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GRAPHIC WORKSHOP 5.0
__________________________________________________________________
If you like this program, please do one of the following:
Go down to your local bookstore and buy a copy of "Coven: A
Novel", by Steven William Rimmer, published by Ballantine
Books. Read the book and tell your friends about it if you
like it. Send us some comments about the book or a photocopy
of the cover and we'll consider you a registered user of this
program.
If your local bookstore doesn't have Coven, ask them to order
it for you.
Alternately, send us $35.00, the normal user fee for this
software. (The book is $3.95 or $5.50 in Canada: considerably
cheaper than cash.)
Printed documentation for Graphic Workshop is available to
registered users for $10.00 extra.
Registered users of this software are entitled to phone
support, notification of upgrades and good karma. When you
register Graphic Workshop we'll send you a copy of the latest
version, as well as several other graphic related programs we
do. Please tell us the version number of your copy of Graphic
Workshop when you register. Our address can be found at the
end of this file.
NOTE: If you're searching for Coven and having trouble finding
it, you can mail order it from the following book store:
Christies of Cookstown, P.O. Box 392, Cookstown, Ontario L0L 1L0,
Canada, (705) 458-1562. The cost is $7.00, which includes
the postage. The author would like to thank everyone who's thus
far chased it down (or tried).
NOTE: German users of Graphic Workshop should contact our German
distributor, PD-SERVICE-LAGE, Postfach 1743, D-4937 Lage, West
Germany. A German language version of the package is available
from them as well.
__________________________________________________________________
----> NEW: LPT1, LPT2 and LPT3 printer support.
Colour TIFF support
Pictor/PC Paint support
Windows 3 BMP support
Image Scaling
Windows 3 PIF and icon
TIFF and LBM details
Grey scale TIFF support.
WordPerfect Graphic file support.
Microsoft Paint support.
VGA palette adjustment.
Driver update: Please see DRIVERS.DOC.
Dot Matrix Printer support: Also see DRIVERS.DOC.
Image rotation and flipping.
IFF/LBM/CE support.
Non-dither halftoning
Welcome to Graphic Workshop...
WHAT IT IS
__________
Graphic Workshop is a program for working with computer graphic
files. It will handle most of the popular formats:
- MacPaint files
- PC Paintbrush files with up to 256 colours
- GEM/IMG files of the sort used by Ventura Publisher
- GIF files of any size and up to 256 colours
- TIFF files (with some restrictions)
- EPS files... encapsulated PostScript... for some operations
- WordPerfect graphic (WPG) files.
- Microsoft Windows Paint (MSP) files.
- IFF/LBM/CE files (from Deluxe Paint, among others)
- BMP files (as found in Windows 3)
- Pictor / PC Paint (PIC) files... also used by Grasp.
Graphic workshop is a simple, menu driven environment which will
let you perform the following operations on the aforementioned
files.
- View them.
- Convert between any two formats (with a few restrictions).
- Print them to any LaserJet Plus compatible or PostScript laser
and many dot matrix printers.
- Dither the colour ones to black and white.
- Reverse the monochrome ones black for white.
- Rotate and flip them.
- Scale them
Using Graphic Workshop, you can have your image files in the formats
that your software wants to use them in, all without keeping
track of numerous funky utilities. In addition, using the
halftoning and dithering facilities of Graphic Workshop, you can
convert full colour digitized photographs... most notably GIF
files... for use as really excellent black and white clip art,
suitable for inclusion in your documents.
Graphic Workshop will handle image files of any size. It will use
extended or expanded memory if you have some, and disk space if
you don't. It has a fast and easily understood user interface.
Hopefully, it lacks even the merest vestiges of bugs... a likely
story, but we hope so.
Graphic Workshop will drive all of the popular display cards. At
present, it will support the following.
- CGA card (Ugh!)
- Hercules card
- EGA card
- VGA card
- Paradise Plus card
- Dell super VGA card (which is actually a Paradise card)
- ATI VGA Wonder card or ATI VGA Edge
- Headland Video 7
- Trident
- Hercules Graphic Station card
As it comes out of the box... or out of the ZIP... Graphic
Workshop is configured like this. If you want to change some of
these parameters, see the installation section at the end of this
file.
