Magnum One/Magnum One (Mid-American Digital) (Disc Manufacturing).iso/d10/pcimag16.arc/IMAGES.DOC

Text File | 1991-04-10 | 35KB | 683 lines

        *** WELCOME TO PC-IMAGES VERSION 1.5  12/30/90 ***

PC-Images is a strange program.  It doesn't really do anything unique, it
just combines things in a unique way.  It includes a memory resident
program (Fred) that lets you capture (take a picture of) virtually
anything that appears on your screen.  It compresses and stores these
"pictures" to disk.  You then use another program (Wilma) to group sets
of pictures together into what we call Carousels.  These Carousels are
much like grouping pictures together in a slide projector carousel.

You can create "stand-alone" Carousels that let others run your Carousels
without having to use Fred or Wilma.  The most obvious use for this
feature is to create business presentations, or briefings, but it comes
in handy for other things as well.  For example, let's say you've been
having problems with a certain program.  You could take pictures of
different screens leading up to the problem, and then take a picture of
the the end result, put them together into a stand-alone carousel, and
ship it off to someone for technical assistance.  Or maybe you've finally
figured out how to get into the secret alien chamber while playing
"Martians take Manhattan" and you've just got to prove it to your
friends.

You can have a carousel "pop-up" at most any time, within most any
program.  It will sit there and run through the pictures in the Carousel
just like you were watching a slide projector in the automatic mode.  It
will continue running until you press a key, and then it will disappear
as though nothing had happened (usually). If you want, you can make a
Carousel hold only a single picture.  For example, lets say you make a
Carousel consisting of just a spreadsheet.  There you are, playing your
favorite game and you hear the boss coming.  You press Ctrl-D and the
Carousel "pops-up" displaying the spreadsheet picture.  Your boss is so
impressed with your diligence and dedication that he gives you a raise
and then leaves.  Press any key and you're back into your game, exactly
where you left off.

In addition, you can use the first picture of a carousel as "DOS filler".
This means that whenever DOS finishes a program it will display the first
picture in the carousel, instead of a blank screen.  How about displaying
a picture of the wife (husband) and kids everytime the program ends.  Or
maybe the company logo?  It may not be much, but when it comes to making
computers more personal, I think every little bit helps.  (Pun intended)

You can also turn a Carousel into a "screen-saver", where it pops up
after a certain period of keyboard and screen inactivity.  It continues
to display your pictures until someone comes along and presses a key.  It
sure beats other "screen-saver" programs.  With a little creativity you
can create all sorts of carousels, including humorous comic strip like
sequences that tell people where you've run off to.

PC-Images has something for virtually everyone.  For the business user it
has its practical side, briefings, screen-saver, etc..  For the graphics
connoisseur it is a great way to combine and display your pictures.  The
more you use it the more ways you'll find to put it to use.  Use your
imagination and have a little fun.

                     *** System Requirements ***

CGA, EGA, VGA, or MCGA and DOS 2.1 or greater. DOES NOT RUN ON A MDA OR
HERCULES GRAPHICS CARD.  Hard Disk recommended.

                         *** How much? ***

PC-Images is user-supported software.  This means you are freely given
this copy in order to evaluate it.  If after your evaluation you decide
to continue using it, you should become a registered user by sending the
registration fee of $35 (add $1 for 3.5 disk) to:

    PC-Images                           Mastercard or Visa customers:
    1157 57th Drive SE                         [phone]
    Auburn, WA 98002                       Compuserve: 72371,1557

A book containing printed documentation for all of our shareware products
(including PC-Images) is available for an extra $5.

You are encouraged to freely distribute copies of the PCIM15.EXE
file as long as you don't charge anything for the copies.  DO NOT
distribute the individual, extracted, files; only PCIM15.EXE.

