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- ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1. Text Utility Add on ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
-
- The function contained in this DLL are designed to work with the JView imaging
- system. You will need to reference JView's main help file or the written
- manual that comes with JView for help on controls that are common to all JView
- dialogs, such as the colorwell. This particular module is provided by:
-
- Crunch Products
- P.O. Box 392
- Berkeley, CA 94701-0392
- USA
-
-
- ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.1. Overview ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
-
- The Text Utility's functions are all contained in one dialog that allows you to
- place text on your image. The design philosophy for this utility has been "The
- user should be given maximum control over the placement and appearance of the
- text." To achieve this, you have control over each individual character. This
- utility has not been designed for use in working with large amounts of text.
- It is best suited for placing captions, titles, etc.
-
-
- ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1.2. How to use it ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
-
- The first parts to examine are various settings that can be specified for the
- appearance or positioning of the text. Be aware that the following options are
- applied individually to each character.
-
- Font Name is used to select the font for the text. These fonts are part of the
- OS/2 system and so can be added or deleted by you at the system level. For our
- purposes, outline fonts work best because they have the ability to be scaled in
- arbitrary increments and often have rotation and skew capabilities. Note that
- not all fonts have skew or rotation capability, what you see is what you get.
-
- SizeThis refers to the size of the font when it is displayed. For graphics, you
- will often want sizes that are much larger than what typically used in word
- processing. Start with sizes in the 20 to 40 range.
-
- Skew refers to the process of shifting the top of a character left or right
- while keeping the bottom edge fixed (making the character slant). The number
- you enter here represents the angle that a line drawn on the left edge of the
- character would make with respect to the vertical axis. It is through skewing
- that italic fonts are created.
-
- Angle indicates the number of degrees that the text will be rotated relative to
- the horizontal axis. By specifying changing angles you can create a path for
- your text to follow. For instance, to have your text go up and down a hill,
- begin with an angle of 0. Character by character increase the angle till you
- reach the middle of your hill's rise then begin decreasing the angle. At the
- top of the hill the angle should be back to zero. Follow a similar procedure
- for the downside of the hill.
-
- Xtra X and Xtra Y allow you to shift a character by the indicated amount (the
- units are pixels). This gives you fine tuning capability as well as the
- ability to do radical shifts. Note that these extra spacings when calculating
- the spacing needs for multiple lines of text or when center justification or
- right justification is being used. Also, the shift caused by moving the
- current character will cause all subsequent characters on the same line to
- shift the same amount. This is because characters on the same line are printed
- relative to the preceding character.
-
- Orientation.Conventional printing occurs left to right. For your purposes,
- there are three other options. Right to left, up to down, and down to up.
-
- Fore, Back and Transparent refer to the color of the text. These will only
- have an affect if embossing and engraving are not being used. Fore refers to
- the foreground color of the text or what color the actual character will be.
- Back refers to the background color or the color of the area immediately around
- the character. Transparent will cause the background color to be ignored and
- the image will show through instead. You will typically leave transparency on.
-
- Bold, Italic and Underline are well known printing effects. These are applied
- or removed by checking the appropriate box.
-
- All of the above settings can be changed on a character by character basis,
- Those settings listed below apply to the entire sequence of text.
-
- Shadow creates a shadowing of the text. You specify the color that you wish
- the shadow to have by manipulating the colorwell. The X and Y variables refer
- to the amount of shift, in pixels, that the shadow will take relative to the
- source text. Basically, the larger the values, the more pronounced the shadow
- will be. Note that the shadow effect will not occur if either emboss or
- engrave is selected.
-
- Normal, Emboss, and Engrave dictate how the text will be presented. Normal
- simply takes the text as you have described it and overlays it onto the image.
- Parts of the image that are beneath the text are obscured. Emboss and Engrave
- give a three dimensional look to your text and make it appear as if the text
- has been embossed/engraved into your image. Engraving would be as if someone
- used a chisel to write the text on your image, while embossing is the opposite
- effect. Embossing/engraving are most effective when you image is neither
- mostly white or mostly black. The numerical parameter that you set when
- embossing/engraving refers to the perceived depth of the effect - larger means
- more depth.
-
- Your can specify text justification under certain circumstances. First off,
- justification is done relative to the first line, not relative to margins as is
- the case with word processing. So, if you have chosen center justification,
- the fist line stays in the same position no matter what the length, while the
- second line's positioning is a function of the first line. The three forms of
- justification - left, right, and center - are only designed to work when
- operating with an orientation of left to right. Further, a single angle should
- be used for all the characters, although that angle does not need to be zero.
- The type of justification is chosen by pressing the appropriate button.
-
- The Set Startpoint button is used to indicate where placement of the first
- character will be on the image.
-
- The Text Entry Area has the capability to show you exactly what the text will
- look like on your image, with the exception that the color displayed here is
- always black on white with a gray shadow if appropriate. The text area
- duplicates the size of your image, and so text is placed here at the same
- starting point as occurs on your image. So, if text is being cutoff because it
- is too large, the same problem will occur on your image. You will quickly
- observe that text display is somewhat slow. You can use Draft Mode to display
- text quickly, but the display will no longer be an accurate visual
- representation of the text. The font and size used to display the text in
- draft mode will be whatever is specified for the first character.
-
- You move around in the text entry area by use of the mouse or the arrow keys.
- Use the shift button in conjunction with the arrow keys to select text for
- modification. Use the right mouse button to bring up special options.
-
- The following are buttons that are standard to most JView dialogs.
-
- Done The text utility is exited and the current changes are saved.
-
- Cancel If text is currently being applied to the image then hitting cancel
- merely aborts the application. If text is not currently being applied, then
- hitting cancel causes the text utility to exit and all changes to the image are
- discarded.
-
- Undo brings up the undo dialog which allows each different application of text
- to be removed.
-
- Reset will permanently remove the most recent text application.
-
- Load allows you to retrieve a previously saved text segment. All information
- is saved when a save is performed. However, it is possible for a previously
- specified font to no longer be available - either because it was deleted from
- the system or you saved the information while on another system. In these
- cases, a substitute font is used.
-
- Save saves the current text.
-
- Test applies the current text onto the image.
-
- Image makes the image window the currently active window.