The Gravité 2.0.3 page

03/28/2002: Gravité 2.0.3 is out. Though no Mac OS X version of Gravité is available yet, version 2.0.3 can be used within Classic, the Mac OS 9 compatibility environment.

10/26/2000: Gravité 2.0.2 is out. It fixes a couple of bugs. Japanese version also available!

01/23/2000: Gravité is available in Japanese!

12/25/1999: Sylvain Demongeot releases Gravité 2.0, the new PowerPC-optimized, Drag Manager-compliant version of his "unutility" Gravité.

What is Gravité?

Gravité makes Macintosh Drag & Drop look and feel more like the real thing. When Gravité is installed, dragged items (Finder icons, image clips) behave according to laws of mechanics such as gravity, inertia and friction.

• Gravité 2.0.3 is designed for PowerPC Macintoshes running MacOS 7.5.3 through 9.x.
• To install, just put the Gravité control panel into the 'Control Panels' folder of your system folder and reboot your Macintosh.
• Gravité 2.0.3 is free.

Download Gravité here!

• Click here to download Gravité 2.0.3
• If you have an old 68K Mac, Gravité 2.0.3 will not run - download Gravité 1.5 instead.

If you want be notified when new versions of Gravité are released, subscribe to the Gravité announcement list here.

Control Panel Reference

• Toggled by Caps Lock: If this is checked, you can activate or deactivate Gravité through Caps Lock (without opening the control panel).
• In Finder Only: Check this if you only want to swing Finder icons.
• Off Under Mac OS X: Under Mac OS X, areas around the dragged item may not appear properly when you drag items from the "Classic" environment to other applications. Check this box if you wish Gravité to work under Mac OS 9 but not under Classic.
• Gravity: This controls the gravity field intensity.
• Mouse Friction: This controls the intensity of the friction force at the end of the arrow.
• Air Friction: This controls the intensity of the air friction force.
• Sounds: This allows sounds to be played.
• Free Flight: If this is checked, the object can be dropped by pressing the ctrl key and releasing the mouse button. The object will fly freely until you release the ctrl key.
• Quality: This controls the display quality (anti-aliasing level). Better quality may yield poorer animation if your machine isn't fast enough.
• Solid Drag: If this is checked, the dragged object will appear solid, not transparent.

Technical Insight

• Gravité 2.0.3 was completely rewritten for PowerPC, the Drag Manager and tranparency. No code from Gravité 1.5 was used.
• Gravité 2.0.3 patches the 'SetDragImage' system call to install its own custom DragDrawingProc.
• Gravité 2.0.3 also patches 'OSEventAvail' to allow proper free flight. This patch is 'fat' to prevent instruction set architecture switches.
• Gravité 2.0.3 implements 11 optimized bitmap rotation routines - one for each combination of screen depth (8, 15 and 24-bit modes) and oversampling (1x, 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x). Oversampling is not available in 8-bit mode.

Other Things that Need to be Written

• Gravité comes with no technical support. I don't commit to fixing bugs either. However, bug reports are welcome at .
• Although Gravité is believed to be safe and harmless, Gravité comes with no guarantee of any kind. Use it at your own risk.
• Gravité 2.0.3 may be distributed freely. If you distribute Gravité on a CD-ROM, it would be nice to let me know and even nicer to send me a copy. Thanks! :^)
• 68K users: Gravité 2.0.3 won't run on your machine (transparent dragging isn't implemented on 68K machines anyway). However, if you use system 6.0.3 trough 7.5, you can probably use Gravité 1.5 .

Revision History for Version 2

• version 2.0.3 released 03/28/2002
  • Fixed a bug that could crash Classic under Mac OS X.
  • Added "In Finder Only" and "Off Under Mac OS X" options.
• version 2.0.2 released 10/26/2000
  • Works on large images.
  • Compatible with "HotLine Client".
• version 2.0.1 released 10/20/2000
  • Compatible with "A-Dock".
  • "Crash" sound is now asynchronous.
  • In a certain situation, Gravité could "eat" a click. Fixed that.
  • Fixed "spring" effect after "crash".
• version 2.0 released 12/25/1999

Gravité 2.0.3 © Sylvain Demongeot, 1999-2002.
Slider CDEF by Jim Stout.
Thanks to Yuzuru Shiraiwa ('E-WA') for the Japanese version.
Thanks to Michael Simmons for his suggestions.

Other software by the same author:

• Stamina & Charisma: web offline browsing tools for the late BeOS
• Ask the DJ: MP3 beat-matching & mixing for Mac OS X

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