- Attempts to autodetect the display card type
- Uses expanded memory
- Uses colour text
- Prints titles on its hard copy
- Uses the following file name extensions:
- MAC: MacPaint files
- IMG: GEM/IMG files
- PCX: PC Paintbrush files
- GIF: GIF files
- TIF: TIFF files
- EPS: EPS files
- WPG: WordPerfect graphic files
- MSP: Microsoft Windows Paint files.
- LBM: IFF files (Deluxe Paint and others)
- BMP: BMP files (Windows 3)
- PIC: Pictor / PC Paint (also Grasp) files.
FILE FORMATS
____________
A NOTE ABOUT MEMORY AND FILE FORMATS: One of the design criteria
of Graphic Workshop is that it should have enough memory left
over on a 640 kilobyte PC to be able to unpack a 640 by 480
pixel, 256 colour file without having to resort to using extra
memory, which would slow it down. This requires a minimum of 300
kilobytes plus a bit for various internal things. To achieve
this, the size of the program itself has to remain at a
reasonable degree of hugeness. This is why, for example, the
installation functions, GWSINSTL.EXE, is separate from the main
program.
The lesser used functions of Graphic Workshop, dithering,
scaling, halftoning and image transformation, have been
implemented for the GIF file format only in order to keep the
code size down. This is a bit of an inconvenience, as you will
have to convert files in other formats to GIF to use these
facilities with them, and then probably convert the results back
to the format your files started off in. However, not
implementing these features for all the formats supported by
Graphic Workshop reduced the code size of the program by
something over a hundred kilobytes by our estimates. The result
is a much faster program at the expense of a bit of
inconvenience.
A long time ago someone decided that 640 kilobytes was
more memory than anyone could possibly want. Someone should find
the person responsible and paint something easily recognizable
on his bald head, such that the rest of us will know where to
throw things.
MacPaint files
These can come in two flavours. The most common one is straight
ported MacPaint files, that is, files having the "MacBinary"
header. The other is "headerless" files, these being the ones
used with PFS:First Publisher. Graphic Workshop reads both types,
but if you convert a file to MacPaint format you can select which
of these two variations on the format you want to use.
Files converted to the MacPaint format from other formats
will be cropped or padded out as necessary to fit in the MacPaint
format's 576 by 720 format. Only monochrome files can be
converted to MacPaint files, since MacPaint in a monochrome-only
format.
GEM/IMG files
There are actually quite a few variations on IMG files. Only the
monochrome ones are currently supported by Graphic Workshop.
This is the format used by Ventura for its monochrome image file
format. Any size monochrome image can be converted to this
format.
PCX files
These are the files used to hold images for Z-Soft's PC
Paintbrush package. These can range from monochrome to 256-colour
images. All the various formats are supported by Graphic
Workshop. Note, however, that Graphic Workshop will allow you to
create 256-colour PCX files from GIF files which may be too large
to work with using the current version of PC-Paintbrush.
GIF files
These can range from monochrome to 256-colour images in any size
you can find 'em.
TIFF files
The TIFF options in Graphic Workshop can get a bit involved. The
TIFF format offers lots of options to make it applicable to a
wide variety of applications... which entails a certain amount of
confusion, as well. Registered users of Graphic Workshop are
welcome to contact us for help in unraveling the TIFF options if
needs be.
Graphic workshop supports monochrome, colour and grey
scale TIFF files. Grey scale TIFF files can be created by
converting any colour format into TIFF with Graphic Workshop set
up to produce grey scale TIFF files, either through GWSINSTL or
by using the /TCG switch. These import into desktop publishing
packages such as Ventura for sharp looking PostScript halftones.
Note that Ventura will read grey scale TIFF files
correctly. It seems to invert colour TIFF files.
Colour TIFF files are useful in Corel Draw, among other
places. Corel Draw 2.0 will import colour TIFF files for
inclusion in CDR graphics. This is preferable to importing colour
PCX files, as the size of a TIFF file in Corel Draw is preserved.
