Icomovie collections are collections of icons that can
be watched like a movie with LXPIC (by Stefan Peichl)
picture displaying program. That means you can have LXPIC
show an icon collection like a film projector shows a film,
each picture of the film one after another so that you get
an impression of a moving object.

Icons in my "videos" are created with the built-in icon
editor found in the address D:\BIN\ICN200LX.EXE of the
Palmtop 200LX. So, anyone who has nothing better to do
can create his/her own "video" for the Palmtop by making
a series of icons whose figures have only a slight changes
from a picture to picture.

I have added three sets of icons: a four-stroke single
cylinder engine that shows roughly how it works. You can
see the function of the main parts of a four-stroke
engine. Also the ignition is visible.
The four cylinder boxer engine is a little more complicated
having the same fundamentals than the single.
The steam locomotive is probably one of the tiniest
"working" locomotive ever built.

Important is that the icons (ca. 10..50..pieces) are stored
in the directory in the order they should appear in the
movie. If you have problems to have the icons appear in
the desired order you can do for example the following
trick: make a temporary directory for the icons, copy the
icons into that new directory, remove the original icons
from their own directory and finally copy/move the icons
from the temporary directory to the original directory
one after one in the right order.

A good idea is to name the icons by giving the name of
five to six letters and two to three numbers: for example
walker01.icn, walker02.icn, walker03.icn and so on. The
extension (ICN) will appear automatically created by the
icon editor itself.
Also you can invert the pictures after you have finished
developing them. You, no doubt, can invert the black and
white every time you use the LXPIC but I have it more
comfortable to invert the icons before starting to use them
in the picture viewer.

Installing the program: First you need the main program
LXPIC. You can download it for example from S.U.P.E.R. Then
you can unzip (you probably already have) my tiny *.zip
files, create a directory for each group of them and copy
the icons to the associated directory. Now you should refer
the user's guide of the LXPIC for information how to use
LXPIC. Of course you can use the LXPIC from the command
line in dos but I personally feel it convenient to add it
to the Application Manager of the Palmtop. You can add a
new item for different videos by using the same main
program LXPIC and giving the arguments of the associated
videos. For example you can write the following string to
the Application Managers path line:
c:\lxpic\lxpic.com c:\locom\locom??.icn|70 or
c:\lxpic\lxpic.com c:\engine\engine??.icn|70.

Please, refer to the Palmtop user's manual for details how
to add a new program to the Application Manager. After
executing the program you see the object in the screen in
its original size. You start running the object by pressing
the letter V. You adjust the size of the picture by
pressing the button + or -. For more details, please, refer
the user's guide or the Help of LXPIC.

August 1997

Panu Antere
Kaarnapolku 5
01730 Vantaa
Finland

For possible questions my e-mail: panu.antere@megabaud.fi
