GEMini Atari

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IMAGE CAT (IMG CAT) Copyright 1989 Chet Walters **** ALL RIGHTS RESERVED **** LEGALESE..... This program is *-NOT-* public domain and is intended for donators only! Thank you for your donation. Make it worth your while and keep this in YOUR library. I have asked for a mere $10 donation for this program and the final product represents many hours of hard work and many more hours spent in learning the system and many dollars spent on equipment. Please respect not only my lawful rights of copyright, but also my investment of time and money to make things convenient for you. You are guilty of international crime if you make a copy of this program for other than your own personal use. You have, by the purchase of this program, the rights to make as many copies of it for your own personal use as you wish, but no other copies are authorized nor permitted. Back this disk up in case of floods or hurricanes and save the original. For free updates, you'll need to send back the original. Use the back up! LEGALESS...... Use of this program is the owner's responsibility (that's you). If you want to put 700 image files in one folder on your harddrive and fry your printer, that's up to you, it's not my responsibility. However, to safeguard against that, IMG CAT will only print up to 150 images at each punch of the CATALOGUE button. Period. That's the limit. You can select and print as many paths as you please during any one session (thousands of files if you want to), but you can't access more than 150 image files from any one path. It's recommended that you limit any path to less than 100 images and then print several paths which gives the printer time to rest and cool. Don't tax your printer. Those babies wear out quick enough. Make sure your ribbon has enough ink to keep the pins lubricated. If you have an HP Deskjet, no sweat, but those carts are a bit on the expensive side, no? Laser printer? Well, I don't have one to test with IMG CAT, but I bet they can get pretty hot after a long session. Keep an eye on your printer! BRAGGING..... With the advent of Touch Up, scanners, Dr. Bob's MVG and the like, many folks have opted to store their bit graphics in DRI IMG format. This is nice. It makes it possible to store graphics in compressed form and let's one work with images larger than the actual display screen. Ideal for DTP applications. However, up 'til now, there has been a real vacuum in the Atari community. That is, a way to effectively catalogue and easily reference those very bit images. There are currently no real slide shows which will let you quickly page through a set of IMG's so you know what's there (though Dr. Bob's MVG comes real close with it's QWIKKIES feature). It was really up to your failing memory (grey type) to know whether that XMAS01.IMG file was the one of the wreath or the one of the Christmas tree ... or was it the one of the Courier and Ives winter scene that you liked so well??? Yeah, yeah, I know, you have it all in a database somewhere. But, geez, in the data base it says 'winter scene' but which one? I had three... Was this the sleigh? Or the mountain? or ??? A picture is worth a thousand words they say.... Well, wonder no more. IMG CAT to the rescue. Before IMG CAT, if you wanted a hardcopy of a set of IMG files, you were forced to drag out Easy Draw, PageStream, Calamus or other DTP packages and laboriously lay out a page of IMG's, name them, title them and then print them. A tough and time consuming job. After you finished the job, you were likely pretty sick of DTP for a while anyway. No longer! IMG CAT will print in various configurations page after page of IMG files nicely laid out in alphabetical order with sizes and names ready for your perusal. Next time you're stuck for a nice graphic to go with that newsletter article about Christmas, just pull out your catalogue and look under 'W' for winter. Since you can put up to 15 images per page, you might even find one that suit's your needs better than the one you were looking for in the first place. And it's all without any hard work on your part. Just run IMG CAT, smack the return key, select a path, and smack the return key again. While your catalogue prints, you're free to pursue other interests (a candlelight dinner with that 'special someone' might be nice here). I've done all the work for you. I have painstakingly written IMG CAT in assembly language so that it's extremely compact. GDOS, the printer driver, the fonts, and those HUGE IMG files require lots of RAM. I've made IMG CAT tiny to accommodate this. I've been able to print 15 image files per page at 300 DPI with only 700K free at the desktop! Now that's efficiency! And with that efficiency comes speed. Your part in the use of this program is very small (the printing takes the time). I meant it that way. IMG CAT is a breeze to use and it's flexible to suit your tastes (more on this later). REQUIREMENTS.... Well, now that the chest