Some applications have trouble reading grey scale TIFF
files which have been compressed. Others read 'em fine. For this
reason, Graphic Workshop defaults to creating compressed grey
scale TIFF files but you can tell it not to compress them if
you're sure whatever you'll be importing them into will read
them. You can set the grey scale TIFF compression in GWSINSTL or
by using the command line switches /TGN for no compression and
/TGC for run length compression.
Note that due to the wide variations among the programs
which produce TIFF files, Graphic Workshop would be lying rather
badly if it claimed to be able to read all TIFF files.
Specifically, it does not read Huffman or LZW compressed TIFF
files as yet, as we haven't devised code to do this in a
reasonable amount of space. Colour TIFF files are another area in
which Graphic Workshop only handles files from some sources.
In most cases you will want to create TIFF files using
the Intel number format. This is what Graphic Workshop defaults
to using, and you can safely ignore this setting most of the
time. If you need Motorola format TIFF files... for example, if
you intend to port them to a 68000 based system... you can enable
Motorola format numbers in the installer or by using the /TFM
command line switch.
When you are creating TIFF files which will be used as
desktop publishing art or in other situations wherein they'll be
printed to a PostScript printer, you should create them with
greyscale expansion enabled. If they will be displayed on a
monitor or edited in a paint program, you may want to create them
with greyscale expansion disabled. You can set the greyscale
expansion on or off permanently using GWSINSTL. The command line
switches /TXP and /TXN will set it temporarily when you run GWS.
More on colour TIFF: Whether you create colour or grey scale
TIFF files will be largely dependant on the application you want
your TIFF files to be read by. Here are a few guidelines:
- If you want to import TIFF files into Ventura or
PageMaker so they'll output as halftones to a
PostScript printer, use grey scale TIFF files with grey
scale expansion enabled.
- If you want to import colour TIFF files into Corel Draw
to print to a colour output device, use colour TIFF
files... the grey scale expansion doesn't matter.
- If you want to import colour TIFF files into Corel Draw
to print to a monochrome output device, use grey scale
TIFF files with the grey scale expansion enabled.
- If you want to import grey scale TIFF files into a
paint or image editing package, such as ImageIn, use
grey scale TIFF files with the grey scale
expansion disabled.
Note also that Graphic Workshop packs TIFF files with an
eye to maximum unpacking speed, rather than for optimum
compression. As such, pictures with between thirty-two and 256
colours will be promoted to 256 colours. Pictures with between
four and sixteen colours will be promoted to sixteen colours.
We have found a very small number of applications which
will read colour TIFF files, and hence have not had much
opportunity to test the colour TIFF facility of Graphic Workshop
with real world software. The TIFF files it works with are correct
according to the TIFF specifications... but this rarely means a
lot. We will be most grateful for any feedback in this area.
EPS files
These are encapsulated PostScript files, and are not strictly
speaking image files at all. Graphic Workshop treats them a bit
differently.
Many EPS files which are created with the intent of
importing them into a desktop publishing package include
bitmapped "preview" images to be used for positioning. If you
attempt to view an EPS file with Graphic Workshop, you will see
the preview image. If there is no preview image in the EPS file
you select, Graphic Workshop will tell you so.
Graphic Workshop will print EPS files to a PostScript
printer. It will also convert other graphic files into EPS files,
suitable for use with desktop publishing programs. If you convert
a colour graphic into an EPS file, the result will be a black and
white halftone when you print it... pretty slick, this.
In most cases, TIFF files will be more useful than EPS
files if you want to import halftoned graphics into a desktop
publishing chapters. Please note that programs such as Corel Draw
and Adobe Illustrator which can import some PostScript graphics
will not import Graphic Workshop EPS files, which have too much
hex data for these programs. You should use TIFF files instead.
WPG files
These are the native import graphic files for WordPerfect. These
files can contain both bitmaps and line art, or vector graphics.
Graphic Workshop can only deal with the bitmapped parts of them.
If you view, print or convert a WPG file containing both
bitmapped and vector elements, the vector elements will be
discarded.
WPG files which refuse to read with Graphic Workshop are
usually those which contain only vector elements and no bitmaps.
