the brush then two problems appeared: They cycled to wrong direction (next vs. previous). With alpha transparent projects the brush was fully transparent showing no tile.

Fix: Import brush color dialog does not find matches if brush has transparent color. Some more tweaks:
Mark transparent color in project palette.
Auto map transparent brush color to project transparent color.
Display brush color details when hovering on them.

Fix: Color channel bits not considered when importing brush colors.

Fix: Get Brush (from clipboard) + certain functions reset to last pick up brush before applying the function

Fix: Getting 32Bit image data from clipboard can result in loosing colors even if no more that 256 are used

Changes with 7.2.3.1 (2019-11-25)

Fix: When having multiple projects open layers display did not update. This could even lead to crashes because of executing functions on wrong layers.

Fix: Mouse wheel not working in embedded windows mode.

Changes with 7.2.3 (2019-11-16)

Added typical layer handling functions to the Layers menu.

Fix: Mouse wheel using wrong operation. If a dialog was open and mouse wheel used then the underlying window sometimes executed its mouse wheel operation instead.

Transparent brush color can now be imported as well with the brush color import function (menu Colors/Import Colors from Brush). The transparent color (if any) is marked by some orange bar and placed at the end of all colors to be imported.

Fix: Different problems when importing data from Windows clipboard. Transparency was mixed up and sometimes “Paste Frame” did not work at all.

Prior to NG the Alt key was used as pipette option to replace a color you click on.
With NG this was changed so that Alt picks up opacity and Alt Gr is replace color mode. This was a mistake, because of two reasons:
Alt should have staid as it was and Alt Gr should have been added to pick up opacity.
Alt Gr does not even exist on all keyboards.
New approach:
Alt is used to replace the color again
Right(!) Ctrl key is now used for picking up opacity (Alt Gr does the same additionally).

Allow isometric angle locks with Shift when drawing straight lines or polygon lines.

Fix: Polygon tools didn’t capture mouse movement correctly. When leaving the canvas window the lines where interrupted.

Fix: Brush used wrong size when grabbed with freehand selection.

Fix: Some glitches with color palette selection (e.g. when selecting a palette in project creation window).
– the system searched all files in folder tree. This is now limited to 2 levels
– files that where 768 Bytes in size where incorrectly recognized as color palette

Fix: Error when using gradient color sort function in gradient editor

Fix: Clicking into PM with middle mouse button when comming from another app did a tool operation (e.g. drawing) instead of moving canvas when there is a pinned window.

With menu Edit/Insert Frame global layer palette is not deactivated anymore. Instead the layer palette is used and the frame pixels are remapped to it.

When turning a project into a tile map then it is automatically resized if it does not fit the tile size.

Fix: Import colors from brush reverted the brush the one that was pick up instead of the current one (e.g. imported from clipboard)

Changes with 7.2.2.2 (2019-10-06)

Fix: “Paste” menu entry in color palette window sometimes disabled even if there is paste-able data in the clipboard

Fix: Merging two layers on the layer stack not working. Contents of lower frame where removed.

Fix: Color remapping creates wrong colors when importing from true color (e.g. load true color images or paste from clipboard).

Changes with 7.2.2 (2019-09-15)

Fix: Inverse halftone gradient fill not working with gradient auto slots.

Fix: When drawing lines with symmetry then parts of the line end are not finally drawn.

Fix: Inaccuracy with multi point symmetry modes. With the multi point dots the symmetry positions are sometimes wrong, especially with larger zoom values and when moving the mouse cursor at the edges of a zoomed pixel. In that case the calculation suffers from rounding effects leading to misplaced dots.

Playback limit modifications now recorded in undo history.

Fix: Problems in 3D animation dialog:
If you enlarged the frame range and execute rendering then the last frame that was already there before the enlargement is erased.
Using “B” for acquiring the last brush stamp position was sometimes not working correctly.
Missing or doubled brush pixel lines when doing a straight movement without rotation at z=0 form outside screen on the left to outside screen on the right.

Internal color management and color calculations reworked.

Fix: Timeline selection with Shift sometimes not working correctly. Starting frame was removed from selection.

Fix: Internal palette generation corrected to match default palette.

You can now define a frame range when exporting animation data.

Added filter option to fill pattern management dialog to only show patterns that match the current gradient type.

Layer based selections:
Ctrl +… selection actions for layers when clicking on eye-icon
no other modifier key = set
Shift = add
Alt = subtract
Shift + Alt = logical “and”
Right Mouse button = remove selection

Single color editor reworked:
– RGB square, RYB/LCh/Lab color wheels and edits
– Color harmonies and scales
– individual scale editor to easily create color ramps
– screen color picker

Removed HSL/HSB preferences. With the new color editor offering different color spaces the option to use HSL over HSB has been removed from the preferences. The color palette window now always uses HSL. HSB is available in the single color edit dialog.

Compatibility tab in the preferences now always visible to e.g. define windows being “inside” the main window not only when running on MacOS or Linux.

Fix: AnimBrush could not be placed at outside top/left area. Also project frame now does not flip to the next one when placing an AnimBrush.

Added menu entries to the context menu in the color palette window (edit area)
– reduce colors
– remove unused colors
– remove duplicate colors

Fix: Some color changes in palette editor did not update paint color slots. If e.g. gray or invert color have been used and one of the affected colors where selected as first/second drawing color then their slots in the main form have not been updated.

Option “Auto select Color” in the dialog menu of the palette editor window is now “Select Paint Colors in Edit/Move Area” and also selects RMB color instead of opening context menu.

In the palette window where you can edit contrast, brightness and saturation gray colors can be changed concerning saturation turning them into colors.

Reworked color sort functions
– made color sort functions to be always available with any selection
– sort from bright to dark
– use multiple sort levels where useful
– let transparent color be untouched when sorting colors

Fix: color palette handling, paint modes, color matching algorithms reworked and glitches removed
– using CIE LAB color remapping
– paint modes used transparent color index if it’s best matching to the color to find
– transparent color problem with multi layer merges

Fix: when saving as PNG24 (sprite sheet) the layer merge used 256 color reduction.

Changes with 7.2.1 (2019-05-05)

Limit color remapping to masked area.

Shortcut option for 2×2 brushes.

Fix: The pen pressure range settings might become “0 to 0” after start up disabling all pressure based functions.

Fix: Layer merging still using wrong transparent color in merge result.

New functions as “hidden” shortcuts Alt Gr + O, Alt Gr + P that rotate the frames of the current layer, either the ones that are selected as playback limit or those that are selected on the time line.

Added preference settings to change transparency pattern size.

Fix: Cancelling layer settings editing led to unsaved changes flag being set to the project.