As a registered user you'll receive these additional benefits:

1.  Technical support
2.  Latest version of PC-Images, PLUS a "decoder" which lets you
    turn all future versions of PC-Images into registered versions.
3.  No more annoying screens and messages asking you to register.
4.  Our "Sampler" disk which contains the latest versions of our
    other user-supported products, including PC-FileNotes, PC-
    Directory, Conjecture, Remind Me!, Nabbit, BriteLine, Trash-It
    and Playback.
5.  A sincere "Thank you" for supporting our efforts to develop
    quality software and offer it at reasonable prices.

Those using PC-Images in a commercial or educational environment must
register.  Site licenses are available, as well as quantity discounts.
Overseas customers please add $5.

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      Have a photograph you'd like to display on your computer?

If you're a registered user of PC-Images, for a $10 fee per picture,
we'll have your photograph or artwork (up to 11x17) professionally
scanned into a full color picture your computer can display.  To have
your favorite photograph or artwork converted to a color computer image
send us:

         *  your mailing address
         *  the type of display you have (CGA,EGA,VGA,MCGA,SuperVGA)
         *  whether you want 5.25 or 3.5 inch disks
         *  the photograph(s) or artwork
         *  $10 per photograph

If you want your photo back, also include a suitable self-addressed
stamped envelope  Send to:
                               RSE Inc
                               1157 57th Drive SE
                               Auburn, WA 98002

This is a service only afforded to registered users of PC-Images.  Please
allow 3-4 weeks for conversion and delivery.  Sorry, but we can't provide
this service outside the United States.

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                         *** Installation ***

If you haven't already, copy the PCIM15.EXE file to its own blank floppy
(if you don't have a hard disk) or to its own subdirectory.  The
subdirectory name is not important, name it whatever you want.  IMAGES
works nice.

Move to the subdirectory, or floppy, where you copied PCIM15.EXE.
Extract the PC-Image files by entering "PCIMAGES" at the DOS prompt.
Follow the instructions.


                        *** Fred and Wilma ***

PC-Images consists of two important programs: Fred and Wilma.  Fred takes
all the pictures and is responsible for displaying the Carousels.  Wilma
puts the pictures together into Carousels, and determines what Carousels
Fred gets to display.  Lets look at Fred and Wilma a little more
carefully.

***  FRED.COM  ***

Fred is a memory resident program.  That means that when you run him he
stays hidden in memory until you need him.  He takes up about 8K of
memory.  He basically has two functions: he takes the pictures and he
displays the Carousels.

Getting Fred into memory:

1.  Move to the disk or subdirectory where he lives.
2.  Enter "fred" at the DOS prompt

That's it.

If you have a hard disk, you can have Fred loaded automatically when your
computer boots.  Assuming Fred lives in the IMAGE subdirectory you would
add these commands to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file:

CD IMAGE
FRED
CD \

It's important that you move to the subdirectory where Fred lives before
entering "fred" at the DOS prompt.  DON'T put Fred's subdirectory in the
PATH statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, and DON'T activate Fred from
another subdirectory by entering his full pathname (allowed in DOS 3.0
and later).

ALWAYS MOVE TO FRED'S SUBDIRECTORY BEFORE LOADING HIM INTO MEMORY.

Taking a picture:

Once you've loaded Fred into memory, then all you do to take a picture of
the screen is to press the Capture "hot key".  By default, this is Ctrl-
C.  In other words, when you want to take a picture of your screen, press
the Ctrl key and the C key at the same time.  Wilma lets you change this
"hot key" if you want, but we'll get around to that later.

Some programs don't like anyone interfering with their operation so they
take deliberate steps to keep TSRs (like Fred) from being activated.  If
you can't get Fred to take a picture within a certain program (games seem
the most prevelant examples) then there is an alternate way to instruct
Fred to capture a picture.  You press the left shift key, and while
holding it down you press the right shift key.  This is called the
"alternate capture hot key".

This alternate method comes at a price.  Sidekick (registered trademark
of Borland International) uses this same sequence to activate.  Some
other programs may as well.  For this reason you should only use the
alternate method when you absolutely have to.  And make sure SideKick
isn't loaded.  Later on we'll discuss how you use Wilma to tell Fred
whether to act upon or ignore the alternate method.  By default Fred
ignores the alternate hot key so as not to interfere with SideKick.