If you use the F4 function on a WPG file which does not read, the
comments field of the file information box will say "No bitmap"
if this is the case.
Graphic Workshop will deal with WPG files having one,
four or eight bits of colour information, that is, monochrome
files, sixteen colour files and 256-colour files. It doesn't work
with two bit files as these are exceedingly rare.
MSP files
These are the image files used by the paint program which comes
with Microsoft Windows. Don't confuse these with PCX files...
some versions of Windows came with a Windows implementation of PC
Paintbrush from ZSoft as well. The two programs... and the two
file formats... are not compatible. MSP files are monochrome
only.
IFF files
These started out on the Amiga. The IFF file standard is
extremely flexible, and allows all sorts of things besides images
to be stored in IFF files. IFF files are found on the PC having
been ported from Amiga systems. They are also created on the PC
by several applications such as Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint
package and Digital Vision's Computer Eyes video scanner board.
In the first case they are given the extension LBM. In the second
they are given the extension CE. The basic file structure is the
same, however.
Note that Deluxe Paint seems to be a bit particular about
the dimensions of the LBM files it will inhale... it likes them
to fit in standard sizes, and for this reason Graphic Workshop
pads them to fit in the next larger standard IFF screen format. A
picture 512 by 392, for example, would be inset into the upper
left corner of an area 640 by 400, which keeps Deluxe Paint
happy. Because the extra area is blank, and compresses down to
almost nothing, this does not increase the file size a great
deal.
Deluxe Paint is a bit of a problem in the way it deals
with IFF files, actually. This affects 256 colour files. Its
native format is a subclass of IFF called PBM, and compresses its
images as bytes. It's somewhat unique to Deluxe Paint, and
Electronic Arts won't tell anyone quite how it works. You can
actually work it out to a large degree, but every so often a file
created in this format in the way it seems like it should be done
refuses to load into Deluxe Paint.
The standard form for IFF image files is called ILBM,
compressing all images as planes. This is much slower, but it
means that files thus compressed will be readable by pretty well
all IFF readers... even if you port 'em back to the Amiga. This
is how Graphic Workshop creates IFF files. Unfortunately, there's
a problem with Deluxe Paint which will occasionally cause it to
stop reading one of these files part way through the image. This
happens to IFF files from sources other than Graphic Workshop, so
it's probably a bug in Deluxe Paint.
If you encounter an image which, when converted into an
IFF file will not read into Deluxe Paint, use the IFN command
line switch when you run Graphic Workshop. This will disable the
IFF compression. Uncompressed files read into Deluxe Paint with
no difficulty.
You can permanently set IFF compression off when you
install Graphic Workshop if you like.
BMP files
These are the files which are used as "wallpaper" under Windows
3. They can be created using the version of PC Paintbrush
supplied with Windows.
You can convert any monochrome or sixteen colour image
into a BMP file. Graphic Workshop does not support 256-colour BMP
files as yet.
BMP files use no image compression, as the intention
appears to be to make them really fast to load. Plan on your BMP
files being very big.
There is a very important aspect of colour BMP files
which you should bear in mind when you use this format. Windows
uses a fixed palette which PC paintbrush cannot go about
changing, as doing so would make the screen and boarder colours
change too. Thus, files converted into the BMP format have their
palettes altered to the standard BMP palette. The pixels in the
image are then remapped to represent the closest approximation of
their original colours afforded by the BMP palette.
This means that transferring an image to the BMP format
will generally result in some colour shifts. Once this is done,
you can't get the colours back the way they were unless you have
the original image file in some other format.
Note also that the colour approximation algorithm in
Graphic Workshop isn't precisely the same as the one in PC
Paintbrush, and it will occasionally produce slightly different
sets of colours than PC Paintbrush under Windows 3 would have.
It's also worth mentioning that as of this writing we've
been unable to get any official details from Microsoft on how BMP
files work. The BMP support in Graphic Workshop was written
entirely by debugging the files provided with Windows 3. As such,
there may be some holes in the BMP functions as they stand.
PC files
These should not be confused with Lotus 1-2-3 PIC drawing files.