Fix:When you dragged a tile in the tile window but you start at the area where there are no tiles (gray dashed area at the end of the tiles) then
it destroyed the destination tile leading to different crashes later on.

Fix: Crash using shortcut Alt + D to show tile indices when not having a tile map project.

Fix: Different glitches with “Create from Modification History”.

Allow color sort in color palette with single color selection if the colors have a consecutive range.

Fix: Exporting merged mulit layer image/animation leds to an opaque image although there are transparent parts.

Fix: Crash when exporting scaled image/animation and enabled spare frame.

Fix: Crash when moving layer FX out of range in the effects list.

Fix: Pixel upscaling on export not working with alpha transparency.

Fix: Random crash when using quick mask stencil.

Fix: Preview of “Create Animation” could not be stopped. Click on Preview button now stops. Escape does not close the dialog anymore.

Fix: Undo/redo of frame scrolling down not working. Redo moved frame to the right instead of to the top.

Changes with 7.2.0 (2019-04-05)

Added “limit” option to the light table to limit rendering light table frames to the selected animation frames.

Fix: Merging layers using effects or opacity looses transparent color.

Real time paint mode usage with brush drawing tools.

Fix: Pixel precise drawing not working with Stereo drawing.

Fix: Ramp RGB/HSV did not respect channel bit depth.

Follow Preview option for magnify window.

Functions added to the palette editor to remap colors to a given color selection.

Some Microsoft ransomware protection denies access to the user documents folder. If this is the case then a special message is shown.

Added new tile index display mode for tiles that use mirroring.

Fix: File I/O plugin behavior not as described in the docs.

Scale and pixel size options now offered on file export (image and animation).

Random playback option for AnimBrushes added.

Fix: Prevent shortcut execution when application is not fully loaded.

Fix: Leaving ‘pick stencil from canvas’ with line mode shortcut changes the line mode

Re-integrated the “Create from Undo Buffer” function that was available. Now called “Create from Modification History”

Fix: When using two spin edit fields on the same dialog that have a track bar then an exception was sometimes raised when the dialog closes.

Fix: Pinned windows disappeared behind unpinned magnify windows (e.g. when using Alt key).

Swap Zoom Level now zooms at mouse position when switching to a larger zoom value and otherwise it centers the view position.

Mouse wheel brush size change now uses one pixel steps.

Zoom function (e.g. magnify and mouse wheel zoom) now keep the pixel under cursor aligned.

Scrollbar handle sizes are made dynamic, depending on the canvas display contents in magnify and animation window.

Fix: GIFs having different transparent colors per frame ended up with a wrong overall transparent color after being loaded. Such animations are now set to be opaque.

Fix: E-key selection and undo did not work.

Re-included image file names per frame as it was in V6.5.

When using flip or sort functions in palette window and option “Apply color Movements to Pixels” is enabled then the pixels are remapped automatically.

Fix: After moving selected colors in the color palette a following sort operation is applied to the original selection not to the destination after move.

Fix: Pick up brush, turn single color, change color, resize –> first selected color was used again instead of the latest one.

Fix: When creating an alpha transparent project, color index 255 must be used as white and transparent.

Fix: Pattern drawing and stereo drawing must deny each other.

Paint mode toggle added. If you hit a paint mode shortcut twice then it toggles back to the previously selected paint mode.

Fix: frame resize dialog did not allow width/height below 4

Fix: In alpha plane only edit mode, transparency pickup with pipette did not work.

Fix: In alpha plane only edit mode, value replacement with pipette + undo did not work.

Right mouse button or double click on tool icon now shows the corresponding tool settings.

Shortcut added to simulate right mouse button. For pen users it’s useful to hold a key (“P” by default) and draw to apply the second color while using the pen normally on the tablet.

When defining colors for a gradient, the color selection mode button was not down (initially it’s single color selection).

When adding colors to a gradient making it incompatible for color cycling, this option is silently deactivated instead of showing an error when you hit ok.

Add auto close option to freehand pickup.

Solo layer mode toggle. When holding Alt and clicking on the visibility icon (eye) of a layer then all other visible layers become invisible. Doing again will make them become visible again.
If the layer that was enabled for this solo mode is invisible at the time you hold Alt and click on it then it turns visible and doing it again will make it invisible again.

Added GIMP gpl palette file format support.

Fix: the animation preview window is considered optional, but there was a problem that when switched off and magnify window was enabled to display anim playback it still popped up. When the magnify window plays back then there is no need to auto pop up the animation window as well.

Added “Save Copy as” feature to project file menu. It just creates a detached copy for the current project. It leaves the project filename untouched and also does not reset the “unsaved changes flag”.

Fix: If you right clicked on a brush container already having a brush and cancelling after overwrite prompt an out of memory error appeared.

Fix: Cycling through brushes with shift + mouse wheel does not show brush when tile map project is used.

Mouse wheel now scrolls window contents that is under the cursor no matter if it’s focused or not, as long as it supports wheel scrolling.

Fix: Pipette did not switch back to previous tool when picking up transparency in alpha transparent project.

Redefinition of coordinate displays. The coordinate displays top left, center, bottom right showed the bounding rectangle and its center of the operation either of a single brush dot, line or rectangle etc. .
With single dots this is fine but not when drawing primitives. With these the display should display the brush grip position for the start and end of the drawing operation and the center of it.

Fix: sometimes an exception occurs when drawing a gradient direction line.

Add consistent filling with filled shape tools and real time preview. All fill tools have been reworked to show real time preview of gradient and brush filling. This is also supported with pattern drawing.
Some problems have been fixed along with the rework like
– can’t undo gradients drawn in selection mode
– fill mode “outline” not working with paint mode “selection”
– If paint mode selection is enabled and fill tool is used then the operation is not undoable
– Inline contour gradient direction inverted
– cancelling Fill shape during creation lead to non-undable operation

Use arbitrary grey scale image as halftone and transition patterns.
– pattern management system in paint mode setting and filled shape settings
– new pattern preview system in gradient editor

Fix: having all layers invisible and using canvas mover crashed.

Store animation as single image file export settings with project: folder, prefix, start index, file type are now stored with the project file.

Shortcut entries to switch halftone pattern slot (no shortcuts set by default).

Added new mouse wheel option to switch halftone slot.

Added new window arrangement option: “Set default layout”.

“Arrange Windows” function now arranges the windows based on their current position instead of always using a default layout. The user can roughly place the windows horizontally and vertically ordered an they are placed accordingly into to the three areas/lanes left, middle, right.

Fix: Holding flip frame keys (“1”, “2”) led to slow animation and frame switching lags.

