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JOBSDUMP.DOC
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1985-12-18
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7KB
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146 lines
***********************************************************************
* *
* JOBSDUMP V2.0 *
* *
* A GRAPHICS SCREEN-DUMP PROGRAM *
* FOR THE DEC RAINBOW 100 PC *
* *
* by *
* James A. O'Brien *
* *
* 4519 Pine Street, Apt. 4 *
* Philadelphia, Pa. 19143 *
* *
* *
* Tel: (215) 898-4698 (Day) *
* (215) 747-9196 (Evening) *
* *
* (completed 11/08/85) *
***********************************************************************
This software may be copied and the copies distributed without
restriction for non-commercial civilian use. Copyright is retained by the
author, and the source code will not be distributed. If you find this software
useful, you may feel like sending a $15 donation to the author at the above
address.
Hardware Requirements: (a) DEC Rainbow with Rainbow Graphics Option (RGO)
and 128k of random access memory (at least 192k
in order to run from within GW-BASIC).
(b) DEC LA50 or DEC LA100 dot matrix printer.
(1) GENERAL
***********
JOBSDUMP is a utility program designed to give the Rainbow computer
an important ability not included with the system - the ability to print out
graphics screens directly on DEC printers. It prints out both medium and high
resolution graphics screens on DEC LA50 or LA100 printers in either of two
formats :
(a) Small, which is a dot-for-dot representation of the graphics
screen and is smaller than the screen since printer dots are smaller than
screen pixels for the Rainbow computer. A small printout takes 3 to 3.5
minutes.
(b) Large, which is a double-size printout rotated 90 degrees counter-
clockwise. Thus, the right-hand-side of the screen picture is the first part
to arrive at the printer. Large printouts barely fit on a page, so that some
experimentation is necessary to decide where to position the paper at the start
of a printout. Actually, the high resolution large printout is a little too
big for the page, so JOBSDUMP neglects the rightmost eight pixels in each
line. Thus, for high resolution large printouts, the graphics screen is
effectively only 792x240 instead of the usual 800x240. All other screens, in
both large and small printouts, are reproduced exactly. A large printout takes
about 7 minutes.
The program is interactive, prompting for the resolution and the
printout size. At any time, you have the option of aborting the printing
by pressing the "A" key. This is useful when you are not interested in
printing the remainder of the graphics screen.
Since printers are monochrome devices, there is no simple way to
distinguish among the various colours or shades of grey visible on the
screen. Any color which differs from black on the screen is therefore
printed out in black on the printer.
A minor problem exists with the DEC LA100 printer, since it cannot
be set to the required aspect ratio of 2:1 for this application. This will
cause LA100 printouts not to be proportional to the screen. The worst case
of this effect will occur when printing out circles, which will appear as
ellipses. The recommended way of dealing with this is to draw circles on the
screen as ellipses in the first place, if possible, to get the correct
results on paper.
(2) Use with GW-BASIC
*********************
JOBSDUMP is used as follows inside GW-BASIC:
XX SCREEN 2 'or "SCREEN 1"
.
.
XX REM User's graphics program, etc.
.
.
XX REM The next line is all you need
XX SCREEN 0 : SHELL"JOBSDUMP"
As shown in the example above, the program is invoked as a child process
running under GW-BASIC in DOS. It is very important to include the statement
"SCREEN 0", since otherwise the program will interfere with the graphics
screen. This is since the "SHELL" command emulates DOS in whatever graphics
mode it happens to be in at the time the command is encountered. The "XX" in
the example just refers to an arbitrary line number.
The binary code, JOBSDUMP.COM, should be kept in the same diskette
directory as the command processor, COMMAND.COM, in order to function properly.
Recall that you may tell the system that COMMAND.COM is to be found in the
file X:\PATHNAME\COMMAND.COM by giving it the command
SET COMSPEC=X:\PATHNAME\COMMAND.COM
This is useful, for example, when you are placing COMMAND.COM and JOBSDUMP.COM
on the MDRIVE to eliminate disk access during their operation.
(3) Use directly from the MS-DOS prompt
***************************************
JOBSDUMP may instead be run directly from the MS-DOS prompt, and it
will print out whatever data remains in the RGO memory, even if it has not
been generated by a GW-BASIC program. Once an application (such as Lotus
123, GW-BASIC etc.) has written data into graphics memory, it remains there
until the computer has been turned off unless it is deliberately erased.
The graphics memory will even survive a <SETUP><CTRL><SETUP> reset operation,
as long as the power is not interrupted. You must know what the resolution
of the graphics data is, in order to get the correct results the first time.
However, if the wrong choice is made and garbage is printed out, it is possible
to abort and try again with the correct resolution. This is possible since
JOBSDUMP was written to be unable to modify graphics memory.
For example, instead of the last line in the GW-BASIC example above, you
could use the statement:
XX SYSTEM
which takes you back to MS-DOS. Now, typing "JOBSDUMP" has exactly the same
results as you would have got using the GW-BASIC example above.