PIC files are created by PC Paint (not PC Paintbrush) and
are used by Grasp, among other things. They come in many
flavours. Graphic Workshop has been tested with the most common
ones. In theory it should support them all, but that's only a
theory.
MEMORY REQUIREMENTS
___________________
Graphic Workshop will use whatever memory you have going. If you
ask it to do something which needs a large amount of memory, it
will try to use your normal DOS memory, which is fastest. If
there isn't enough DOS memory, it will use extra memory.
There are three sorts of "extra" memory which Graphic
Workshop can use, to wit, extended, expanded and virtual.
Extended memory is also called XMS memory, and is only available
on AT and 386 systems. Expanded memory, also called EMS or LIM
memory, is available if you have a LIM board and driver in your
machine. Virtual memory means using a big disk file and making
believe it's memory. Virtual memory is very slow compared to real
memory.
You must tell Graphic Workshop what to do about extra
memory when you install it. See the section on installation.
Graphic Workshop can run in restricted memory, such as
that which is found in a really old PC or when running "shelled
out" of another program. However, it can do nasty things when
it's really starved for memory. Some virtual memory operations
will not work in this condition, and if it's really stuck for
RAM... if there's only a few tens of kilobytes free... it may
manage to crash. Try not to run it when there's almost no room
left for it to store things. The help menu will tell you how much
memory is free.
PRINTERS
________
You can print to any sort of LaserJet Plus compatible printer
with one megabyte of memory or more or any sort of PostScript
printer. You can print to any dot matrix printer which is
supported by a Graphic Workshop external printer driver. These
are described in greater detail in DRIVERS.DOC. Note that if you
attempt to print PostScript data to a LaserJet or a dot matrix
printer you'll get reams of meaningless ASCII text.
Graphic Workshop allows you to print a picture in four
resolution modes to laser printers, ranging from 75 to 300 dots
per inch. This will determine the resulting size of your picture.
Each page of Graphic Workshop output can include any
combination of data about the picture on it you like. See the
installation section for more information about enabling this
feature.
The size and resolution of dot matrix printing is
determined by the driver being used.
Note that if you have a printer for which there is no
driver available, one of the Epson FX-80 drivers will probably
work, as most dot matrix printers support the Epson FX-80
standard. The print might not be as good as your printer can
manage, but it'll be better than a blank sheet of paper.
RUNNING GRAPHIC WORKSHOP
________________________
To run Graphic Workshop, type GWS at the DOS prompt. Depending on
your installation procedure, you may also want to type some
command line switches, as described in the installation section.
The main file screen will appear. Graphic Workshop always
shows you all the names of the image files it knows how to deal
with in the current directory, along with all the visible
subdirectory names, if any. If you are in a subdirectory, you
will also see a subdirectory entry which is two periods.
The cursor mover keys will move the file selector bar
around. If you move it to a directory entry... shown in dim
text... and hit Enter, you will move into that directory. If you
select the two period entry, you will move back up your directory
tree by one step.
If there are too many files in your current directory to
see all at once, Graphic Workshop will organize them into pages.
The PgUp and PgDn keys will step you through the pages.
If you place the selector bar on a file name and hit
Enter, Graphic Workshop will attempt to show you the file. It
will start by showing you a wait box, which has a bar graph in it
to show you the status of what you've asked Graphic Workshop to
do. When the picture is fully unpacked, Graphic Workshop will
switch to your display card's graphic mode and show you the
picture.
You can always abort an operation when the wait box is
visible by hitting the Esc key.
If the picture is larger than your screen, the cursor
keys will allow you to pan around it.
Esc will return you to the main screen.
Several things can go wrong here. If you have installed
Graphic Workshop for the wrong kind of display card, you might
see random characters rather than a picture. In this case, check
your installation.
If Graphic Workshop could not find enough memory to unpack
your picture into, it will abort the process and say so.
Finally, if your picture requires more colours than your
card can display, Graphic Workshop will tell you this. There is a
specific exception to this. Graphic Workshop will show you GIF
files having more than sixteen colours on a sixteen colour EGA
card by fudging the colours. Bear in mind that while you'll get
to see an approximation of the actual colours in the GIF file...
it will not be the real thing.