Fix: Prev/next frame functions do not respect playback limit

Fix: Crash when setting a Lock grid dimension to 0.

Fix: Mirror and rotate always use latest pickup brush.

Fix: Pen opacity edit fields where not disabled for non alpha transparent projects.

Fix: Dark skin scrollbars stuck in place after arrange windows.

Fix: Tile set window placed on a second monitor displayed on the first monitor after new program start

Fix: Pen settings did not update usable options on project switch

Fix: Flicker in main window at startup.

Fix: Create project from clipboard led to wrong playback limit.

Fix: Random crash when closing project.

Fix: Frame resize with resample + undo led to wrong transparent colors.

Fix: Random crash when saving project with layer effects

Fix: Remapping colors should not change a transparent color.

Fix: When there is an open action in the palette window, moving the mouse outside now applies the operation

Fix: color selection rendered in alpha edit mode

Fix: ensure changes are always applied (leaving window, closing window, changing tab)

Store layer flattening options for image/animation file export with project so that there is no need to confirm them next time you save after reloading the project.

Added tool option to color picker to define if only the current layer should be used or all/current and below.

Added extra options for mouse wheel for Shift, Ctrl, Alt keys.

New layer effect “Re-apply Color Palette”. This enables you to apply other color palettes to existing pixels or shift color ranges to apply different color ramps.

Fix: hold E -> click without movement did not update selection mask rendering.

Fix: single pixel brush does not activate last used brush draw tool

Fix: rectangles did respect lock grid Keep Cell Boundaries option (which is now called “Inbound”).

Reworking grid settings and algorithms and introducing “inbound” option that creates objects within grid cells.

Extensive rework of the tile mapping engine. Most important changes:

• with tile map projects transparent colors per layer are not useful and therefore not allowed anymore
• tile map integrity check is now an official function, but only available by shortcut (Shift+Ctrl+i)
• new workflow options for modifying tiles:
  • edit empty Tile: Allow new Tiles, Merge new Tiles, Reuse matching Tiles
  • edit present tile: Modify existing Tiles, Auto place matching Tiles, Duplicate & Modify Tiles
• switching transparency mode alhpha vs. indexed now possible with tile map projects
• the order of connected projects can now be changed with drag and drop.
• if a project is saved having connected projects then they are saved as well if they have changes.
• added tile set display settings dialog in the tile set window. There you can define a fixed number of tiles to be displayed per row as well as the marks for empty and duplicate tiles.
• context popup functions in tile set window: Insert Duplicate, Join Duplicates
• new tile set import features incl. append, overwrite and color handling options
• improved export features for tile set and tile map data
• flattening FX and layer merge now allowed for tile mapping projects. Requires sync mode to be off.
• tile set windo completely reworked to support selection display, better drag/drop, delete/insert shortcuts, better scaling etc. .
• tile index display has now differnt options which will also color indices based on the selected display mode, e.g. tiles selected as brush are emphasized, duplicates etc.
• tile drawing is automatically updated over tiles incl. merging as the seamles pattern drawing does
• in pick/place mode the brush coordinates now use tile coordinates
• allowing color movement and remapping with tile mapping sync mode disabled
• cycle tiles by mouse wheel (see “control” section in paint & tool settings dialog)
• improved connected projects management
• remove duplicate and unused colors now available with tile maps
• single image layers can now be used as tile maps
• tools like filed shapes or fill now automatically place aligned tiles when using “Pick/Place” mode
• info displays (tile coordinates, in-tile position, mirror options…)
• fixed a couple of problems with undo/redo
• Construct 2/3 JSON tile map export

Changes with 7.1.8 (2018-08-26)

Mac OS and Linux version based on Wine including a couple of compatibility changes that where required to be more compatible with Wine.

New import functions for colors. Theer is now an extended dialog when using Coors/Import from Brush to place and arrange colors to be imported from Brush to the current project.

Tweaks: Removed some warning dialogs. Upated Tips. “Help/Support” menu entry. Changed UI fonts.

Dark Skin now available for Free Edition.

Plugins now available for Free Edition.

Fix: Smear paint mode placed wrong pixels when doing multiple strokes.

Fix: Different improvements concerning pinned Windows.

Fix: Random crashes when switching to full screen mode.

Fix: Crash when using the fill tool off the canvas in tile map editing.

Fix: Crash with “edit alpha only”. Sometimes there was a crash with alpha transparent projects when switch on alpha plane edit mode.

Fix: Shortcut for real time dither/halftone did not work anymore.

Fix: Single image layer erased when defining number of animation frames.

Tweak: In palette window keep selection when switching edit areas.

Fix: Default selection mode in the color palette editor not correctly preselected.

Quick ramp key “R” in color palette window now creates vertical ramps, too.

Fix: Using lines and curves for 3d stereo no longer worked with 3D offsets changes.

Fix: The fill tool did not fill with a dither pattern when dither was enabled.

Changes with 7.1.7 (2018-05-06)

Fix: AnimBrush playback skipped frames with continuous drawing and placing single dots

Fix: Initial AnimBrush pick up creates empty 1×1 brush if tablet is connected

Fix: Multi layer image/animation not preserving transparency correctly when storing as GIF/PNG

Fix: Grip position not reset when standard brush tip is set by brush tip size change (slider or edit field)

Fix: License holder name displayed wrong with UTF-8 characters

Fix: The automatic horizontal or vertical lock that is enabled when holding Shift sometimes drew the first dot not precisely but for one pixel aside.

Fix: Rotating a standard brush was not possible. It reverted to the latest picked up brush and rotated this one.

Fix: Using Shift + S when brush is on canvas it was stored with the image.

Fix: Phantom pixels appearing on the canvas occasionally.
– loading an image with keyboard shortcuts
– switching between file browser and PM with Alt-Tab and loading a project from the file explorer with double click
– when closing a project with Alt + F4

Fix: When the current layer transparent color was selected as foreground and background color and picking up a portion as brush then selecting a standard brush led to a fully transparent one which was not usable.

Fix: Restore brush function (Shift + B) did not rewind an AnimBrush to its first frame.

Fix: Error in tile palette window when switching between tile map projects and normal projects.

Fix: There where different regular internal errors on some systems. Fixed based on user feedback.

Fix: When all layers are turned into single image layers and then deleting a layer raised an internal error.

Fix: It was possible to create a project with more than 32768 pixels width leading to program faults.

Fix: Random crash when using brush size slider and closing program.

Fix: When using the transparency edit field in the layer window, then the edit field was always reactivated when you re-enter the window, even if you olny click on a layer. When using keys 1/2 to switch frames you accidentally changed the opacity value then.
Additionally it was possible to enter huge numbers leading to a failure.