Displaying a Carousel:

Fred has a variety of ways he can display your Carousels, but in the
manner of things, Wilma dictates most of what Fred does.  She tells him
what Carousel to use as the "screen-saver" and which to use as the "DOS-
filler" and which one he is to display when you press the display "hot
key".  Catch that?  You can have Fred display a carousel at most any
time, even within other programs just by pressing the display "hot key",
Ctrl-D by default.  In other words, when you want to display your
Carousel, just press the Ctrl key and the D key at the same time.  Your
Carousel will "pop-up" and continue running until you press a key.  It
then disappears and restores your screen as tho nothing had happened.
Fred's a pretty sneaky guy.

When a carousel is being displayed you have four options:

- You can sit and watch it run
- You can press PgDn to immediately move to the next picture
- You can press the "End" key to freeze the current picture
- Or press any other key to return to your original application.

Exercise:  Let's have Fred take some pictures.

1.  Go to the subdirectory or disk where Fred and Wilma live.
2.  Enter "FRED" at the DOS prompt
3.  Go around and take a few pictures by pressing Ctrl-C.  These
    pictures don't have to be anything interesting, they could just
    be of the DOS prompt if you want.  We're just using them to
    become familiar with the program.  You can delete them later.


***  WILMA.COM  ***

In the manner of things, Wilma is quite a bit more complicated than Fred,
but unlike the manner of things, our Wilma is easily understood.

Wilma essentially does 3 things:

    *  She lets you group your pictures into Carousels
    *  Determines what Carousels (if any) Fred uses for the "DOS-filler",
       "screen-saver", manual display, and stand alone briefings.
    *  She lets you change Fred's Capture and Display "hot-keys".

Let's give Wilma a try.

    1.  Go to the subdirectory or floppy where Fred and Wilma live.
    2.  Enter "Wilma" at the DOS prompt.

Look at the screen.  There are five separate areas.  You move to a
specific area by pressing the function key associated with that area, or
clicking in that area with a mouse.  We will refer to each area by the
function key you press to get there.  For example the list of pictures
will be the F3 area, the list of Carousels is the F1 area, the pictures
that make up the selected Carousel are the F2 area.

Each area has its own set of commands.  These are displayed in the upper
left of the screen.  To select a particular function click on it with the
mouse or press the hi-lighted key associated with the function.  This is
all better understood by an example.

    Note:  The bottom line of the screen often provides helpful
    explanations of what's going on.  Keep your eyes on it as we go
    through these instructions.  Much of what we say here will be
    summarized in this "help" area.

Go to the F3 area (press the F3 function key).  A hi-lite bar will appear
on one of the picture names.  Yes, these are the pictures you just
captured.  They start at 0001 and can go up to 9999.  You'll probably
want to rename them to something that makes more sense.  So let's do it.

Notice the menu in the upper left of the screen.  You have four options:

    *  Press S to select this picture.  In other words, if you want to
       add this picture to the Carousel, press S for Select.
    *  Press the Delete key to delete the hi-lited picture.
    *  Press R to Rename the hi-lited picture.
    *  Press V to View the hi-lited picture.

Press V to view the picture.  Hopefully the hi-lighted picture will be
displayed.  Press any key to get back to the main program.  Now press R
to rename the picture to something that has some relevance.  Easy huh?

Let's create a Carousel, shall we?  Select several pictures from your
picture list.  (Hi-lite the desired picture, then press S for Select).
When you select a picture it's added to the bottom of the list of
pictures in the F2 area.  As it says, F2 is the list of the pictures in
the selected Carousel.  After you've selected your pictures, move on over
to the F2 area (by pressing F2).

Notice the new menu in the upper left of the screen.  You can press:

    *  R to Remove the hi-lited picture from the list.  This doesn't
       delete the picture, it just removes it from the Carousel list.
    *  V to View the hi-lited picture
    *  You can change the ordering of the pictures by using PgUp and
       PgDn.  For example, to move a particular picture up the list you
       first hi-lite it and then press the PgUp key.  To move it down the
       list, hi-lite it and press the PgDn key.  With a mouse, you just
       "drag" the picture up or down the list by keeping the left button
       depressed while you move the mouse.  Do this for a while until you
       get a feel for it.

