Notes and tips
Repeating patterns
Using the repeat section function in the edit menu is a powerful tool to get
background textures. repeating an area as small as a square of 4 pixels can
create a very interesting background.
Drawing shapes
To draw irregular shapes such as a question mark, one of the best
techniques is to use the polygon option in the toolbar. Each point in the
polygon is indicated by a mouse click and there is no limit on the number or points
in the polygon. If the polygon is outlined only, then the polygon will not be closed
by IconPainter. Something like a question-mark could perhaps best be drawn by making the
line thickness 2 or 3 pixels and outlining the shape with mouse clicks (a double
click to finish).
Rotation and antialiasing
When something is drawn with antialiasing, rotation through less than 90 degrees can mean
the antialiasing doesn't seem to work anymore. There's not a lot that can be done about that
except not to antialias.
Similarly antialiasing in IconPainter at the moment works by assuming the object drawn is
drawn over the background color when infact it may be drawn over some other object. A solution
to this is to change the background color to reflect the color of the object over which you are
actually drawing.
JIT compiling on slower computers
On a older, slower computer (eg. P166 or less) with limited resources using Just-In-Time Java compiling can
actually slow IconPainter down because of all the extra IO so it may be better to
switch it off. On faster computers this problem doesn't exist.