Fix: If layers window and brush container where not visible and window rearrange function was used then an error occurred.

Changes with 7.1.6 (2018-02-14)

Raised the 2GB memory limit to 4GB.

Fix: Mouse pointer icon not always immediately changing when using keyboard shortcuts to switch tool.

Fix: Remove alpha plane made layers opaque.

Fix: Filled polygon with auto close did not fill bottom and right edges.

Tweak: Inconsistent insertion behavior for color slots and auto slots in gradient editor. Now the slot that was used before the insertion is always active after insertion.

Fix: Color palette select single colors incorrect tool tip.

Tweak: Canvas drawing operations are now refused on invisible layers.

Fix: When tool settings change the tool window was activated leading to some flickering.

Fix: Random crash when closing last project.

Changes with 7.1.5 (2018-01-14)

New Option in timeline to switch to the frame where the playback was stopped

Some magnify window options enabled by default: Show Animation Playback, Pan around Canvas.

Always apply animation playback in preview window even if playback in magnify window is enabled as well.

Fix: Storing file associations not working on some systems. An error message occurred.

Fix: Symmetry sometimes not working correctly when drawing fast strokes.

Fix: Light table settings crashing under Win7 with dark UI

Changes with 7.1.4 (2018-01-01)

Fix: Mouse wheel brush size change restored last picked up brush although a round brush was selected before.

Fix: Pipette tool left temporary line on canvas when after using the line tool.

Fix: Loading true color image and reducing colors not functioning when you use “current palette” option.

Fix: Brush size slider suddenly disappeared when sliding.

Fix: Moving colors in the palette editor not working with tile map projects if sync mode is off.

Changes with 7.1.3 (2017-12-16)

Fix: If the tile library window is on second monitor all dialogs opened there as well.

Fix: Creation of project from a frame stored in the clipboard selected wrong transparent color with alpha transparent image data.

Changes with tile map engine
– Added warning if more than 200 tiles are created at once with modify/create tile map edit mode.
– When using the tile pick/place mode then the paint mode replace is activated because replacing the bitmap data by the brush pixels is required. But instead of switching to this paint mode it is used internally now to prevent confusion.
– Added tile index and orientation info to the information panel
– Shortcut to switch between tile map modes (create/place tiles)
– Duplicate mode now also works in modify/create tile map edit mode
– In modify/create tile map edit mode drawing on empty tiles now always creates new ones and does not use tiles already present in the library
– Fix: Tile mirroring options where ignored when creating a new tile project
– Option that shows number of tiles in tile map project on the canvas
– Fix: Tile library window did not show all tiles vertically. Some at the end might have been cut off in certain situations
– Added option to the tile library window to toggle if picking up a tile from the library should activate the pick/place mode
– Tile mapping duplicate and sync option now available in the keyboard shortcut prefs
– Tile drawing limit. Hold “I” to enter tile selection tool. This will select a tile area with LMB and unselect with RMB.
– Store tile library window open state
– Allow saving tile map project with sync mode off
– No automatic switch to “Pick/Place Tiles” or “Modify/Create” after brush pickup anymore
– Pick up single tile with a single click when using Pick/Place Tiles mode on a tile map project
– Ensure drawing grid to be visible when creating a new tile map project.
– Allowing to cut tiles with right mouse button brush pick up

Fix: Creating a bitmap font project does not work

Fix: Delta keys not working with drawing lines and curves stereo drawing

Fix: Slow or no brush re-display on Win10 fall creators update when switching frames. MS seemed to have changed mouse refresh functions.

Fix: Startup speed improvements. Especially Win 10 Fall Creators update has some slower gfx functions. Workaround was added.

Fix: Quantization settings where ignored when loading animation from single images.

Fix: Onion Skinning not showing next frames as expected when using “Key Frames only” if there was no previous key frame as well.

Tweak: Mousewheel control “switch frames” now cycles instead of stopping at the and or the start of the animation.

Changes with 7.1.2 (2017-10-13)

Tweak: In palette editor the option “Apply Color Movement to Pixels” now is not used when using the copy mode. Because when copying colors the pixels should still use the original and not the copy.

Fix: Palette issues after compacting unused or duplicate colors with tile map projects.

Fix: Tile Map projects and moving/remapping colors in the palette caused problems because the tile library data was not updated.

Fix: When saving a tile map project with the last tile being an empty duplicate of the 0-tile then crashes appear after reload.

Tweak: If a tile turns empty then the tile map entry was not reset to be the zero tile which required to use “optimize” to get rid of those empty tiles. Now if a tile turns empty then it is replaced by the zero-tile in the tile map.

Fix: Crash when undoing right after creating a new tilemap project.

Fix: On some systems there’s a crash on startup due to a incompatible wintab32.dll.

Fix: Cannot move around the canvas anymore with cursor keys when drawing.

Changes with 7.1.1 (2017-09-25)

There are a lot of changes and fixes. Too much to list all in very detail. Here is an excerpt.

Fix: Symmetry center coordinates inverted with Multi Dot Mirror/Cycle

Fix: Crash when turning single animation layer into single image (global color palette disabled)

Fix: When having Tile Mapping Sync mode off you can accidentally close project with unsaved changes

New Timeline with selection drag & drop etc. .

Fix: Polyline tool did not automatically finish when first dot was hit

Added auto-close option to filled polygon / contour tool.

Double size option to increase size of mouse cursors.

Fix: Text brush creation preview not working when using background color

Allow palette ramps with rectangular color selection in color palette editor. This way also vertical gradients can be created.

New option at palette editor to auto commit color movement.

Fix: Circle with N dots and AnimPainting not working with small circles.

Fix: Busy-cursor after brush rotate.

Fix: N-dots circle not working correctly. With higher N-values the where not placed correctly along the circle outline.

Brightness calculation for sorting and gray scale conversion improvement to better match the perceived brightness of a color.

Remap frames to gradient.

Fix: Layer effect “display other project” did not relocate projects when moved

New window to host different settings for quick access: tool options, paint mode and dither settings, lock grid, symmetry, pen pressure settings

Some quick indicicons moved form main window to layers (spare frame, alpha mode…)

Dark UI skin.

Layer blend modes + opacity at layers window.

Tweak: Layer lock icon is now a button to toggle directly at the layer

New color constraints engine to support error detection for legit hardware systems.

Option to use HSL color scheme instead of HSB.

Color palette generation tool to create colored ramps.

New project creation workflows with preset management.

Fix: Brush resize sometimes not working as well as Shear/Bend

Fix: Picked up brush is not restored when you select a standard brush tip and use Shift + B afterwards

Paint mode values (% scales) can now be edited directly at the color selector area.