Once you've got the pictures you want, in the order you want, then it's
time to "Preview" your Carousel.  Notice in the upper right hand corner
that Previewing is associated with F6.  Previewing your Carousel
basically serves two purposes, it lets you see the pictures in your
Carousel and it lets you set the delay between each picture.

    Note:  F6 and F7 have drop down menus.  You make your selection by
    either pressing the first letter of the desired option, hi-liting the
    desired option and pressing Return, or by clicking on the desired
    option with a mouse.  You can escape these menus by pressing the
    Escape key, or clicking on the F6 or F7.

When you press F6 you'll be given these options:

Touch Change        This changes the pictures when you press any key on
the keyboard.  When you're done looking at one picture, press any key and
the next picture will appear.  This option doesn't set the picture delay,
it just lets you see what pictures are in your Carousel.

As Is               This displays the carousel just as it will be
displayed by Fred except that often times Fred will make the transition
between pictures smoother.

Default Delay       This sets the timing between pictures to the default
delay amount.  We'll talk about how to set this default delay value when
we talk about the F4 area.

Save Delay          This is the same as "Touch Change" except that the
delay between pictures is actually recorded in the Carousel, so that it
will run just as you control it here.  In other words the Fred will
replay the carousel exactly as you preview it here.

Lets try it.  Let's say you want to set the delay between all your
pictures to the default delay value.  Press D, for Default Delay.  Each
of the pictures in your Carousel will be displayed with a 10 second delay
between each.  When you've finished, you'll be asked to give your new
Carousel a name.  After that you'll be returned to the main screen.

Let's see how things came out.  First, notice your Carousel has been
added to the list of Carousels in F1.  The pictures in your Carousel are
listed in F2 and an asterisk appears next to the name of your Carousel in
F1, indicating it is the selected Carousel.  Press F6 to Preview your
Carousel.  Press A (for As Is) to see how things came out.

Now let's take a look at the menu options in F1.  Press F1.  A menu
appears that lets you press R to Rename the selected Carousel, or press
the Delete key to delete the selected Carousel.

Okay, we've made a Carousel.  We've previewed it and we're happy with it.
How do we tell Fred that this is the one we want to use as a "screen-
saver", or as "DOS filler".  Pressing F7 lets you set the "DOS filler",
"screen-saver", or stand alone "Briefing" to the selected Carousel.  In
other words, to set the "screen-saver" to a particular Carousel you would:

    *  Goto F1 and hi-lite the desired Carousel.
    *  Press F7 to bring forth the "Set" menu
    *  Press S (for "Screen-saver") to "Set" the "screen-saver" to the hi-
       lited Carousel.

There are several things to remember:

1.  When you use Fred to manually "pop-up" a Carousel (by pressing Ctrl-D)
    he uses the "screen-saver" Carousel.  In other words, pressing Ctrl-D,
    while using Fred, just forces the activation of the "screen-saver".

2.  The "Briefing" option refers to the stand alone Carousel we discussed
    earlier.  This creaes a program that displays your Carousel without
    the end user having to use Fred or Wilma.

3.  The "DOS filler" option displays the first picture of your Carousel
    whenever a program ends, rather than the blank DOS screen.

                  *** Built in EGA color editor ***

If you capture an image in one of the EGA graphics modes, it's possible
the colors of the picture won't be right (this all gets explained in the
"Problems?" section).  That's why we built an EGA color editor into
Wilma.  To activate the editor press any of the cursor keys while viewing
the picture.  Five lines of different colors will appear at the top of
the screen.  Most of the time each square will be a different color,
however, in some cases there will be duplicates.  Your picture can only
display 16 of the colors shown.  The last row of colors is the current
defined "palette", those colors your picture is currently using.