This does not work for 256 colour PCX files, just GIF
files. You must have a VGA card of some sort to see 256 colour
PCX files.
You can see how many colours a colour image has by using
the Get Info key, as discussed below.
Note that you cannot view grey scale TIFF files without a
VGA card.
In the VGA display mode... and in the super VGA modes
provided by external VGA drivers... you can make small
adjustments to the VGA colour palette while a picture is being
displayed. The 'r' and 'R' keys will increase and decrease the
amount of red in a picture, the 'g' and 'G' keys will adjust the
amount of green, the 'b' and 'B' keys will adjust the amount of
blue. The 'i' and 'I' keys will adjust the overall intensity of
the picture. The '=' key will return the picture to its normal
state. Note that these adjustments only affect the picture that
you're viewing... they do not alter the palette in the file on
your disk.
If you hear a beep while you're playing with these keys,
you've gone to the limit of whichever of the adjustments you're
using. Graphic Workshop will not allow you to adjust the palette
to the point where the picture would start looking weird.
Because Graphic Workshop will not allow you to actually
distort the colour balance of the palette, there will be some GIF
files which will not be adjustable using this feature.
One frequently encounters sixteen colour GIF files with
more colour resolution that an EGA card manage. While such files
can be displayed on an EGA card, the colours will be best guess
approximations. For this reason, sixteen colour GIF files are
displayed in VGA mode if you have an external screen driver
loaded. This does not apply to sixteen colour files in other
formats.
OTHER KEYS
__________
If you hit "?", you'll see a menu of the keys which control the
main file screen of Graphic Workshop. This box also tells you how
much free DOS memory is available.
The Esc key will allow you to quit Graphic Workshop and return to
DOS.
If you hit "T", the currently selected file name will be
"tagged". The "U" key will untag it. The batch operations
described below will work with multiple files if you have some of
them tagged. If you hit "C", all the tags will be cleared.
If you hit "L", Graphic Workshop will allow you to log in a new
disk drive.
If you hit "D", you will be prompted to delete the current file.
Note that this is not a batch command... it only works on one
file at a time.
If you hit "R", you can rename the current file. Note that it the
renamed file will have the same extension as the old one, no
matter what extension you give it.
If you hit F5, Graphic Workshop will shell out to the DOS prompt
if there's enough memory. If you do this, Graphic Workshop will
still be in memory. Type EXIT at the DOS prompt to return to it
right where you left off. If you change drives or subdirectories
while you have the DOS prompt active, Graphic Workshop will
restore the previous drive and subdirectory when you return to
it.
The F10 key will show you some information about Graphic Workshop
as well as your current display adapter and memory settings.
GRAPHIC FUNCTIONS
_________________
The graphic functions of Graphic Workshop are accessed through
the function keys. They may be used on individual files or in
batch mode. If no files are tagged, the operation you select will
take place using the file name the selector bar is currently on.
If one or more files are tagged, the operation will take place
on all the tagged files.
Hitting Esc will abort any operation.
F1 - Print
This function will print one or more files to the printer
of your choice. Hit it and a menu of printers and resolution
settings will pop up. As with all menus under Graphic Workshop,
hitting Esc will make it go away if you discover you've gotten to
it in error.
Colour files printed to a PostScript printer will be
halftoned. Colour files cannot be printed to a LaserJet or a dot
matrix printer directly... you can dither them to black and
white, though, as described in a moment.
Big files can take a long time to print... be patient.
All printing to laser printers takes place through the
current printer port, LPT1 by default. You can select a different
printer port through GWSINSTL or by using the command line
overrides LP1, LP2 and LP3. If you want to drive a serial
printer, use the DOS MODE command to redirect the output of
Graphic Workshop to a COM port. Printing to dot matrix printers
takes place through whatever port the driver was written to work
with.
One of the options in Graphic Workshop's installation
involves the default screen size for printing colour graphics to
PostScript printers. This can be set to anything you like for
special effects. However, the best results can usually be had by
allowing the PostScript printer to choose the optimum screen
setting.
