Guides to the frame shelf
Three pages, written because the shelf cannot explain itself while you are using it.
A decorative edge is one of those things everybody can judge and almost nobody can specify. You know when a scallop is wrong; saying why involves an arc count, a corner remainder and a band that is a proportion rather than a measurement. These pages are where that reasoning is written down, so the controls on the tool can stay short.
They are not a manual. Two of the three spend most of their length arguing that a particular frame is the wrong choice for a particular photograph, and the third is mostly about what this renderer will never be asked to draw. If you are looking for a list of features, the shelf itself is a better list than any page about it.
- Guide 1
Scallops and deckles, and where they come from
One edge came off a die and one came off a paper mould, and that is why one is judged on regularity and the other on irregularity.
The corner arithmetic, the seeded tear, and what each slider is really setting.
- Guide 2
Choosing a frame for a photograph
The amount of detail already in a picture decides how much band it can carry, and most pictures can carry less than they are given.
Thin against wide, what holds up at thumbnail size, two moves for colour, and when to close the page.
- Guide 3
Drawn frames, and photographed ones
A frame here is a few hundred bytes of numbers, which is the whole reason it can be recoloured and enlarged without asking anything of you.
What the renderer refuses to draw, what the planned craft sets will give up, and the two promises this tool declines to make.
Two more that are not written yet
The occasion and craft library — festival sets, floral borders, washi tape, kraft paper — has a page waiting for it and no frames to describe. So does the gradient and glow builder, which is a real part of the specification and not a real part of this release. Both are named here rather than listed as coming soon, because a link to nothing is worse than a sentence admitting nothing is there.
What exists today is twenty-two generated frames in four groups, and the three pages above cover all of it. The shelf itself is the shorter route to an answer for most questions.