Brush tip setting moved to color selectors area.

Transparency mode selection for brush pickup.

Color contrast algorithm in the palette editor renewed to have better results.

Changes with 7.0.10 (2017-06-05)

Fix: New installer software because the previous one did not install if you have more that 2TB free space on the traget drive.

Fix: Hex-Edit in palette window was not usable with “c” because it executed the shortcut of quick copy instead of typing a “c”

Fix: Sometimes the brush did not paint or even a crash appears. It was connected to disabling pen pressure brush size option.

Tweak: Added shortcut settings to clear and invert stencil

Fix: Shift + mouse move did not always lock the correct movement direction.

Changes with 7.0.9 (2017-05-07)

Fix: When there is no gradient that is active for color cycling then animation/create from color cycling crashed.

Fix: Mouse wheel didn’t scroll tile library when the tile library window was over brush container or layers list windows.

Fix: Crash when invoking ‘Print…’ from menu without any open project.

Tweak: Gradient reordering via drag & drop. Resizeable gradient list windows. Speed improvements concerning gradient list display when switching projects.

Fix: When using pipette tool with double click on the canvas then the color change requester opens. After that, using a drawing tool immediately used it actively on the canvas as if the mouse button was pressed.

Fix: AnimBrush “rewind after drawing” option was not working correctly. The rewind was also done if deactivated.

Fix: Curve tool did not work correctly with AnimBrush.

Fix: Crash when undoing the creation of a 3D animation on a new project with single frame.

Fix: Project files could not be loaded that had a mask and where resized before being stored. The mask was saved with a wrong size sometimes leading to weird effects when loading again.

Fix: Slow mouse wheel scrolling in select gradient window and gradient management.

Tweak: Allow closing a project when animation/color cycling is still running.

Fix: Temporary ‘Move canvas’ tool did not deactivate in full screen mode when releasing space bar.

Fix: Copy/Paste multiple frames dialog allowed to enter “0” for frame numbers leading to an error.

Menu entry File/Animation/Append Image… removed because File/Animation/Import Image… does the job.

Fix: Second tile map layer destroyed tiles if the first layer was not empty when adding a new layer

Changes with 7.0.8.1 (2017-03-18)

Fix: Crash when loading a tile map project with multiple layers.

Changes with 7.0.8 (2017-03-05)

Tweak: The “New Project” dialog should enable transparent project by default.

Fix: Store/reload ‘Allow Display Below 1:1’ tickbox setting for full screen mode.

Tweak: If a layer has a transparent color then “clear” should use that transparent color instead of the current 2nd color.

Tweak: Store selected layer index with project and activate on reload.

Tweak: Earlier close with polygon tools. Polygon (brush pickup or draw tool) automatically closes when setting a dot 3 pixels near to the starting point.

Fix: Tile mapping “Remove duplicate Tiles” menu entry was not disabled in non-tilemap projects.

Tweak: adding trackbar editor to several number edit fields.

Fix: Harmless ‘External error’ on startup on some systems when using the Free Edition.

Tweak: Do not allow lock grid and symmetry enabled because this does not make sense and also is not always working.

Feature: Support for drawing tablets. There are pen options to use pressure for:

• Brush tip size
• Brush scaling
• Real time dithering
• Gradient with dithering
• Paint mode scale for Brighten, Translucent, Saturation, Hue, Shade, Multi Shade and Halftone
• AnimBrush frame switch
• Alpha transparency (opacity value)

The eraser can be used as well for second color/inverse operations or erase.

Feature: Allow for circles with even width and height pixel size for non-centered circle drawing.

Tweak: Centered brush grip is now pixel perfect for brushes with even width or height. Before the brush was half pixel out of center.

Fix: Right click on empty tile areas in the tile library lead to an internal error.

Fix: Error at startup with CrossOver 16.1

Fix: Crash when using tile duplicate mode when placing tiles and using undo later on.

Changes with 7.0.7 (2017-02-05)

Fix: Brush pickup tools did not contain the subsymbol that indicates a tool group.

Fix: Light table did not work in full screen mode

Fix: Color slot shows transparency pattern even if the current layer has a different transparent color.

Fix: Shortcut “D” did not activate Continuous Drawing when “cycle grouped tools…” in the prefs was switched off.

Fix: Crash in tile library palette window if there are duplicated tiles and the window has a certain size.

Tweak: Stay on selected palette editor page when picking up color.

Fix: Double click on empty tile (dashed area) in tile library leads to an error

Fix: Crash when creating first project from clipboard data.

Fix: True color sprite sheet saves wrong when having more than one row.

Fix: Flatten to background option could not be removed when storing as single layer and display of background color was switched off. Example: You had set up displaying a background color on the layer stack. You save the file as sprite sheet (e.g. PNG) and select “flatten to background color”. Then you switch off the background color in the layer stack and save again (even with “save as”). Still the background color is used silently instead of creating a transparent image.

Changes with 7.0.6 (2016-12-26)

Fix: Symmetry drawing caused brush artifacts left on the canvase when used with pattern drawing.

Fix: Remap brush to gradient sometimes introduced wrong transparency to the brush.

Tweak: when using “paste” (Ctrl + C/V) in palette editor then switch cursor to “ok”-shape

Tweak: Shortcuts for animation playback can toggle playback and stop now.

Tweak: Automatically switching to ‘Edit Stencil Mask’ when invoking ‘Quick selection’ (E) and reselect previously active area when leaving quick selection

Fix: Undo was not working AnimPainting (hold ALT and draw).

Fix: When using “keep cell boundaries” on a grid that is not aligned to 0x0 but e.g. 5×5 then drawing a line from lower right to top left snapped to wrong positions.

Tweak: “tile palette” for tile map projects consequently renamed to be “tile library”

‘Layer modification settings’ of menu Layers removed. In the scroll submenu you can now decide which layers to scroll. The operation of “Flip” of menu “Frame” was replaced by the operation from “Flip Frames…” of menu “Animation”. So there will open a requester asking for frame range and layer settings now.

Fix: There was a slight brush distorted when creating 3D animations.

Fix: When switching from two displays back to one from time to time then some dialogs have been displayed outside the visible area.

Tweak: Tile library window now has a vertical scrollbar only and supports mouse wheel and auto track.

Tweak: Tile mapping settings window is now resizeable

Fix: Tile zoom window hides behind tile library window when opening and closing a modal dialog.

Fix: Brush container did not work correctly with saved window positon (alternative).

Fix: Top level windows have been still weird when switching between applications.

Fix: Crash with vertical line contour gradient on small areas.

Fix: Layer effect “display other project” crashed when using current project.

Fix: File drag drop not working when splash screen is switched off.