beating is out of the way, there is one other thing before we get to the real good stuff. You should know that IMG CAT requires GDOS (Atari) or G+PLUS (CodeHeads) and a suitable printer driver with at least one printer font that has 10 point and 12 point typefaces. That's 'easy'. Migraph (Easy Draw, Touch Up, Super Charger) makes an excellent one for Epson and a terrific one for the HP Deskjet plus several others. NeoCept (of Word Up fame) has a good collection of drivers for GDOS too. There are drivers available for most any printer. If you need more info on GDOS, there are several sources and we won't expound on it here. If you work with IMG files, you likely know about GDOS already. If you haven't a clue about GDOS, write CodeHead Software about their excellent and FAST G+PLUS system for GDOS compatibility. The folks there are mighty helpful. CATALOGUING..... I think that's how you spell it. Anyway... You should go through a little preparation before using IMG CAT. IMG CAT will print only the image files found within one path on your diskettes or harddrive. It will not dig into any folders other than the one you open with the fileselector. What you see is what you get, no more, no less. This is not a real limitation. Most folks don't keep more than 150 IMG's in one directory on the hard drive and floppies can hold only so many. Too, as mentioned, this will keep you from turning your printhead into scrap iron or taking a fire hose after your laser all the while swearing at me for letting you do it. So, with that in mind, if you don't already have your images 'organized' do it first. You might even want to make a first run with IMG CAT then go through and sort your images into catagories for a final run (there's a draft feature for HP owners described later for just that). Think about it? Was this possible before IMG CAT? Nope, it was a hard job to get.... wait, this ain't the bragging section..... RUNNING IMG CAT Put IMG CAT anywhere you like on your harddrive or floppy. Double click on the IMG_CAT.PRG name from the desktop. It's not recommended that you run this program from within other programs which have the PEXEC feature (like Flash or the like). We tweak the system a bit to get the job done and though we follow ALL the rules, there's no guarantee that you won't see some of those explosive beasties if you run this from within. Besides, we need the memory for IMG files and fonts. Programs like NeoDesk from GRIBNIF and HotWire! from the CodeHeads (ie specially designed as shells) and Dr. Bob's Menu Helper should work ok if you have the RAM (Dr. Bob's is ideal here since it is VERY small). As a point of interest, this program was written on a Mega 4 with CodeHead's HotWire residing peacefully and always in memory using many of the work saving features of HotWire! Highly recommended. BUTTONS, BUTTONS, WHO'S GOT THE BUTTONS? When IMG CAT is initialized, you'll see lots of buttons. Unless you've never heard of a mouse, you don't need to be told what to do with them. The button defaulted is the SET PATH button. That's what you should do first. Just hit RETURN or punch that button and the fileselector will appear. Dig around until you have the IMG files you want to print before your very eyes then click on OK or hit RETURN again (you don't need to select an individual filename). The path you chose will be in the TITLE box and CATALOGUE will then become the default button. If you wish to have a special title for this (perhaps you have a collection of animals on a floppy labeled ANIMALS but the title of A:\ for this section of your catalogue would be a bit less than informative) you can edit the title line up to 40 characters (press ESC and type ANIMALS DISK ONE for instance). Make sure your printer is on and there's plenty of paper then smack the RETURN key again. Your work is done! IMG CAT will do the rest. See, that wasn't so hard! Go have that dinner! Once you're done with dinner (or whatever the dinner might have lead to) then come on back. You'll see that SET PATH is once again defaulted and the kitty is waiting for you to select another path to print! SETTINGS and FLEXIBILITY This would be a very poor program indeed if I foisted my preferences on you. Oh, yes, I do have preferences, and you'll see them when you first run IMG CAT plain as the whiskers on the kitty. But they're not etched in stone. We'll discuss each in turn and then tell you a way of saving YOUR preferences so you don't have to click the mouse ninety times (like some other programs which I won't mention here) to have it your way every time you run IMG CAT. ...PAGE STYLE You have three choices. If you've got a 300 DPI printer and like lots of information at your fingertips, then style 15 is your baby. It prints 15 images per page with each image 2 inches by 2 and the names printed sideways (only place they'll fit!). If you've got a 9 pin printer or like more white space on your pages, then style 12 is for you. This gives 12 images per page with upright titles and