TPaint

This is a VGA DOS paint program I wrote in 1996 (original page.)

TPaint title screen

Running it in a browser (really!)

You can run paint.exe in a browser window! It's incredible that this works, many thanks to em-dosbox! I've tested it in Chrome on Ubuntu, ymmv.

Running it in dosbox

  1. Install dosbox
  2. Download and unzip tpaint.zip
  3. cd tpaint
  4. dosbox .
  5. paint.exe

Press F3 to go to the main menu, F1 to go back to the image:

Example images

An archive of example images and colour palettes is also available. They can be viewed with the included viewvga.exe.

Help

The following is the help file included (with original typos!)

When in the Image Screen -
				------------

---Keys:
	F2	-	Go to the Palette Editting screen
	F3	-	Go to the Main Menu
	F4	-	Go to the Mask screen
	F12	- This help screen

	ESC - Quit tPaint
	
	SHIFT & 'i'	- Toggle the Info box on/off

	m	- toggle image masking on/off

		FUNCTION SELECTION KEYS
	SPACE - Toggle between draw and continuous draw, and box and filled box
				circle and filled circle, ellipse and filled ellipse
	d	- Draw 
	l	- Line 
	g	- Gradient Line 
	c	- Circle 
	b	- Box
	a	- Average box
	s	- Brush
	w	- Wu antialiased line
	f	- Flood Fill
	z  - Bezier curve - Left mouse button to move control points, right to draw,
								middle to abort
	e	- Ellipse

	TAB - Cycle through brush shapes

		DRAWING MODE KEYS
	[	- Dodge 
	]	- Burn 
	>	- Brightest 
	.	- Normal 
	/	- Average 

	PGUP - Next colour		(colour = colour +1)
	PGDN - Previous colour  (colour = colour -1)

		EDITING KEYS
	INS - Paste from clipboard
	DEL - Copy to clipboard

		AVERAGE MODE KEYS
	1	- - Horizontal
	2  - | Vertical
	3  - + Cross
	4  - \ Diagonal   
	5  - / Diagonal
	6	- * Surrounding 8 pixels

		IMAGE VIEWING COMMANDS
	ENTER	- Temporarily view the entire image when in zoom mode
		  press a key to return to editting mode

	+ 	- Zoom in
	ALT & '+' - Zoom in, center on mouse position
	-	- Zoom out

	HOME 	- 	Go to the top-left of image
	END	-	Go to the bottom-right of image

	LEFT   }
	RIGHT  }  Pan the image around when in Zoom mode
	UP     }
	DOWN   }

	CTRL+UP		}
	CTRL+DOWN   }	Pan the image around when in Zoom mode in 
	CTRL+LEFT   }	'screen sized' chunks
	CTRL+RIGHT  }

	SCROLL LOCK	- toggle auto pan mode on/off
					- when SCROLL LOCK is on, the window will pan when
					  the mouse is moved to the edge of the screen


---Mouse:
	LEFT MOUSE BUTTON
		- Activate the current drawing function
	RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON
		- Select the colour under the mouse pointer to be the 
		  current drawing colour
	MIDDLE MOUSE BUTTON (or LEFT and RIGHT simultaneously)
		- Average the surrounding pixels using current Average Mode setting


When in the Mask Screen -
				------------

---Keys:
	ESC or F1	-	Go to the Image screen
	F2	-	Go to the Palette Editting screen
	F3	-	Go to the Main Menu

	SHIFT & l:	Load mask from disk (.MSK)
	SHIFT & s:	Save mask to disk (.MSK)

	f  - Reverses mask
	i	- 	creates mask from non-zero image pixels
			colours below THRESHOLD are made into white areas of the mask,
			colours above THRESHOLD are made into black areas of the mask.

		FUNCTION SELECTION KEYS
	d	- Draw 
	l	- Line 
	c	- Circle 
	b	- Box
	s	- Brush

		IMAGE VIEWING COMMANDS
	ENTER	- Temporarily view the entire image when in zoom mode
		  press a key to return to editting mode
	1-8 - change mask layer

	+ 	- Zoom in
	-	- Zoom out

	HOME 	- 	Go to the top-left of image
	END	-	Go to the bottom-right of image

	LEFT   }
	RIGHT  }  Pan the image around when in Zoom mode
	UP     }
	DOWN   }

	CTRL+UP		}
	CTRL+DOWN   }	Pan the image around when in Zoom mode in 
	CTRL+LEFT   }	'screen sized' chunks
	CTRL+RIGHT  }

	SCROLL LOCK	- toggle auto pan mode on/off
					- when SCROLL LOCK is on, the window will pan when
					  the mouse is moved to the edge of the screen


---Mouse:
	LEFT MOUSE BUTTON
		- Activate the current drawing function
	RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON
		- Select either no-mask or mask depending on pixel under the mouse 
		  pointer to be the current drawing mode


When in the Palette Screen -
				______________

NOTE:	Undo is saved upon entry to the Palette screen.
		The UNDO button undoes all changes since the Palette screen was
		entered.  Therefore, to save the palette before making a change, exit
		the Palette screen and re-enter it.

		Use the View ('v') command to see the effect of palette changes without
		losing the ability to undo them.

---Keys:
	ESC or F1	-	Go to the Image screen
	F3	-	Go to the Main Menu
	F4 - 	Go to the Mask screen

	ENTER	- Toggle between Block-Blend and Linear-Blend modes

	SPACE - Toggle between colour swap and colour replace modes

	v	- Temporarily view the entire image when in zoom mode
		  press a key to return to editting mode

	s }	sort palette on intensity of colours
	S }

	r	}
	R  }	Sort palette on R/G/B levels of colour
	g  }
	G  }
	b  }
	B  }

	w	- convert palette to a grey-scale


---Mouse:
	LEFT MOUSE BUTTON
		- When in Palette block:
			Select colour to be current drawing colour
		- When in RGB block:
			Modify the RGB level of the current drawing colour
	MIDDLE MOUSE BUTTON (or LEFT and RIGHT buttons simultaneously)
		- When in Palette block:
			Blend between two colours
	RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON
		- When in Palette block:
			Swap or Replace two colours

When in the Menu Screen -
				___________

---Mouse:
	Select options from buttons available

---Keys:
	Most keys from the Image screen will work,
	
	ESC or F1 - Return to Image screen	
	F2	 - Go to Palette screen
	F4	 - Go to Mask screen
          

More notes and help

I don't think directories are supported when loading and saving files - everything must be in the same directory as tpaint.exe.

viewvga.exe does support directories though.

Some resources from spaced can be viewed (you need to load the default DEF.PAL palette), but maybe only those that have a width of 320 pixels.

CTRL+F5 captures the screen in dosbox

CTRL+F10 releases the mouse in dosbox

tompaton.com