What does Artelope do?

Artelope is a real-time shape-recognizing drawing app for the Palm OS.  Draw any shape on the screen with the stylus.  Artelope will straighten lines, clean up polygons, smooth curves, and draw ovals and circles, all based on the user's freehand sketch.  Several generations beyond the many "scribble pads" available for Palm, Artelope lets you draw clear, clean, easily viewable and understandable drawings.  Artelope translates the user's sketches directly into recognized shapes, without requiring the user to use cumbersome toolpads or unnatural and non-intuitive tap-and-drag motions.

Draw something on the screen using one stroke.  Then lift the pen.  Wow, look at that.

Artelope recognizes and rectifies straight lines, curves, ovals, circles, and polygons.  Unlike some shape recognizers, Artelope can basically recognize any kind of polygon you draw – right triangle, isosceles triangle, rectangle, parallelogram, trapezoid, pentagon, hexagon, septagon, figure of 8, star, weird jaggedy thing you draw during a meeting. . .

There is an optional, free conduit to copy Artelope pages to a Windows-based PC.  If you didn't receive it along with this package, you can download it from the artelope.com web site.  The conduit comes with its own, seperate documentation.

If you are a particularly good artiste, you can send me your works for submission to the Artelope Gallery.  Unless it's gross, I'll probably post it.

Send them to other people!  Artelope fully supports beaming.  Just choose "Beam" from the "Pad" menu to beam an Artelope page to another handheld.

Note the four tools at the bottom of the screen.  The pencil is the default; it lets you draw a figure freehand, and then does its best at rectifying and prettying-up what you drew.  The freehand tool lets you draw freehand without shape recognition.  The eraser tool erases.  The text tool lets you enter text directly on the screen.

Just click where you want the words to go, then start entering characters using Graffiti.  Sometimes the insertion point won't appear, but don't worry; just start writing.

Taken care of.  Click the dog-eared page icon in the lower-right hand corner of the screen to get a new page.  Then, use the arrows at the top of the screen to move between different pages.  You can also use the page-up and page-down buttons on your Palm to move between pages.  If you want to move directly to a page, there is also a pop up menu you can use to navigate.  Click the trash can to delete the page you are currently viewing.

That's the multiple Undo button.  It un-does whatever drawing you just did, going back three steps.  This is useful for those occasions when your drawing was so sloppy that the shape recognition didn't draw what you wanted.  There is also a menu option that does the same thing.

Perfection is tough, but with a few adjustments you can make Artelope more accurate for your needs.

From the "Options" menu, choose "Preferences."  Then, adjust the three scroll bars as follows:

• If you find that you are always drawing rectangles or other polygons, but they get recognized as weird blob things or curves, then move the "Curves/Angles" scroll bar closer to Angles.  If you are trying to draw curves and blobs, but they keep getting recognized as polygons, move this scroll bar closer to Curves.
• If you draw circles and ovals but they come out as squat blobs, move the "Blobs/Ovals" scroll bar closer to Ovals.  If you find that your drawings keep getting recognized as ovals, when they aren't, then move the scroll bar closer to Blobs.
• If you tend to draw with fast, long strokes and don't always connect your corners right, or often draw lines that you wanted to be straight but are really very curvy, then move the "Neat/Messy" scroll bar closer to Messy.  If you tend to draw slowly, taking time at corners, or find that your subtle kinks and curves are getting flattened too much, then move this scroll bar closer to Neat.

As you draw polygons or straight curves, Artelope will detect lines that it thinks are supposed to be horizontal or vertical.  This lets it neaten up rectangles and right triangles.  If you would prefer that Artelope not do this, uncheck this box.

Move the "Curves/Angles" scroll bar all the way to Angles and see if that helps.  Also make sure that the "Correct vertical & horizontal" box is checked, and consider moving the "Neat/Messy" scroll bar closer to Messy.

Please consult the license for all the details.  They can be summarized this way:  You are free to use Artelope for a 30 day evaluation period.  Artelope's pencil tool will not work after an initial 30-day trial period.  If you wish to continue using Artelope after that time period, you must pay $12 to register as a user.  However, even if you are not a registered user, you may give as many copies of Artelope to as many people as you like, and you may even charge people for doing so.

Again, please consult the license.htm file (which should have been distributed with Artelope and this documentation) for the terms of your license to use and distribute this software.

People who paid for versions 1.0, 1.1, or 2.0 are hereby licensed to use version 2.2.

Registration costs $12.  To register, go to http://www.artelope.com/.  You will need to know your name as it appears in the "Register Artelope" dialog box, which you can see by selecting "Register Artelope" from the "Options" menu.

Yes; go to http://www.artelope.com/ to learn about updates, get my current E-mail address, or to register.

Instead of listing my contact information here, I will ask that you check the web site for the most current info on how to contact me.

Please send me any suggestions you have.  Most of the features I've added since version 1.0 have all been recommended by users, and most of the ones I add to this version will come from the same source.  Visit the artelope.com site to get my contact information, or visit the suggestions page.

VERSION HISTORY
 

Version	Release date	Comments
2.2	November 3, 2000	Adds: Conduit to download pages to a Windows-based PC Improved recognition capabilities; addition of the curves/angles scroll bar Added popup menu to move between pages, and better-looking arrow buttons.
2.0	August 26, 2000	Adds: Improved recognition capabilities, especially for smaller figures Beaming Multiple layers of undos Variable pen widths Pen width and color indicator Improved text tool
1.1	July 30, 2000	Adds support for Palm OS 3.5, the Palm IIIc, and color (after furious demands from Palm IIIc devotees)
1.0	July 28, 2000	Initial release