Tabs are now used in the brush container to select between global and project brush container.

Tabs are now used in the palette window to select between color selection and extended edit modes.

Added new “Inline Contour Gradient” fill mode. It fills the shape with colors of the gradient from outside in.

Changes with 7.0.5 (2016-11-20)

Paint mode “shade” has been slowed down to only apply a single shade step until the mouse button is released. Re-factoring of the brush container:

• dynamically add slots without having a full set predefined
• selection of multiple slots + drag/drop, copy, paste, delete…
• background definition
• slot size definition
• auto slot alignment to have only a vertical scrollbar for faster navigation
• auto zoom
• animated brush indicator

Decoupled lock grid and symmetry settings to have separate tool box icons and settings dialog.

Added X- and Y-Mirroring to the symmetry tool.

Lock grid can now display the corresponding grid lines by option.

Toggle for symmetry mode so that symmetry can lie between 2 pixels.

Fix: mirror settings not working when creating tile map from image.

Undo for frame speed settings.

Fix: Create animation (3D) did not work with alpha transparent brushes.

Fix: Strange behavior of paint mode settings edit fields when entering numbers.

Palette editor changes:

• improved palette entry selection/move with single entries
• enabled color ramp in single color selection mode
• new selection visualization
• when moving colors then the corresponding pixels are moved too by option which
• instead of auto-cancel do auto-ok when an operation is in progress and the mouse leaves the window is a better approach than the auto remap option

Fix: Crash when File / Load Animation… with certain avi files.

Letting the main tool key only cycle through tools that have no shortcut defined.

Fix: Fix Background stored the visible brush when using keyboard shortcut.

Moved File/Recent Files menu below File/Project Settings

Fix: CTRL based shortcuts sometimes leave the pipette active.

Changes with 7.0.4 (2016-07-17)

Tweak: Improved filter with keyboard settings to also search for keys like “Ctrl + A”.

Update information feature.

Tweak: Left click on selected tool brings settings window on top. Useful for when using pinned windows.

Keyboard shortcut settings have been moved to a separate (larger) settings dialog.

Switch to display or hide light table layers in magnify and animation window separately.

Tool cycling (e.g. “B” for brush pickup tools or “V” for lines) can now be disabled in the preferences.

Fix: Changes in connected tile map projects did not trigger the “unsaved changes” flag which led to inconsistent tile data.

You can now define a shortcut for every single line tool.

Tweak: User folder is used as initial default for save/load dialog instead of the app folder.

Fix: Symmetry “place center” function not correctly working with tile maps.

Tweak: Symmetry center is now project center by default.

Tweak: Save scroll frame settings for next restart (menu Frame/Scroll/Scroll current Frame only).

Fix: Crash when enabling sync mode (tile mapping).

Fix: Crash when using paste frame(s) function with position offset.

Changes with 7.0.3.1 (2016-06-19)

Fix: Adding layer not working with tile map projects.

Changes with 7.0.3 (2016-03-22)

Tweak: Improving quick mask/stencil selection (E key) to also work on empty mask/stencil when using right mouse button to remove selection area or stencil mask colors.

Fix: Crash when creating a tile map project from an image with alpha plane and using tile map data export function.

Fix: Spare frame is enabled with new projects although being empty.

Feature: Layer effects are now availabe for free edition.

Feature: Layer effect “Display other project” was extended to repeat the project frame horizontally and/or vertically to apply endless tiling. See effect settings.

Feature: Layer effect “Display other project” was extended to have a dynamic x/y offset depending on the frame index displayed for the master project. This way you can apply automatic scrolling of external project display while animating the master project. This can be used for (e.g.) parallax effects like this where every parallax level is a separate project displayed with a master project’s layer:
See effect settings.

Fix: Layer flattening on file export glitched under certain conditions leading to missing image data.

Feature: Quick operations (copy, swap, ramp) for RGB/HSB tab added in palette editor:

Fix: Playback buttons did not allow switching between play modes directly without hitting stop before.

Fix: Single image layer disabled for tile map projects because it is not supported yet and leads to bad side effects.

Fix: “Layer effect “Display other project”‘s “on top” setting did not work correctly.

Fix: Animation Window not updated in full-screen view.

Feature: Modify color channel bit depth now undoable. Changes can now also be applied without changing channel bit values to re-format a palette that has been loaded into the project.

Fix: Lock grid height could not be set to “1” anymore.

Fix: Crash when using “duplicate layer” function on a tile map project layer.

Feature: It is now possible to have both PM NG and PM 6.5 open at the same time.

Fix: Single image layers have been cleared when inserting or copying frames.

Fix: Crash on exit happening sometimes on CrossOver (Mac)

Tweak: Automatic activation of web color edit in onscreen palette is now an option.

Tweak: Added default keyboard shortcuts for colour reduction functions (menu Colors).

Major changes from 6.5 to Release 7.0.2 (2016-02-17)

(Only major changes are mentioned. Please check the Free Edition to play with Pro Motion NG when you are used to V6.5 yet. It will give you a better impression about the changes.)

All new layer engine with lock layer, merging, layer effects (stroke, display other project), duplicate etc.

Key frame settings (color/title).

New light table system.

New gradient engine including auto slots.

Pixel perfect drawing to remove smeared pixels/jaggies when drawing freehand with single pixel brush.

Redone Copy/Paste of multiple frames.

Improved edge line displays/cross hairs for canvas tools like brush pickup, filed polygon etc.

Support of Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V in palette editor (RGB/HSB views).

Option to have a pan around the canvas to be able to move corners to the middle of the window.

New color edit dialog with color preset slots.

Stereo drawing (experimental).

Free Edition with some features switched off.

Lots of UI changes incl. better Windows 10 compatibility.

Lots of smaller tweaks and fixes.

About the Dvorak layout

The Dvorak keyboard layout is an improved alternative to the widely-used QWERTYlayout. Compared to QWERTY, Dvorak has been designed to require less fingermovement and contortion when typing. QWERTY was made to deliberately hindertyping: by moving frequently used letter combinations away from one another ithelped prevent old mechanical typewriters from jamming in the hands of a fasttypist. As such, QWERTY should be considered obsolete and broken when it comesto typing on a computer. I type on a computer keyboard every day, and so Iwant to do it on a sensible keyboard layout. This is why I decided to makethe switch to the Dvorak keyboard layout in the late 1990’s. I think it wasa good decision.

I was a very fast typist with QWERTY, which I had been using for some 15 yearsbefore switching, and still my average typing speed increased after switchingto Dvorak while my top speed was mostly unchanged. However, it should beunderstood that comfort, not speed, is the main benefit of Dvorak for alreadyfast typists. Faster typing may follow from the greatly reduced finger movement,but I think too many QWERTY advocates get stuck on the idea that speed is themeasure of keyboard layout quality… Just because one can learn to contort one’sfingers in complex ways very fast does not mean that it’s a good practice.

