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1992-05-15
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******************* ABOUT GRAPHICS MODES ********************
When The Multimedia Workshop starts up, it automatically
detects the graphics card in your computer and adjusts
accordingly. With most graphics cards there are two or more
graphics modes available in which you can work. For instance,
if you have an EGA system, you can create pictures in one of
two EGA modes or in one of two CGA modes. But if you use the
EGA-High mode, other computers with only CGA will not be able
to display your presentations properly. So, you'll have to
decide what mode to use. Of course, your presentations will
look better if you use the highest resolution mode your
computer supports, but at the cost of losing the portion of
your audience who have only lower resolution equipment.
Resolutions are measured in pixels, the little dots of
which everything that appears on your monitor are composed.
These are the modes supported by The Multimedia Workshop:
CGA-LO 320 x 200 4-color
CGA-HI 640 x 200 2-color
EGA-LO 640 x 200 16-color
(also called UNIVERSAL MODE)
EGA-HI 640 x 350 16-color
Hercules MONO 720 x 348 2-color
VGA-HI 640 x 480 16-color
VGA-Lo 320 x 200 256-color
When starting a new picture, your computer will present a
menu of the graphics modes available on your particular
computer. (If you have HERCULES, there is only one choice,
so the menu is skipped.)
If your computer supports it, 16-color UNIVERSAL MODE is a
good choice. It is reasonably high resolution, but plays on
all standard EGA and VGA computers. But also, it plays on
Hercules and CGA systems. UNIVERSAL MODE will still work
on CGA and Herc, but only in monochrome (2-color).
Therefore, you can make a presentation which looks good on
expensive equipment, yet still plays to the rest of the
IBM-compatible audience!
If you have CGA or Hercules equipment, you can still
write in UNIVERSAL MODE, and I'll tell you more about that
later.
Let's look into the other modes in some more detail:
CGA-LO 320 x 200 4-color: The people who marketed CGA color
systems used to tell you that CGA can display up to 16 colors
at a time, and that's true - in text mode. But in graphics,
only 4 colors can be on the screen at a time. There is a
little trick built into The Multimedia Workshop, however,
which makes it seem like there is a little more color
variety. You can control the 'background' color. In other
words, one of the four colors can be changed within a
picture. More about this later.
CGA-HI 640 x 200 2-color: This is the same resolution as the
EGA-LO mode, but monochrome. It has twice as many pixels as
the lowest VGA resolution . So, even though it is CGA, it is
reasonably good resolution. With The Multimedia Workshop you
can change the background color, more or less simulating
"color" in a monochrome situation. When you write a
presentation in UNIVERSAL MODE, on a CGA system, it uses this
mode, and just leaves out the color. It does this by making
all colors which are not black, white.
This is a very presentable resolution, as is evidenced
by some successful shareware products you might have seen,
NON-MEDICAL PAIN RELIEF, BICYCLE TUNE-UP, and OXY-ACETYLENE
WELDING, which were created with earlier versions of
The Multimedia Workshop.
UNIVERSAL MODE (also known as EGA-LO) 640 x 200 16-color &
2-color: If you have an EGA or VGA system, you can write in
this mode directly using all 16 colors. When your finished
product is displayed on other EGA and VGA systems, the end
users will see 16 colors, but if used on a monochrome EGA,
Hercules or CGA system, the same presentation, in the same
resolution, will appear in monochrome (2 colors). This is
done by making all colors other than black, white. The best
way to write in UNIVERSAL MODE for the widest variety of
computers, is to keep your backgrounds mostly black, and make
sure differing colors are not essential to your pictures.
Also, be careful about using fills (filling an area with
solid color or a pattern), they don't work exactly the same
on different graphics displays. Use fills minimally, or check
your Universal Modes presentations on several different
computers.
EGA-HI 640 x 350: This is almost VGA, but not all EGA systems
support this mode. The first EGA cards had only 64 kilobytes
of display RAM and could not display this.
HERCULES MONO 720 x 348: This is a rather weird resolution,
but is still quite common, especially in business
applications. If you choose this resolution specifically,
only Hercules and VGA systems will be able to display it. In
fact, some VGA and most laptop/notebook VGA systems will
distort it to fit within their 640 horizontal pixel
resolution. If your computer supports only this graphics
mode, you can still create in UNIVERSAL MODE, and I'll tell
you more about that later.
VGA-Hi 640 x 480 16-color: If your computer can support this
mode, you can also write presentations in all the other
modes. However, if you create in this mode, only those folks
who also have VGA on their computers can see your
presentations.
VGA-Lo 320 x 200 256-color: Again, you'll be restricting your
audience to owners of VGA equipment if you use this mode.
Although the resolution is quite low, with so many colors,
very realistic pictures can be drawn. VGA-LO supports fewer
fill patterns and type faces and the FASTMODE option does
not work with this mode. BLOW OFF DELAYS works fine.
NOTE: On many VGA cards, Hercules mode will run only if the
Hercules mode is pre-selected with a bit of software provided
with your video card. If you ignore this fact, when you try
to use The Multimedia Workshop in Hercules mode on many VGA
systems, the light goes out and you have to reboot.
.PCX FILES
PCX is the most common format for storing pictures and
clip-art on disks. There are many wonderful works of art
available in these files. Many are public domain. Within
the .PCX family are several variations, and with The
Multimedia Workshop you can use most of them in your own
presentations.
You can display .PCX files in any of the seven video
modes, although you usually must use the mode in which the
chosen .PCX file was created.
In other words, if you have a 256-color VGA .PCX file,
you won't be able to use it in Hercules mode. There is a
facility built into The Multimedia Workshop to report on the
format of a .PCX file which you are considering for use. If
you are writing with a VGA-equipped computer, for other VGA
computers, you can use almost anything in your presentation,
due to the automatic video mode switching capabilities of
MSHOW and The Multimedia Workshop. For instance, you can
chain a CGA 2-color, a CGA 4-color, and a VGA-256 color
picture together in presentation!
You can also attempt to bring mis-matched video mode .PCX
files into your pictures. Sometimes you can cross formats
with no difficulty, sometimes the computer will crash in the
attempt, but you CAN always try it and see what happens!
In some cases, you'll only get the upper left corner of a
picture when attempting to display a high-resolution format
picture at a low resolution.
If you have an EGA or VGA-equipped machine, keep in mind
that when creating a presentation in Universal Mode, keep in
mind that the .PCX files which work in Universal Mode on your
computer (actually EGA-LO 16-color) will not work when shown
on a Hercules or CGA-equipped computer, because .PCX files
are loaded into specific memory addresses on various graphics
cards, and cannot make the transition from one type to
another.
_____________________________________________________________
end of chapter