WXP version 5
User's Guide

WXP Loop

The wxploop program is an interactive program that allows WXP programs to overlay and animate.  This program sets up a bitmap (or pixmap) which can be used as a canvas for several WXP programs.  A bitmap/pixmap is a reserved area of memory that mimics the display window so that graphics can be drawn to it just as if it were to the window.  Multiple programs can all draw to the same bitmap allowing products to be overlaid.  Second, the program can open up several bitmaps, each acting as a separate canvas and the resulting bitmaps can be looped to show animation.

wxploop.gif (3292 bytes)

Information can be drawn onto the window or a pixmap in one of three ways:

  1. using the annotation features of wxploop to draw lines, text and filled areas,
  2. using the window or pixmap ID to allow another program to draw directly to that window or pixmap,
  3. importing an image (XWD,GIF) file into the loop.

WXP Loop Modes

Wxploop can be run in one of two operational modes:

NOTE for X Windows: When plotting graphics to a wxploop window or pixmap, it is highly recommended to allocate all colors used in the final graphic by using the "color" command. If this is not done, only the default color table is loaded (normally "wxp.clr"). Even though each WXP program allocates its own colors, these only remain allocated for the duration of each graphics program that is independent of wxploop. Once the graphics program exits, the colors are deallocated and those colors displayed on a wxploop window or pixmap may be changed by the next program that wishes to allocate colors. Running the "color" command in wxploop will allocate those colors in the color table. If a graphic uses multiple color table, the "color" must be run again to allocate the other color tables. This command does not deallocate any previous colors.

Once a loop has been created, it can be saved to either X window dump or GIF files. Then these files can be read back into wxploop later on and again animated. Another key feature is the check command that will determine if an image is already in the loop based on image titles.


Last updated June 24, 1998