README for autoshapes
====================
Christof Ecker 18. <September 2004>

Introduction
------------

Autoshapes is a bundle of plugins for the drawing program Skencil/Sketch. The
shapes are figures which can be changed by dragging handles.

Requirements
------------

o The standard setup of a running Skencil, i.e. Skencil, Python, and
  PIL. Skencil must be of the stable branch (version 0.6.* ). I am using
  Skencil 0.6.16, Python 2.3.3, and PIL 1.14.

Installation
------------

The installation is just the standard procedure for Plugin objects and should
be described somewhere in the users guide.

1. Unpackage the file autoshapes-0-2.tgz (you obviously already did that since
   you are reading this) and cd to the package directory:

   tar -zxvf autoshapes-0-2.gz
   cd autoshapes-0-2


For a system wide installation check the Skencil developer's guide. Here I
will only describe how to make a local installation.

For a local installation, you need to have a plugin directory and you need to
tell Skencil to look in that directory for plugins. I suggest you to use
'~/.sketch/Plugins' to store the plugins.

2. Create '.sketch/Plugins' if it does not already exist ...

   cd ~
   mkdir .sketch
   cd .sketch
   mkdir Plugins

3. ... and copy the library and the plugin there:

   cp -r autoshapes-0-2/Lib autoshapes-0-2/autoshapeplugin.py  ~/.sketch/Plugins/

4. Skencil can be configured using a file '~/.sketch/userhooks.py'. If it does
   not already exist create it. It should contain the following lines
   (without any white space at the beginning of a line!):

import os, sys
from Sketch import config
config.plugin_path.append(os.path.expanduser('~/.sketch/Plugins'))
sys.path.append(os.path.expanduser('~/.sketch/Plugins'))


If everything worked the plugin should be listed in Skencil's edit menu as
    
    Edit->Create->Auto Shapes

History
-------

o Version 0.2 <18 September 2004>
  - Shapes are no longer independent plugins
  - Added a dialog with icons for the shapes
  - New shapes:  raster, thinturn, thinhalfturn, circle1, circle2, circle3,
    arc, doublearrow, rim, measure, divide, tangent, intersection, dconnection  
  - Help texts
  - Fixed snapping problems
  - Made connections sticky
  - Many small changes
  - Old drawings can not be edited with version 0.2 anymore. However both
    Plugins can be installed in parallel

o Version 0.1 <9 February 2003>
  - The first public release.


License
-------

This is free software; you can freely redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
(version 2 or later).

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY.  Use it at your own risk.

Author
------

Christof Ecker <ecker@physik.hu-berlin.de>

Any comments, suggestions, and/or patches are very welcome.


