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A little documentation to go with the program .....

This screen-saver is rather unusual as it really is a screen-saver, not a screen-burner !!!
It generates over 2000 different geometric curves and these are displayed in a random order on the screen. As the curves are displayed, the colour varies gradually and this looks best in high colour or better.

The configuration screen is a tabbed dialog with the following parts:-

Display
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   The graphics speed can be varied - enter the number of images per second. Valid values are between 1 and 1000, but the actual upper limit is really determined by your hardware ...
   You can vary the size of the object, expressed as the percentage of screen resolution. The default is 8%. Valid values are between 0 and 500. The size is as a percentage, so that you do not need to re-configure the screen-saver should you change the resolution.
   If the size is entered as 0 (zero), then a dot is displayed, instead of a shape.
   The 'Completion Delay' option enables you to specify the time (in seconds) that the completed curve remains on the screen before the next curve starts. This can be anything between 0 and 60 seconds.

Colours
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   The 'Colour Option' needs a bit of explaining ...
Because of various (somewhat boring and technical) reasons, it can appear as if the colour selected for the shape is too dark (which doesn't look very good on a black background). If this is the case and it bothers you, select a lower colour setting. This will cause the number of colours used to be slightly reduced, but at least they will all be visible. In severe cases, use the 'low' setting.

Rotation
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   Shapes may also be rotated, clockwise or anti-clockwise. As with the shapes above, simply check the one(s) you want. The rotation that appears will be randomly selected from those chosen. (If a circle is displayed, then the rotation is ignored).

Shapes
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   There are eight different shapes that can be displayed. Check the one(s) you want in the box to the left of the shape name. If only one shape is selected, then that one shape will always be used. If more than one shape is checked, then the shapes will be randomly selected from those chosen. 

Zoom
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   The zoom options cause the selected shape to gradually change in size, giving a sort of 3D look to the curve. The different levels (very high, high, medium or low) alter the size of the lower limit for the shape. The very high level is really only suggested if the object size is large (upwards of 30%, or so), although this is not a limitation that is imposed. Select several levels to randomly use one of those chosen, or leave all blank, to disable zooming. With zooming enabled, the other zoom options come into effect, namely the 'phase' and 'start' options. The 'start' option specifies whether the curve should start with small objects, or large objects. Check both boxes to randomise. The 'phases' specify how many times the curves 'goes in and out'. 1 phase just goes in, 2 phase goes in and out, and 4 phase goes out, in, out, in. Select more than one to randomly select.

Join The Dots
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   Use these options to further alter the way in which the curves are displayed.
   The default option is 'No', which causes the shapes to be drawn 'as expected'. If the 'Yes' option is selected, then something interesting happens. Instead of showing the selected shapes, curves are plotted showing the paths of the corners. In other words, instead of (for example) squares being shown, 4 continuous curves are plotted, showing the paths of each the square's corners (try it and see ...). If the object size is set to zero, this option will cause one continuous line to be displayed, instead of a series of dots. Selecting 'both' causes both the shapes and their corners to be drawn.

Hotkeys
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   I have saved this section for last, because it is possibly the most interesting part of all ...
Many people have wanted to see some of the generated images for longer than the 60 second maximum delay and even more have wanted to save the images to the hard disk. Well, these are both now possible !! You can define hotkeys to perform selected actions and so far, two are available.
You can define a hotkey that will cause the image to pause. Press the key again to carry on drawing.
You can define a hotkey to save the current screen image as a .bmp file on the hard disk, in a directory of your choice. This directory can either be entered directly in the 'Location' part, or you can press the 'Browse' button to select a directory on your system. If no directoy is given, files will land in the c:\ directory. The generated files will have the naming structure 'Beautiful Geometry nnnnn.bmp', where 'nnnnn' is an incremental sequence number.
A few points to note are that the hotkeys must be activated by clicking the appropriate 'Activate' toggle and (of course) they must be different. Also, they operate independently from one another - i.e. you can pause the display, save it to disk and then press the pause hotkey again to carry on drawing. 
The really good thing about all of this, is that (although the program is a screensaver) it just carries on drawing, even though you have pressed a key !!!
The decision to use bitmap files is deliberate, as they are fast to generate and I didn't want to get involved with having to support many different graphic formats. Bitmaps really are the 'lowest common denominator' of graphic formats and if you want to convert them to a smaller format (eg jpeg) then there are numerous programs for this.


The shape, rotation, join the dots and zoom effect combination will be used for one complete curve, after which they are re-determined for the next curve.

Click the 'Cancel' button (or press escape) to abandon any changes and exit the screen.

Click the 'OK' button (or press <Return>) to save the current configuration and exit the screen.

There is no nag screen, but the 'UNREGISTERED' text in the dialog title does not appear in the registered version.

That's about it on the documentation front - I hope you enjoy the program.