To change a color you use the cursor keys to move the letter "S" to the
square of the desired color and then press S (for Select) to select that
color.  The letter P then appears in the first box on the last row.  Use
the cursor keys to move the P into the box of the color you want to
replace and press P (for Put).  The old color will be changed to the new.

For those of you familiar with the EGA you know that it is supposed to
only display 16 colors at one time.  We have to do a little magic to get
it to display all 64 colors at once.  Unfortunately it's a very inexact
science and depends greatly on the timing of your computer.  As a result,
the color rows on your machine may not line up with where the P or S is
placed.  You can adjust this by pressing the PgUp and PgDn keys.  Give it
a try.  Remember the fifth row of colors should be the row where the "P"
appears.

Once you've changed the palette (the last row of colors) to the way you
want, then press the Space Bar.  The changes will then be recorded as
part of the picture.  If you don't want to save the changes then press
"Esc"ape to exit.

                        ***  Configuration  ***

F4 and F5 lets you configure a variety of items associated with PC-Images.

Let's look at the items in F4 first:

Picture Delay:   This is the default delay we talked about earlier, if
you select "Default Delay" for your Carousel, this value is the length of
time each picture will be displayed.  Press the right cursor key to
increase the value (notice the menu in the upper left corner) or press
the left arrow key to decrease the value.  This only affects the delay
between pictures of newly created or changed Carousels.  Established
Carousels are not affected. If you want to change the default delay in an
established Carousel, you must select it using F1, use F6 to preview it
and then select Default Delay.

Activation Time:  This is the period of keyboard and screen inactivity
that occurs before the "screen-saver" Carousel pops-up.  Once again, use
the right cursor key to increase the value, the left cursor to decrease
it.  Setting the Activation time to zero deactivates the "screen-saver"
feature.

Display type:   All this does is tailor the list of pictures to include
only those that work on the selected display adapter.  Although it
defaults to the type of display you're using, you can select any of the
others as well.  This is useful if you're making a Carousel for someone
who has a different display adapter than you and you want to make sure
the pictures you select will display on their machine.

The last item in F4 configures Wilma to display in monochrome or in color.
This just affects Wilma, not any of the pictures or carousels.

The F5 areas:

Flicker?   If, when you select this function, your screen begins to
flicker then select yes (by pressing the right cursor key until "Yes" is
highlighted).  If there is no flicker then hi-lite "No".

DOS filler?  This lets you decide whether you want Fred to exercise the
"DOS filler" feature.  In other words, do you want Fred to display the
first picture of your carousel every time a program ends?  Select your
answer by using the right or left cursor keys.  Remember, to get the
DOS filler option to work you must not only select it here but you
also must use F1 and F7 to select and save the carousel to be used.

The last two items in F5 let you change the "hot keys" Fred uses for
capturing pictures, and for displaying Carousels.  Follow the menu options
displayed at the upper left of the screen.

Remember when we talked about the "alternate capture hot key"?  An
asterisk preceding the Capture HK value indicates Fred will respond to
this alternate method of capturing an image.  No asterisk indicates Fred
will ignore the alternate hot key method.  To change whether the
alternate method is used or not you first change the Capture Hot Key.
You don't really have to change it, just go through the process.  You'll
then be asked if you want Fred to act upon the alternate hot key.  Press
Y for yes, N for no.

** MS Windows - use the alternate capture key to capture Windows images.

If Fred is loaded in memory when you make these changes you'll have to
exit Wilma, re-boot, and reload Fred in order to notice the changes.

That's about covers it.  Wasn't that tough now, was it?  When you're done
with Wilma you press F10 to Quit.

               *** Removing Fred from memory ***

You can remove Fred from memory by entering "fred/u" at the DOS prompt.
However, remember that you must remove TSR's in the opposite order in
which they were loaded.  If you don't, Fred may not be able to remove
himself, or your computer could lock up requiring you to re-boot.

****  Instructions for creating and using stand-alone "Briefings"  ****

To create a stand-alone "Briefing":

*  Use Wilma to create a carousel of the slides you want include in your
   briefing.

*  Preview your carousel and set the delay between each picture using F6.