some white stuff for easy on the eyes viewing. Style six prints (you guessed it!) only 6 images per page and is more or less for those with limited memory. Style six is also a good one for those HUGE scanned images, halftones, and quick looks at a small set of IMG files too. Just click on the icon of your choice. ...ASPECT RATIO You can elect to preserve or ignore the aspect ratio of the images on the page. Unlike Degas, TNY or NEO pics, IMG files have widely varying sizes. Some may be long and skinny or short and fat or wide and narrow. Each image on the page is printed within a fixed area (ie 2 x 2 on style 15 pages). If you elect to PRESERVE aspect, then we look at the longest side of the image, shrink that to exactly fit the box, then we shrink the short side a corresponding amount which may or may not be the size of the box. This way, we preserve the overall 'look', or aspect of the picture. If you choose to IGNORE aspect, the we look at the longest side, shrink or enlarge that to fit and go on to enlarge the short side so the image fills the box entirely. This often has a 'fun house mirror' effect on the picture and I can't fathom why anyone would elect to ignore aspect, but you're not locked to my preferences. ...IMAGE SIZES IMG CAT will print the pixel sizes in WIDTH x HEIGHT above or beside (depending on page style) and just after the name of the image. This is to give you a rough idea of the actual size of the image. If you have a 300 DPI printer, then a 450 x 300 image will be an inch and a half by one inch pixel for bit. Since all images regardless of size print strikingly well through IMG CAT, you might not know the actual extent of the image by just looking at the picture. SHOW the size. If it's 1200 x 890 then you know that it's a pretty darn big image. You can then easily surmise if a particular image is a good choice to import 30 times on a page in your DTP application for making labels (the big ones don't do this well). If you don't want sizes printed, then HIDE them. ...PAGE BINDING This somewhat 'cryptic' option is for the style of the overall catalogue rather than individual page design. If you choose NONE then the page titles on all pages will be printed flush right on the page. If you choose CONT, then odd numbered page titles will be printed flush right while even numbered ones are set flush left for a 'book' effect. The CONT means continuous which further means that the titles will be swapped book style, but there will be no pause between pages. You can then punch and collate with 'page protector' plastic covers for a nice book. SING means single sheet which further means that the titles will be swapped and IMG CAT will wait for you to respond to an alert box between each page. It's not recommended that you print on both sides of a sheet of paper unless it's at least 60lb since heavy graphics tend to bleed through to the other side spoiling the whole thing (lasers won't bleed, but they will double warp the paper and the toner on the second side will be a tad 'flaky'). But, the option is here for you if that's what you want to do. This feature is there for those who have single sheet printers too. ...BOX STYLE Personally, as you can see, I like dotted boxes around my images. This gives an impression of the aspect of the image, doesn't clutter the page, and keeps the names and sizes relative to the particular image for easy reference. If you like images sans boxes or solid lines for the surround, then take your pick. SCAT! Here's a feature that I wish more programs had (which is why I included it). IMG CAT is easy to use. The learning curve is flat as a pancake (or is that steep as Everest? I can't bring to mind right now which means easy). Anyway, the only time you're asked for confirmation when doing anything is when you hit one of the print buttons. You'll see an alert asking if your printer is on. Click the appropriate button: AYE! for "go ahead," NAY! for "wait, not just now." There is a third button named SCAT! If you click that button, you will never again see that particular alert box for the rest of the session. Kitty will just quietly go about his business when you punch a print button. You'll find that once you catch on to IMG CAT, you'll be grateful for the SCAT! button. You're welcome.... SAVING PREFERENCES All of the preferences mentioned above can be saved for ensuing sessions with IMG CAT. In addition to STYLE, ASPECT, SIZES, BINDING and BOXES, the ASPECT, PLACEMENT, and ENLARGEMENT of single printing (discussed later) and the SHIFT KEY condition of printer checks are also saved. Just click on the kitty's nose at the main dialog and insert your working program disk into the drive from which it was run (fixed media hard drive owners need not worry about this). Your preferences are saved directly to the IMG_CAT program so there's no other file besides the PRG floating around for you to worry about. If you have a harddrive, this will happen so fast you won't think it worked! But, next time you