The Dvorak layout has been designed to enhance typing in English, but itworks well for other western languages. For example, all the vowels are onthe left side of the Dvorak keyboard, which means that adjacent charactersare often typed with alternating hands in most languages. In contrast,QWERTY has many examples of very long words and letter combinations thatare typed with one hand only (e.g., “stewardresses”, “databases”, and“monopoly”).

Switching to Dvorak

A regular keyboard can be used for typing Dvorak; it is just a matter ofswitching the layout in software. Most operating systems ship with the Dvoraklayout included and don’t require administrator privileges to switch layouts,so using Dvorak at work or school is not a problem.

If the keyboard layout is switched in software only, the symbols written onthe keys do not match those produced by the keypresses, but this isn’t reallyan issue and may in fact help teach you not to look at the keyboard whentyping. A printed-out picture of the Dvorak layout helps in the learning stage.On most keyboards it is also fairly simple to pop out the key caps and movethem around to match the Dvorak layout¹.

¹ National keyboards may not have the exact right key caps to matchthe special character placement of Dvorak. If you are buying a new keyboard andwant to match the Dvorak layout as closely as possible, get the keyboard in theInternational English layout.

In my experience it takes a couple of weeks of practice with Dvorak to reacha comfortable typing speed, and a few months to achieve high speed and re-learnkeyboard shortcuts² into muscle memory. I think this one-time learning periodis a small price to pay compared to overall the amount of time spent usinga computer keyboard. Personally I find I can also still type on QWERTY wellenough to get by, but after using Dvorak it always feels uncomfortable (sinceQWERTYis uncomfortable; people just don’t know any better before they trya better layout).

² Some people use Dvorak variants with QWERTY keyboard shortcuts(i.e., keys behave like their QWERTY equivalents when pressed together withCtrl or Command). To me this sounds like a bad idea since thenyou have to context switch your mind to a different layout for new shortcuts.

Of course Dvorak is not the only alternative keyboard layout, for example, theColemak layout has design goals similar to Dvorak but it tries to makeswitching easier by making less changes relative to QWERTY(e.g., the C and V keys remain in the same place for copy/paste).This may be an option to consider if the switch to Dvorak seems too daunting,but personally I don’t like the idea of QWERTY’s ghost haunting my keyboard.

I’ve even considered making a completely custom keyboard layout by doing softwareanalysis of the text I type, i.e., the keyboard would be optimal for mepersonally. Yet, in the end I think that the advantages of other layouts overDvorak would be fairly inconsequential compared to the advantages of pretty muchany reasonable layout over QWERTY.

My ArkkuDvorak layout

Two common characters required to type Finnish, ‘ä’ and ‘ö’, are not present inthe US/English Dvorak layout. Since there is no Finnish standard for Dvorak, Imade my own with the idea that I wanted it to be fully backward-compatible withregular Dvorak. My ArkkuDvorak³ layout accomplishes this by exploiting thefact that Finnish (and other international) keyboards have one more key than USkeyboards; this “extra” key becomes a combined ä/ö key.

³ I did not intend to name the layout after myself, but the originalfilename stuck after I shared the layout with others.

The way ArkkuDvorak works is that the extra key, located to the right of theright Shift key, produces ‘ä’ when pressed normally but ‘ö’ whenpressed together with Shift. This sounds quite unorthodox at first,but it works very well in practice since the capital ‘Ä’ and especially ‘Ö’are seldom needed. The uppercase letters are still available via Alt Gr-aand Alt Gr-o, along with many other special symbols and dead keys underother Alt Gr combinations.

The major advantage of this solution over more conservative approaches is thatno keys are “consumed” by the additions. This keeps special characters readilyavailable for programming and command-line use. One can also type—my additionsexcluded—on the regular US/English Dvorak layout included by default in operatingsystems.

The trade-off is that the layout remains better optimized for Englishthan for Finnish, but for me that is a positive thing since I type moreEnglish, especially in the form of programming languages, than I do Finnish.

ArkkuDvorak with other languages

In addition to Finnish, my keyboard layout gives relatively easy access toall characters required for typing at least German, Italian, and Swedish.Spanish is pretty well covered, too, but the accents and ¿/¡ could bemore accessible. I also find that French is alright for infrequent use,but the various accents, especially the circumflex, are quite incovenientto reach. The same probably applies to Dutch and Portuguese. Norwegian andDanish are possible in theory but some characters, like ‘œ’ and ‘ø’, requireextensive acrobatics.

My recommendation for non-Finnish/Swedish users is that my layout be used asa starting point for building a new custom layout; after all, if you don’tneed the ä/ö key frequently, why squander the single extra key on it.

Making changes to the layout is very easy with most operating systems.The X11 and Linux layouts in particular are just simple text files thatcan be edited with plain text editor. The Mac OS X layout is technicallyalso plain text but its XML format has some hidden subtleties—never-the-lessit’s easy to change individual symbols just by searching and replacing.The Windows layouts can be edited with Microsoft’s freeKeyboard Layout Creator, and the classic Mac OS layouts withApple’s free ResEdit.

Download ArkkuDvorak

Here you can download the keyboard layout for various operating systems andplatforms. I happen to use a lot of different computers and systems, and soI’ve taken it upon myself to port the layout to most of them. It should benoted, however, that these layouts have been created and infrequently updatedover more than a decade, and they are not all up to date with the latestoperating system changes nor do they all share the exact same Alt Grcombinations.

⁴ These layouts are provided as is with absolutely no warranty or guarantee. =)

The only thing “guaranteed”⁴ to work in every version of the layoutis the basic addition of ‘ä’ and ‘ö’. In practice there are many otheradditions hidden under Alt Gr and Shift + Alt Gr combinationsbut I keep changing my mind about what to put there. If you have your ownideas about that, please edit the layout to your liking!

Anyhow, find the version for your operating system below and read theinstallation instructions underneath. Let me know if you run into difficulties.

The most common versions

For Apple Mac OS X

Installation

⁵ Under recent OS X versions the Library directory may behidden by default. To access it you can select Go to Folder fromFinder’s Go menu and type in ~/Library foryour personal library directory or /Library for the system-widedirectory.