*  Use F7 to save the carousel as a Briefing.  Wilma will then create a
   subdirectory called "BRIEF" and copy all the files needed for the
   briefing into the subdirectory.  If there are already files for
   another briefing in there, they will be erased.

*  When you want to give someone a copy of your briefing then copy all
   the files in the "BRIEF" subdirectory over to another disk and give it
   to them.

To run a stand-alone "Briefing":

*  Move to the "BRIEF" subdirectory, or the floppy where the "BRIEF"
   files have been copied.

*  Enter "BRIEF" at the DOS prompt.

The following keys are active while viewing a Briefing:

   *  Press Escape to quit
   *  Press PgUp to go to the previous slide
   *  Press PgDn to go to the next slide
   *  Press Home to go to the start of the briefing
   *  Press End to pause.  Press any other key to resume.

If you don't press any keys the briefing will continue to run (using the
delays you established with Wilma) until you press the Escape key.

                      *** Problems? ***

"When I pop-up a Carousel, it takes a while for the first picture to be
displayed"  That's because Fred captures the images on the screen before
display the Carousel.  How long the wait is depends on much memory the
current screen display uses, how fast your machine is and how fast your
disk drive is.

"Fred didn't accurately capture an image"   If you have an EGA, Fred had
trouble because many of the registers that dictate how your computer
displays images are Write Only registers.  This means Fred can't read the
values of these registers.  Usually this isn't a problem because there
are established video modes most programs adhere to.  But some programs
go off and re-program the video without telling anyone what they're
doing.  In these cases Fred isn't going to accurately capture the image,
whether you have an EGA or a VGA.  He just doesn't have enough
information available to know what's going on.  He'll do the best he can
with the info available, it just may not be enough.

One of the most obvious examples of this on the EGA is in the way colors
are displayed.  The registers that dictate which colors get displayed are
write only.  If the colors are different than standard then Fred has no
way of knowing what the colors are.  That's why we put an EGA color
editor in Wilma, to let you correct the colors.

Another example.  Several programs, including GIF viewers and others, let
you horizontally pan across a picture.  To do this they re-program the
way the video accesses its memory.  Unfortunately there is no way we can
accurately determine what they've done.  If you run into this problem you
might want to check and see if the host program can re-size the picture
to fit within the screen limits.  Many do.

Fred supports all the "standard" (I use that term loosely) super-VGA
modes, however, most super-VGA cards have other unique modes they can
also generate.  For compatibility reasons, Fred only recognizes the
"standard" modes.  The others are ignored.

"After Fred displayed my Carousel the screen wasn't restored correctly."
When Fred displays a carousel, he has to capture the image on the screen
before he displays the carousel.  Therefore, the situations we just
discussed about the difficulties of capturing images comes into play here
too.  Sometimes there just isn't enough information available for Fred to
restore the screen accurately.  That's the bad news.  The good news is
that in these situations the only thing that gets messed up is the screen
image.  All your program data is intact, and the program will continue to
run as though nothing had happened.  Therefore, if Fred displays a
carousel, but afterward the screen isn't returned normally, your program
will still work correctly.  Nothing has been harmed.  What you want to do
is instruct your program to do something that will regenerate the screen.
Pressing PgUp or PgDn may help, depending on the application you're in.

The whole idea of a TSR is that it should pop-up and exit without
interfering with the program that's running when it pops-up.  It
distresses me that Fred sometimes doesn't have enough information to
restore the screen exactly as he found it.  But unfortunately it's the
nature of the beast.  The good news is that this situation may never
happen to you.  In most cases you'll never encounter this problem.
However, if it does happen, remember that even though the screen may look
a mess, your program data, and screen data, are intact.  The only thing
that's changed is the way the screen data is being displayed.  If you can
get your program to regenerate the screen then things will be fine.

Remember too, you don't have to use Fred to display your Carousels.  You
can use Wilma, or create stand-alone "briefing" carousels.  Neither of
these methods has the "capture" problem since they don't have to restore
any screens when they're done.  In fact, if you're using a multi-tasker
like Windows, GEM, or DesqView, I recommend using stand-alone briefings
instead of Fred to display your Carousels.  Just run the stand-alone
briefing as a separate application.