run IMG CAT, you'll see that it did indeed 'take.' NOTE: if the file named IMG_CAT.PRG is not found, IMG CAT will ask you to help it find itself on disk with the fileselector. When and if that happens, you should search through your folders to find your working IMG_CAT.PRG then double click it. This should only happen if you have run IMG CAT from a floppy which is no longer in the drive. ********* CAUTION ******** There are safeguards to ensure that you can't inadvertently spoil another program file when saving defaults, but you can screw that up royally by poking around in the IMG CAT program file with a sector editor. DON'T and there will be no problems. No guarantees otherwise. FONTS As noted, IMG CAT requires GODS and fonts for your printer. Check other sources for information on GDOS and it's foibles. IMG CAT allows you to choose from up to six fonts maximum during any one session. Note, however, that GDOS requires that ALL fonts listed in the ASSIGN.SYS file be loaded all at once. If your ASSIGN.SYS lists more than six fonts, the excess is just wasted memory. Along these same lines, IMG CAT uses ONLY point sizes 10 and 12. Other point sizes are wasted space too. You might want to write a special ASSIGN.SYS for just IMG CAT which has only the 10 point and 12 point fonts of your favorite six fonts. G+PLUS from the CodeHeads offers a great alternative by allowing you to load ANY ASSIGN.SYS with any program run automatically and this is a boon to IMG CAT. Highly recommended (it dramatically reduced the development time on this program, I can assure you). Note, that if you have limited memory, you should load only one or two fonts. If you're having the problem of 'missing' images on a page (the last two or three are blank boxes) then you have simply run out of memory (RAM type). Set up an ASSIGN.SYS with only SWISS in 10 and 12 points and this problem should go away. Use fonts designed for your printer. Limiting your fonts to 10 and 12 points will also make IMG CAT load and run more quickly. If your text does not seem to be the correct size, then IMG CAT can't find the font it's looking for. IMG CAT attempts to print page titles in 12 point and image names and sizes in 10 point. If the chosen font does not have these size designations, then IMG CAT will try to print with the nearest point size BELOW the requested one. If there is no point size BELOW the requested one, then the next HIGHER point size will be used. You can use this little 'fact' to your advantage if you wish. If you have listed, say, only SWISS 7 point in your assign.sys, then when you print with SWISS, all text will print in 7 point SWISS (it's a clean tiny font at 300DPI for those who like tiny text). If you want larger, then you can have only, say, DUTCH 18 point listed in your assign.sys for DUTCH. When you print with DUTCH, you will get 18 point text. Note, however, that using larger point sizes will cause the numbers for the sizes of images to overlap the names so it's best to HIDE sizes here. DEVICE DRIVERS Presently, IMG CAT references only Device #21 or Device #23 as printer devices. This is the norm (as far as I know) and should present no problems. Make sure your printer driver in your ASSIGN.SYS file has one of these designations. Device #21 is the default for most drivers (EPSON), but the Migraph HP DeskJet driver installs as device #23 for 300 DPI and device #21 for 150 DPI (as they came from Migraph). If you have Migraph's driver and have these devices listed as such, then IMG CAT will detect it and default to device #23 for 300 DPI if you're using the original ASSIGN.SYS. Otherwise, it will install device #21. If you have another printer (LQ, SLM) then edit your ASSIGN.SYS file to specify either device #21 or device #23 for compatibility. ***** HIDDEN FEATURE ***** If you have a DeskJet and Migraph's driver for it, then you CAN bypass this automatic #23 install for draft printouts if need be. Merely press and hold the SHIFT key when you double click on the IMG_CAT.PRG and keep it pressed until the choice box appears. You can then choose DEV #21 for preliminary 'sorting' printouts (if you've followed Migraph's lead and have DJET150.SYS as 21 and DJET300.SYS as 23). This nifty hidden feature is useful as well if you only have one floppy drive. You can boot with a disk which has GDOS and which installs the ASSIGN.SYS file. You can then remove that disk from the drive and insert the disk with IMG_CAT.PRG. Hold down the SHIFT key and double click the PRG. Keep holding down the SHIFT key until IMG CAT loads and gives you an alert. Remove the disk with IMG CAT and re-insert the GDOS disk with all the fonts and drivers. Click on the device desired and off you go! Thanks to Frank Tomecek for thinking up this little feature. NECESSITIES IMG CAT needs no GDOS screen fonts, no screen drivers and no META driver. It needs only the printer driver for your printer and at least one printer font in both 10 and 12 point designations. Below is a sample of the MINIMUM