Editing Shape table (section)

==Technical details==
The [[Tuple|vector]]s of a two-dimensional graphic, each encoding a direction from the previous pixel along with a flag indicating whether the new pixel should be illuminated or not, were encoded up to three in a byte. These were stored in a table via the Monitor or the <code>[[PEEK and POKE|POKE]]</code> command. From there, the graphic could be referenced by number (a table could contain up to 255 shapes), and built-in Applesoft routines permitted scaling, rotating, and drawing or erasing the shape. An [[Exclusive or|XOR]] mode was also available to allow the shape to be visible on any color background; this had the advantage, also, of allowing the shape to be easily erased by redrawing it.

Apple did not provide any utilities for creating shape tables; they had to be created by hand, usually by plotting on [[graph paper]], then calculating the hexadecimal values and entering them into the computer.  [[Beagle Bros]] created a shape table editing program, which eliminated the "number crunching", called ''[[Apple Mechanic]]'', and a related program, ''[[Font Mechanic]]''.