Download and extract the .zip file and drag the keyboard layoutbundle into the directory⁵Library/Keyboard Layouts in eitheryour home directory or the system drive (to install for all users). You mayneed to create the Keyboard Layouts directory if it does notexist. Reboot or re-login to ensure the layout is detected by the system,and then go to System Preferences and you should be able tofind the layout under Language & Text in theInput Sources tab. Tick the box next to the ArkkuDvoraklayout. Also tick the box Show Input menu in menu bar at thebottom of the dialog. Your menu bar should now have an icon for switchingkeyboard layouts somewhere near the top right corner of the screen.

⁶ To view the contents of the bundle, hold down Ctrl and clickon the bundle in Finder. Then selectShow Package Contents.

Inside the bundle⁶ you can find an XML file atResources/ArkkuDvorak.keylayout. This file can be edited witha text editor to change the layout. On older OS X versions you can also tryinstalling this file by itself (without the bundle) if you have troublegetting the system to detect the layout.

If the computer is in shared use, you may wish to make sure you enableShow Input menu in login window under Login Options (foundunder System Preferences and Users & Groups onrecent OS X versions). With this enabled any user can switch the layout in thelogin window—very helpful for entering passwords.

For Microsoft Windows

Gromacs -f

I recommend trying the the Windows 7 version first no matter what version ofWindows you are using. If it doesn’t work, try one of the other versions. Sofar compatibility with Windows 8 is an unknown—I suspect the Windows 7 versionmight work since Microsoft has not updated the Keyboard LayoutCreator.

Installation

Extract the .zip file and run the installer found within. Includedin the most recent version you will also find theKeyboard Layout Creator document for editing the layout.If you have trouble installing the layout, I suggest you download theKeyboardLayout Creator and use it to rebuild the installer on your own system.

For X11 and Linux

X11 is the most common graphical windowing system used on *nixand UNIX systems such as Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, IRIX, etc.If you use Linux (e.g., Debian, Fedora, or Ubuntu) and don’t know which versionto get, download the first one… It’s almost certainly correct.

If you only get a bunch of text in your browser when you click the link,save that text as a plain text file; the layout is just plain text.

Note that on Mac OS X there is no need to install an X11 layout even if you useX11 on it—install the OS X version and it will work.

Installation

Run xmodmap followed by the layout file name to load the layout onthe fly in a running X11 session. I suggest typing setxkbmap fi intoanother terminal window in case the new layout doesn’t work; then you can switchback just by pressing Return in that terminal.

Once you have verified that the layout works correctly you will probably wantto have it loaded automatically in the future. The specifics on how to do thatdepends on how your system is set up. On many systems renaming the file.Xmodmap (leading dot included) inside your home directory causesit to be loaded when your X11 session starts. You can also place thexmodmap command in your session startup scripts; refer to thesystem documentation (or help forum) on how to do this.

Troubleshooting

The X11 layout files are just simple text files that can be edited with anyplain text editor. If you get errors due to invalid symbol names, simply deletethe symbol names causing complaints from the file and re-try. Not all X11implementations support nearly all of the symbols in those layouts; especiallythe SGI version needs to be stripped down quite a bit to work on IRIX. For thevast majority of PC Linux systems the first version should work as is, though.

Another common problem is that some of the keycode numbers have changed overtime due to X11 changes. If a key stops working or produces an incorrect symbol,run the command xev in a terminal and press the problematic key.Look for keycode in the output and make note of the followingnumber. Then edit the layout file and replace the number at the beginningof the line with the definition for the problematic key with the one you got fromxev.

One key known to have changed its keycode over time is Alt Gr. I’veincluded several possible definitions at the end of the PC version of thelayout file, but they are all commented out (i.e., disabled) by default. Ifyour Alt Gr doesn’t work, edit the file and see near the end forinstructions (the lines beginning with ! are disabled; remove theexclamation mark to enable them).

For the Linux console

These versions of the ArkkuDvorak layout are intended only for theclassic, text-only, Linux console. If your Linux has things like windowsand graphics or such, you will almost certainly want the X11 version aboveinstead of this!

Installation

Run loadkeys —unicode followed by the filename. If you havetrouble, try dropping the —unicode argument and switching to thelatin version of the layout. Once the layout works you can put this commandinto a login or system startup script.

For Classic Mac OS

The first version should work on all classic Mac OS versions from System 6 onward.The one specifically for Mac OS 9 should be used if you have trouble withrecent systems; I have one PowerMac G4 system where the layout version forolder Mac OS versions incorrectly places the ä/ö key below Esc.If that happens to you, try the “Mac OS 9” version instead (or edit the layoutwith ResEdit).

Installation

First extract the MacBin file (e.g., with StuffIt Expander). OnSystem 7, or Mac OS 8 or 9, drag the extracted file onto your closedSystem Folder. You should then be able to select the ArkkuDvoraklayout in the Keyboard control panel.

Gr-o Mac Os Download

On truly classic Macintosh systems, i.e., System 6 or earlier, installingcustom layouts is a bit complicated and you need to edit yourSystem file with ResEdit. Download and extract thelayout and follow these steps:

1. Create a copy of your System file
2. Extract the layout file and open it with ResEdit
3. Double-click the KCHR resource type
4. Copy the ArkkuDvorak resource within
   (i.e., select it and press Command-C)
5. Open the copy you made of your System file
6. Find the KCHR resource inside, double-click it
7. Paste the layout by pressing Command-V
8. Save the file and quit ResEdit
9. Replace the original System file with the edited copy
10. Restart the computer
11. Open Control Panel from the Apple menu, select Keyboard
12. Select ArkkuDvorak

Mac Os Download

Finnish Summary

Gr-o Mac Os Download

ArkkuDvorak on suomalainen näppäinasettelu, joka säilyttää täydenyhteensopivuuden englanninkielisen Dvorak-asettelun kanssa lisäämällä suomenkirjoittamiseen tarvittavat ä- ja ö-kirjaimet yhden näppäimen taakse. Koskasuomalaisissa näppäimistöissä sattuu olemaan yksi näppäin enemmän kuinamerikkalaisissa, tämä muutos ei vaikuta englanninkielisen Dvorakinnäppäinasetteluun millään tavoin.

Gromacs Bd

Yleisesti käytössä oleva QWERTY-näppäimistö on suunniteltu hidastamaankirjoittamista jotta ikivanhat mekaaniset kirjoituskoneet eivät menisi solmuunliian nopean kirjoittajan käsissä. Sen sijaan Dvorak on suunniteltu vähentämäänsormien vääntelyä ja niiden kulkemaa matkaa näppäimistöllä, mikä tekee siitähuomattavasti QWERTY:ä miellyttävämmän käyttää. Itse kirjoitan tietokoneennäppäimistöllä päivittäin mutta ikivanhalla mekaanisella kirjoituskoneella enkoskaan – siksi vaihdoin Dvorakiin. Vaihtaisit sinäkin.