ASSIGN.SYS configuration required for Epson 9 pin: ;your path goes below PATH = D:\EASYDRAW\EPSYS\ 00p screen.sys ; --START OF SCREEN FONTS-- 01p screen.sys 02p screen.sys 03p screen.sys 04p screen.sys ; --END OF SCREEN FONTS -- ;PRINTER DRIVER 21 FX80.SYS ;--START OF PRINTER FONTS-- ; SWISS ATSS10EP.FNT ATSS12EP.FNT ;up to five additional fonts here... Yours may vary depending on driver and fonts, but you must have device #21 or #23 as the device number before your printer sys file. If you have an SLM 804 then you should enter: 21 SLM804.SYS in place of the 21 FX80.SYS above and: ATSS10LS.FNT ATSS12LS.FNT ;up to five additional fonts here... for the fonts. DJet owners with Migraph's drivers should have: 23 DJET300.SYS ATSS10LS.FNT ATSS12LS.FNT ;up to five additional fonts... ... 21 DJET150.SYS ATSS10DJ.FNT ATSS12DJ.FNT ;up to five additional fonts... ... to take full advantage of IMG CAT's HPDJ 'shift into draft' printing feature detailed above. ***** PLEASE NOTE: If you run with a minimum ASSIGN.SYS file such as this one, subsequent programs requiring GDOS drivers and fonts may not work properly. Subsequent programs may need the META.SYS or the screen fonts and they will not be installed. Using G+PLUS from the CodeHeads eliminates this ASSIGN.SYS headache and allows easy GDOS configuration for individual programs. If you normally boot from a floppy, then by all means write an ASSIGN.SYS file like this one and boot with it to run IMG CAT. Reset your system when you're done with IMG CAT so that the 'short' sys gets cleared out of memory. If you have a harddrive then you should get G+PLUS to handle this for you. PRINTING SINGLE IMAGES Click on the PRINT SINGLE button (logical... no?) and you will be greeted with a new dialog. Your installed device and DPI rating (though mileage may vary depending on use) will be shown (though only shown, not selectable). When you first visit, the CHOOSE FILE button is your first choice and is the default if you press RETURN. Select an individual IMG file to print (yes, Virginia, you MUST select an individual IMG file here). The file will be read and its size will be noted in the pixel boxes. You can choose the PLACEMENT on the page, the ENLARGEMENT factor and the preservation or ignoration of the ASPECT (discussed above) of the printout before you punch the print button. Note, that if you choose to IGNORE ASPECT, the image will always print exactly SQUARE per the longest side of the image unless it won't fit on the page that way. If you choose an enlargement factor that causes the finished product to be larger than an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet (the only page size that IMG CAT is aware of, by the way) then the image will print FIT TO PAGE. Click the filename button (under the kitty) to choose another image, or just change the placement or enlargement of the current image for a reprint. When done, click EXIT to return to the main catalogue dialog(ue??). CAVEATS First, if you have an HP DJ printer, then some of the features of the program will not be available to you on a strict basis. Due to the peculiarities of the DJ, if the printer is turned on when the computer is booted, then it detects as ALWAYS ready whether it is or not. Conversely, if it's switched off with an AB switch when the computer is booted then it detects as always OFF and you must reboot with the printer on to get back the ability to print. It also gives odd timeout signals which makes things difficult too. There's a complicated fix for this little (and painful) oddity, but it involves inserting a transistor into the centronics plug and I won't detail it here. Bear in mind, if you have a DJ, you are responsible to make sure the printer is on and ready when you press the CATALOGUE or PRINT buttons. Even if you make a mistake here, you have about 30 seconds to right it by turning it on (you should have the GRAPHICS DIP switch 2 set to 300DPI). Also, I've had to eliminate some of the 'hey, is the printer there?' checks within the program for that very reason. The DJ is very TIMEOUT prone so I've had to go to other means described in the next paragraph. IF YOU HAVE A DJ, THEN BY ALL MEANS CHOOSE SHIFT FROM THE ALERT AT SAVE DEFS. OTHERWISE, YOU MAY BE THINKING YOUR CATALOGUE US PRINTING AWAY (the DJ's quiet you know) WHILE THERE'S AN ABORT? ALERT SITTING THERE WAITING FOR A CLICK. If you have an Atari laser hooked up to the DMA port, then by all means set the printer checks to SHIFT and not TIMEOUT since there will be nothing hooked up to the parallel/serial port. This also holds true for folks whose printers hook to the serial port since the program checks only the parallel port or the serial port (according to what you have installed with the desktop control panel accessory) for timeouts. Since IMG CAT explores and exploits some of the very dark regions on the back roads of TOS, there is no easy way to abort a print once it's begun. Once you see the 'page 1 of ?' prompt, the system has taken over and the