"Some of my pictures aren't the same color as they were when Fred took
the picture."  You've got an EGA.  As we mentioned before, Fred can't
read the EGA palettes directly.  If a program changes the palettes (some
do) and they don't update the data area in the BIOS (most don't) then we
have no way of knowing what the palette values are, so we use the default
values.  Use the built-in EGA color editor in Wilma to adjust the colors.

"Some of the fonts in my text screens aren't the same as they were when
Fred took the picture"  Some display adapters let you change the fonts
used in text modes.  We use the default fonts used by the BIOS.  It should
be noted that often times programs that use a variety of fonts, use
graphic modes and not text modes.  PC-Images works fine in most of these
cases.

"Sometimes when my Carousel runs, the pictures "pop-up" quickly and other
times it takes it bit longer.  Why the difference?"  When Fred decides to
display a Carousel he asks your computer for enough memory to store the
biggest picture in memory.  If he gets the memory he asks for, then while
one picture is being displayed, he loads the other into memory.  When it
comes time for the new picture he quickly moves it over, and then loads
the next picture into memory.  This is pretty fast.  On the other hand, if
the memory isn't available he is forced to read the new picture in
directly from disk.  Disk reads are a whole lot slower than memory moves.
Unfortunately DOS won't give us any memory when it's just sitting there
flashing its stupid cursor, so if you "pop-up" a Carousel while at the DOS
prompt, the slower method of display is used.

"Sometimes I get this annoying flash between pictures."  Some display
adapters flash when they change modes.  There's not anything I know of
that can change this.  Fred does his best to eliminate mode changes, but
you can't always avoid it.

"Sometimes, especially during games, the screen-saver function activates
a lot sooner that it should"  Some programs, mostly games, reprogram how
fast the clock ticks.  This will directly affect how fast the "screen-
saver" pops up.  You should use Wilma to set the Activation time to 0 in
order to disable the screen-saver function when using these programs.

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                  ***  Where do we go from here... ***

I may (could use input here) add the capability to add text to your
pictures.  It would probably be real basic, and consist only of one size
and type of font.  More than likely, it would just let you add a couple
of lines of text to the bottom of your pictures using the default BIOS
display character functions.  Nothing fancy.  Input?

Someday, I'd like to be able to attach digital voice and/or sound to your
pictures.  This would be a ways down the road, but it's something I'm
definitely looking at.  If you know of any good text to speech conversion
programs that will run on an unmodified PC, I'd sure like to hear about
them.

Here are some things I have NO plans to incorporate.  I don't like
reinventing the wheel any more than I have too.  There are plenty of good
programs out there that perform these functions admirably:

Paint program.  If you want to modify your pictures (other than adjusting
the EGA palettes as discussed earlier), do it using a paint program prior
to having Fred take a picture of it.

Picture translators.  If you have pictures coded in any of the many and
varied graphics formats that you want to display, then find a program
that will translate that format into a screen image, and then have Fred
take a picture.  Likewise, if you'd like to change a PC-Images picture to
one of the graphics formats then use one of the multitude of screen
grabber programs to do so.  At this time I have no intention of making a
translation program to translate these pictures into a format PC-Images
can use.  And vice versa.

Clip-Art.  If you want to take some part of a PC-Images picture and put it
into your desktop publishing programs, then use a program designed to do
that, cause we ain't gonna.

Mono Display Adapter.  I can't see any reason at all to support the MDA as
it's text only, making it a rather boring display adapter for this sort of
thing.  However, if I get enough flack, I may expand PC-Images to support
the Hercules Monochrome Graphic Cards.  I'd rather not.

If you have any suggestions, jot them down and send them to us.  Although
we can't respond to your letters, we do appreciate all input, and we
seriously evaluate every suggestion we receive.

Thank you for your time and interest.  I hope Fred and Wilma make your
computing more interesting.  Have Fun!