
\section{Introduction}
The purpose of this document is twofold. 
It will list the programs Athena makes available for graphics work 
and references to outside documentation on them, and it will
give brief introductions on how to produce a simple rough image,
how to make a schematic for a class paper, how to convert among
the image file formats Athena understands, how to do basic editing
tasks on them, and how to do major image manipulation.
If you have graphics experience, just find what you want in the 
next section, Pointerville, and knock yourself out. If you're
a novice, look at the further sections to see how these things
work.

The sections after Pointerville do contain some jargon, 
which is why there is a glossary at the end. 


If you're a novice, here's some important information
you need to know to get started. You will likely need
to create graphics for several purposes: a doodle for a poster, 
or a web page, a diagram or a graph for a lab report,
or a major work for the MIT museum. Who knows?
You should know the right format for the work.
If it's a photograph, or a scan of a paper drawing,
the JPEG format is what you need. For almost all other 
application, GIF and PNG are the formats you will wind 
up using. If you're doing serious graphic editing, 
and want a format that will preserve your layers,
and alpha channels and whatnot, you should know about the 
XCF format. 

If you're creating a schematic or figure, save your work in the format
native for the program you're using. That will let your edit 
your work most conveniently. If you make a graph from 
Matlab or Mathematica, save both the figures and the 
data in the native format, for the same reason. 

Most likely, you will wind up having to write a paper 
in \LaTeX{}\footnote{more info on \LaTeX{} is available in the 
SIPB guide {\it Innesential \LaTeX{}}, from {\tt http://www.mit.edu/sipb/docs.html}} 
and importing graphics into it. Some of
the programs described here will generate the \LaTeX{} code 
to import directly into your paper. That is very convenient
for manual adjustments afterwards. Barring that, you will 
need to generate Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files in order
to import them in your paper.

\section{Pointerville - Where the Programs Live}

{\em I already know this stuff. Where do I find the programs? }

If you want to cut to the chase, here's the list.
All of these programs live in the graphics locker
({\tt add graphics;}) unless we say otherwise.

\subsection{Quick Glances}

To have a brief gander at a graphics 
file, the utilities {\tt xv}, {\tt xloadimage}, and 
{\tt display} are available to you. 
You can also use the Athena Web browser.
For large image files (over 1000 by 1000), {\tt gimp}
is the best tool because it can read them while only using
memory for the pixels that will be displayed.

\subsection{Quick Sketches}

To make a quick sketch for a poster or Web page, 
run {\tt xpaint}. If for some reason you cannot 
use {\tt xpaint}, thes two tricks might do in 
a pinch: You can use the 
graphics components of Applix or Star Office 
({\tt add applix; applix\&} or {\tt add soffice; soffice \&} 
respectively). Applix is the better choice (the graphics
option is in the star menu, by the way) because it lets
you save your work in a useful format, while 
Star Office requires a screen grab (see below).

\subsection{Screen and Window Grabs}

If you run the sawfish window manager, (the 
default Athena window manager as of September 2003),
just press the PrintScreen button on your keyboard 
and a menu will come 
up offering to make a PNG file out of what is on your screen.
You can then edit and crop the screen grab as need be. 
Right now this is the best available way to deal.
You can also type {\tt add graphics; convert x: screenshot.png}
for the same purpose. 
 Other utilities that will do a window grab for you 
from their user interfaces are {\tt xv} and the {\tt gimp}. 
(On both, see below.)


\subsection{Quick Editing}

To resize an image, crop it, or correct its 
color balance, there is {\tt xv}. Open the image 
by typing {\tt add graphics; xv filename} and 
the image will appear in a  window. Right-click on the window and the 
{\tt xv} menu will appear, offering ways to do the operations
above and also add a quick text message, smooth it, 
sharpen it, despeckle it, and more. 
The color editor window is excellent for quick
color corrections. 
The same window also 
has the very handy Grab button for screen shots. {\tt xv} will also
do file format conversions for you (just save as another 
format).

\subsection{Quick Schematic drawings}

If you need to make a diagram or schematic drawing
of some sort, you can use
{\tt xfig}, {\tt tgif} (in the {\tt sipb} locker)
{\tt dia} (in its own {\tt dia} locker),
or {\tt xcircuit} (in the {\tt xcircuit} locker)
Of these, {\tt xfig} is the fastest one to learn.
One should just remember to use the Export button
to save the image in a useable format.  
(Remember to save in the native format for future editing,
though.)
{\tt dia} is also fairly easy for novices. 

\subsection{From the Command Line}

{\tt convert}, or {\tt imconvert} in some 
platforms, will not only convert to and from most
file formats but also resize, manipulate colors, 
tile images together, change the color depth, 
add text, and concatenate images into an animation. 

If it doesn't do what you want, and you have,
for example, a TIFF file, type {\tt tif} and then
hit the TAB key. A list of utilities should come 
up for you. One might be what you need. The same applies
to almost any graphics file format you're dealing with. 
Finally, to make animations, you have 
also a utility called {\tt gifsicle}.

\subsection{Serious Graphics Work}

Type {\tt add graphics; gimp \&}.
Godspeed and victory, my friend. 