kitty no longer has control. Just about the only way to abort the print is to shut off the printer. In about 30 seconds, TOS will (smartly) realize that there is no printer and will give control back to the kitty. At that time, if you're only printing one page or a single image, then no sweat, just pick up where you left off. If, however, you're in the process of printing 2 or more pages, the kitty will just keep on trucking unless he detects that a SHIFT key is pressed. It would be nice to just check at the end of each page to see if the printer is on or not, but some printers give timeout signals when they shouldn't. If there was a check like this at the end of each page printed it would cause some printers to ALWAYS pause at the end of each page. Certainly not desirable. The SHIFT solution is the only workaround for this, and that is the way IMG CAT comes in its out-of- the-box condition. But, I don't lock you into this. You can change way IMG CAT asks for abort. To do this, you must save your defaults. At that time, you will be asked what method to use. If you're having timeout troubles at the end of each page, then choose SHIFT like the DJ folks and the Atari Laser DMA folks. If you've chosen SHIFT from the ALERT when saving defs, then to abort a multiple page print, shut off the printer then count 'oneMississippi twoMississippi three...' until you get to about 15 then press and hold the SHIFT key until kitty asks you if you want to quit. If you've chosen TIMEOUT from the ALERT at save defs, then the kitty will ask you if he discovers that the printer is off (at the parallel port) at the end of the page without this baby sitting. This 'kloodgie' aspect of the program I apologize for, but that's a necessity for some cantankerous printers. Scanned photographs and halftone pictures will take on a crossed hatch appearance when they are enlarged or reduced. IMG CAT works great with line art (scanned cartoons, drawings etc) but with these other types, the going gets rough at times. They also use lots of ink! If you need to print several of these, then use PageStream, which has a 'screening' feature to eliminate this freak of nature. The dialogs used here were designed to look really terrific on a monochrome screen. The buttons in the single print dialog, however, might look a little crowded and somewhat off-center on a color monitor. IMG CAT runs in hi and med rez only. Since most folks who fool with bit images use the monochrome, this should not pose a problem. Also, color users will have no 'progress' reports since the icons are elongated in med rez. Since IMG CAT keeps a channel open to your printer the ENTIRE time it's running it requires that your printer be turned on when you exit the program. No big deal really, and when you consider that this eliminates the need to load the fonts for each path you print, you'll agree that it's a small price. If the printer is off when you want to exit, then IMG CAT will tell you what you need to do. If you have an Atari Laser then you'll probably see a quick box flash on the screen each time you quit, but pay no heed. IMG CAT sorts the image names on only the first four characters for extra speed. If you have a series of IMG's named CAT1, CAT2, CAT3 then they will sort correctly. However, if they are named KITTY1, KITTY2, KITTY3 then they will all be together in the printout, but not necessarily in that order. For speed I use the blitter for the kitty (not to be confused with litter for the kitty). If you have a blitter then you get 300 kitties on the screen when you run. If no blitter you only get 100 kitties (300 takes too long). Anyway, this caused me much headaches with the first release of the demo. I hope you appreciate the consideration (and I apologize for the inconvenience if you downloaded a demo that did nothing more than lock up on you). Every effort was made to ensure that the program would run on any size monitor or screen. I don't have a Viking to test it on. The only thing I had was a PD program called BIGSCRN which fooled GEM into thinking that the screen is bigger than the standard monitor. But that's all it does, fool GEM. It's buggy. My stuff looked ok as long as the screen was 640 pixels wide and 800 long, but wider it looked funny even though my checksums worked out to the right values. I think that's the fault of BIGSCRN and not IMG CAT. If you have a big monitor, then please let me know. (I'll return the favor by letting you in on a back-door feature). ************* DEMO *************** If you're reading this doc and working only with the DEMO of IMG CAT, then you'll quickly realize the limitations of the demo. It will give you a good idea of what the full blown version will do. Support ATARI ST ShareWare authors. Don't make us feel like beggars. Send in a donation of only $10 for a full version. You'll like it I'm sure! Chet Walters P.O. Box 45 Girard, OH 44420 Folks outside the continental United States must send an international money order for $12 in US FUNDS or $12 in US currency (postage is expensive). I live in a backwoods area of the US and currency exchange houses are difficult to come by. Allow six weeks for delivery. ********************************** If you've donated and are reading this doc then I thank you very kindly for your consideration. I will strive to continue to put out useful and bug free ShareWare. The latest version of FujiDesk is on the disk and if you like working with bit images, you'll want to get Dr. Bob's MVG, a demo of which is on this disk too..... *********************************** If you have not donated and are reading this doc and are using IMG CAT regularly then you and your friend are guilty of international violation of copyright law. Besides that, you are a slug who lives under the slimiest dirty rock on the dung covered floor of a hostelry. *********************************** For the curious, DEVPAC from HiSoft through Michtron was used to write this program. WERCS from the same was used for the dialogs. If any of you read my plea for a recommendation on a new language to use for writing programs on the ST in the stead of GFA, then know that this is the one. Highly recommended. Many thanks go to Mr. W.D. Parks for his kind assistance and motivation. Thanks also goes to Craig Daymon (Manual Maker) for his 'public' suggestion of exploring the possibilities of using the system to print images. And thanks to the folks on GEnie and CHQ BBS (216) 758-0284 for their help in debugging. If you're a telecommunicator (is that a word?) then join us on GEnie in the ST Roundtable Category 7 Topic 13 for comments and suggestions. ************************************ You can bet if a company or product was named herein, then it bears a trademark or copyright. Here's a semi complete list of things you'll want to check out if you really want quality stuff.... G+PLUS (****) [four stars if you wondered] HOTWIRE! (****) Codehead Software P.O. Box 74090 Los Angeles, CA 91607 (213) 386-5735 NOTE: Due to the complexity and 'one time only at boot' nature of Atari's original GDOS, the idea of IMG CAT would probably have stayed forever buried deep in the fissure of Sylvius were it not for the advent of G+PLUS by the CodeHeads. G+PLUS made IMG CAT a viable ShareWare item and brought it to the fore. G+PLUS also cut development time on this product considerably. By all means, get it! EASY DRAW (****) TOUCH UP (***) various printer drivers (****) Migraph 200 S. 333rd St. Federal Way, WA 98003 ************* UPDATE INFO ************* (proof that ShareWare authors are very responsive to the public) 9/25/89 1.02 Thanks to Dr. Bob (Mr. W. D. Parks) and his GLU_RSRC routine, there is no longer a separate resource file tagging along with IMG_CAT.PRG. Now, since IMG CAT saves defaults directly to the program file and has pasted right into it a 'GLUed' resource, you have only one file to worry about when moving IMG CAT from directory to directory. Store it anywhere! Even on disks full of images! It's only 27K! You should not rename it though, since this will make you step through the fileselector every time you want to save defaults. Leave it named IMG_CAT.PRG. 9/26/89 1.03 At the suggestion of Mr. Bob Rakocy, the 1/2 size button was added to the ENLARGEMENT dialog. You can now take those _HUGE_ scanned images and pare them down to half size for printing singly. Added was compatibility with LGSLELECT by Charles Johnson thanks to an incongruity discovered by Mr. Bill Rhebock. As it turns out, this problem existed as well with the system selector in any version of TOS prior to TOS 1.4. 9/27/89 1.04 As it was, if you chose CATALOGUE before SET PATH, only a 'No images found' alert would ensue. Now, at the suggestion of Frank Tomecek, if you choose CATALOGUE in this case, it is treated as if you had punched SET PATH. You are given the fileselector and asked to choose path. Punch CATALOGUE again to print. Fixed was a cosmetic bug discovered by Mr. Rakocy. If there were an even number of images for the page style chosen (ie 24 images for style 12), the 'Page ? of ?' dialog would turn up incorrect. It is now correct. 9/28/89 1.05 A few cosmetic changes and some optimizations for speed. Nothing to get excited about. 10/12/89 It was discovered at this time that the print drivers which come with TimeWorks Publisher and other early drivers limit the number of IMG's one can print on a single page (this was first thought to be a memory problem but it's not). So, as a result, if you're using one of the TimeWorks or an early release driver from another source then you can print with only page style six no matter how much memory you have in your machine! This is a serious deficiency of the driver and not the fault of IMG CAT. If you're using those drivers, you should try to obtain a driver for your printer from Migraph (or from Atari if you can) which allows 15 images per page or more. (To print 15 images per page you need at least 600K free at the desktop before running IMG cat with these new drivers.) 