Note that there's a potential memory problem involved in
printing to a dot matrix printer under Graphic Workshop. We've
never encountered it, but it could happen. In order to print to a
dot matrix printer through a PDR driver, Graphic Workshop has to
create a buffer which holds anywhere from eight to twenty-four
lines of your image, depending on how many pins your printer's
print head has. It also has to buffer the picture you're
printing, of course.
Now, it could happen that there's just enough memory to
buffer the picture but not enough to create the line buffer.
Graphic Workshop will refuse to print the picture under these
conditions.
This is a pretty unlikely occurrence. If you think it has
happened, you can easily check it. See how much free memory there
is by hitting a question mark, then open the F4 get info box. See
how much memory your picture needs to unpack into. Whipping out a
calculator, see how much memory is left over. Figure out how many
bytes a line of your picture takes to hold by dividing the
horizontal dimension by eight, rounding this number up if the
result isn't even. Multiply this number by the number of print
head pins in your printer... probably either eight or twenty-
four. If the result is bigger than the amount of free memory left
when your picture is loaded, you've encountered the
aforementioned condition.
Note that none of this applies if the help box tells you
there isn't enough memory to buffer your picture all by itself.
If this happens, Graphic Workshop will use extended, expanded or
virtual memory for your picture, leaving the DOS memory free for
a line buffer. We'll assume here that there's at least enough
memory free for a line buffer all by itself. Note that if you use
expanded memory, Graphic Workshop will need thirty-two kilobytes
of DOS memory to manage the expanded memory.
If you happen to encounter this condition, you can trick
Graphic Workshop into getting around it by forcing it to use
extended, expanded or virtual memory rather than DOS memory for
its picture buffer, thus freeing up the DOS memory for a line
buffer. Simply shell out to DOS and run a second copy of GWS.
Print from that. When you're done, quit the second copy and type
EXIT at the DOS prompt to get back to the first copy.
All this is a very unlikely situation, and one you'll
probably never run into.
F2 - Convert
You can convert a file of any format into a file of any
other format... with a few restrictions. The new file will have
the same name as the original but a new extension. Converting
PICTURE.MAC into an IMG file will create PICTURE.IMG. PICTURE.MAC
will not be touched.
As noted above, large images converted into MacPaint
files will be cropped to fit. Colour files cannot be converted
directly into monochrome-only formats, that is, to MacPaint,
Microsoft Paint or IMG.
Colour files converted to TIFF will be written as grey
scale files.
EPS files cannot be converted to any other format.
Any file can be converted into an EPS file. If you enable
the preview option during installation, the resulting EPS file
will have both the original image and a dithered preview image,
making it ideal for use with a desktop publishing package such as
Ventura. The results are stunning.
Note that Ventura will print an EPS file to a PostScript
printer. If you attempt to print a chapter with an EPS file in it
to a LaserJet, Ventura will print the preview image.
See the Ventura section below for more information about
using EPS files with Ventura.
Note that you can convert monochrome image files to EPS
files, but there's no good reason for doing so.
EPS files are huge, far larger than a compressed image
would be. Leave lots of disk space if you intend to use one. As
a rule of thumb, you can figure the size of a colour image packed
into an EPS file as being
width * depth * 2 plus a few hundred bytes
The width and depth can be worked out using the Get Info
function, below.
EPS files created by Graphic Workshop do not have
trailing showpage operators... ignore this remark if it doesn't
mean anything to you.
Note that you can batch convert any mixture of file types
using Graphic Workshop. Any files which are inappropriate for the
conversion you've requested will simply be ignored. The ongoing
status will appear at the bottom of the screen.
F3 - Dither/HT (Halftone)
Dithering is a sort of magical process by which colour
images can be converted into pretty excellent black and white
versions for reproduction on a monochrome screen or a black and
white laser printer. Graphic Workshop allows you to dither GIF
files down to monochrome IMG, PCX, MSP, WPG or TIFF files.
Dithering often works a lot better if you scale the
original image up. Graphic Workshop lets you dither with images
of anywhere from "size as" up to 500 percent expansion if you
have enough memory.