10/19/89 1.06 Due to some optimization and the fact that the loss of images per page first thought to be a memory deficiency problem turned out to be a driver deficiency problem (see above), the 150 IMG per path limit is now raised to 500 IMG's per path. Bear in mind, that most fileselectors will handle only 300 to 350 filenames per path. IMG CAT will allow 500 names to be printed, but the FSEL may crash when trying to access a directory with that many names (some do some don't). This is not a fault of IMG CAT, but of the fileselector. UIS_II and LGSELECT give you an alert if you're over limit, but go ahead and click the OK button as the limit of these FSEL's only affects the FSEL itself and IMG CAT will process ALL the names up to 500 just fine. The new TOS 1.4 selector handles that many names alright, but the old system selector may crash. Other third party selectors have not been tested. You should also be aware that having that many names within a directory will slow GEMDOS file access down considerably (even with TOS 1.4) and those directories become more and more difficult to manage as they grow (300 names is not too unreasonable a limit). Also, you can burn up a dot matrix printer by printing that many files in succession. CAUTION! 10/21/89 1.07 IMG INDX is now included on distribution disks with the advent of IMG CAT 1.07. See IMG_INDX.TXT for details on using it. IMG CAT now has the ability to print only the ODD pages, EVEN pages or ALL pages of the catalogue. This feature facilitates easy two sided printing. It's recommended that you only use this feature if you have a laser printer since graphics prints on a dot matrix or HPDJ will sometimes bleed through to the other side spoiling the prints. You can do this, but you should use 60 lb. paper at the minimum. To access the feature, press and hold the SHIFT key when you click on the CATALOGUE button. You should print first the ODD numbered pages on blank pieces of heavy paper so click on ODD in the alert (the initial default). Then, once the ODD run is done, you'll be greeted with the ODD EVEN alert again with EVEN as the default. Turn the paper over and insert it into your printer so that the first page to be printed next will fall onto the back of page number one and subsequent pages will print in the proper order on the backs of pages 3, 5 etc. Click then on EVEN or press RETURN. It's not that difficult to do and the results (from a laser printer at least) are excellent. By the way, when you opt to use the ODD/EVEN print feature and don't have CONT set for PAGE BINDING, the CONT button under the PAGE BINDING box will be automatically set as the default (ie swap titles with continuous feed) and REMAINS as such until YOU change it. If you plan to use this feature, it might be a good idea to leave the PRINTER READY? alert active (don't click on SCAT during this session). 10/22/89 1.10 An obscure bug was found in both IMG CAT and then VDI. IMG CAT had a forty character limit on pathnames due merely to an oversight on the part of this programmer. Sorry, that's fixed now. However, there was found to be still a limit on the length of this parameter. Current VDI drivers will accept a drive\path\filespec only up to 68 characters in length so there was a 68 character limit imposed such as the samples below: C:\MAXIMUM1.123\MAXIMUM2.123\MAXIMUM3.123\MAXIMUM4.123\FILENAME.IMG or alternately C:\MAXIMUM1.1\MAXIMUM2.2\MAXIMUM3.3\MAXIMUM4.4\MAXIMUM5.5\FNAME.IMG or alternately C:\MAXIM1\MAXIM2\MAXIM3\MAXIM4\MAXIM5\MAXIM6\MAXIM7\MAXIM8\NAME.IMG Note that some early drivers might have crashed even below this limit, I have tested only a few and don't know whether the limit is imposed by the driver, GDOS or VDI itself, but I suspect the driver. TOS (at least 1.4, older versions of TOS were documented to have a 64 character limit on path names) will allow nesting of folders to eight deep (as in our last sample and up to 104 characters), but I cannot get the GDOS VDI to accept any more than 68 characters regardless of the nesting (for the curious, Migraph's Outprint crashes miserably on this very same limit). IMG CAT now checks for filespecs that are too long and will do a little workaround trick to get these super long paths to print without crashing the machine. With version 1.10 of IMG CAT you can print paths up to TOS 1.4 GEMDOS limits rather than the short early TOS and VDI limits. However, note that coincidently there is only room for about 68 characters for the page title across the top of the page when printing style 6 or 12. If you count the page numbers, then you must subtract six or seven from this as well. If your pathspec is longer than about 60 characters (like our samples above) then they will be truncated to 40 characters in the title box on the screen and to roughly 60 characters on the page. If you print with the CONT or SING button set then the page numbers will be lost on even numbered pages. Keep your path names short or edit the title line before you print the catalogue.