Aside from dithering to a file, you can dither to the
screen to see what your selection of dithering parameters will
look like.
Dithering is a fairly slow process, and the better the
dithering algorithm, the slower it gets. Big files and really
good dithering can take half an hour or more, although the
results are usually worth it.
At its best, dithering can look better than halftoning,
and a dithered file can be printed on both PostScript and
LaserJet printers.
If you have Graphic Workshop dither a file, it will
create a new file for you of the type selected and with "D_"
before the name. Thus PICTURE.GIF would be dithered to
D_PICTUR.IMG, for example. PICTURE.GIF would be left untouched.
If you want to dither a colour PCX file, you must first
convert it to a GIF file. Dithering only works on colour GIF
files.
The simplest... and fastest... form of dithering is a
Bayer dither. This does not produce great results, but it's
extremely quick. The EPS preview images created by Graphic
Workshop use Bayer dithering.
The remaining three dithering algorithms use what is
called "error diffusion". These produce really nice looking
dithers, but they're quite slow. The fastest... and least
attractive... is Floyd-Steinberg. The best... and by far the
slowest... is Stucki. The Burkes dither is somewhere in the
middle.
All three of these dithers come in two flavours, UD...
unidirectional... and BD... bidirectional. These options will
produce slightly different results.
You should plan to experiment with the dithering options
of Graphic Workshop a bit to see what it's capable of.
Dithering scans an image line by line, starting in the
upper left corner and working down to the lower right corner. For
this reason, you will find that if you rotate an image by ninety
degrees, dither it and then rotate the dithered version by a
further two hundred and seventy degrees, you'll get different
results than you would have had you dithered the original image.
The last two items in the dither menu are not really
dithering functions at all, but rather true halftones
They will produce sixteen and sixty-four grey level halftones
respectively from a colour image. They do this by approximating
the grey levels in dot sizes, just like newspaper halftones do.
The destination image will always have four or eight times the
dimensions of the source image. There is absolutely no advantage
to expanding images for halftoning, so the expansion menu will
not appear for sixteen and sixty-four level halftoning.
Halftones often look more realistic than dithers. The
drawback to using halftones is that the files can get enormous,
and even a sixty-four grey level halftone doesn't really handle
grey levels as well as an error diffused dither... although in
some cases it may look better.
F4 - Get Info
This box will show you some basic information about one
or more selected files. Among other things, it will tell you how
much memory the file needs to unpack into. You can use this
number to figure out whether the file in question will fit in
your available DOS memory or whether extra memory will be
required, as discussed previously. The amount of available DOS
memory is available by hitting the "?" key from within the main
screen.
The last field in this box displays the file comments if
there were any, or "No comments". File comments are, in fact,
Macintosh file names if they're present or, in some cases,
information about the internal structure of the file. You will
find Mac comments in some GIF files and many MacPaint files.
Some file formats actually contain a lot more information
than can be displayed in the normal Get Info box. TIFF files, for
example, can contain the name of the artist responsible for them,
the type of software used to create them and so on. You can this
sort of optional information for formats which support it by
using the "details" option of the F4 box when it's available. The
arrow keys will scroll you through the detail window. Details are
available, for example, if you get information about TIFF and IFF
files.
You may need some external assistance in fully
interpreting the details.
F6 - Reverse
This function will create a reversed version of any
monochrome image file. The new file will have the same name as
the original file, with "R_" appended to the front of it. Thus,
reversing PICTURE.MAC will leave you with R_PICTUR.MAC. This
function will ignore any files which are not monochrome.
F7 - Transform
This key will pop up a menu offering you five image
transformations. You can rotate an image in ninety degree
increments and you can flip it horizontally or vertically. These
functions work on images of any number of colours, but only if
the source images are in the GIF format. You'll have to convert
images from other formats to GIF if you want to use the
transformation functions on them.
Note that the ninety and two hundred and seventy degree
rotation functions will take a very long time if your images are
large and require the use of virtual memory... this assumes that
you lack extended or expanded memory. Them's the breaks.
Transformed images will be stored in files with "T_" in front
of the names. Thus PICTURE.GIF will become T_PICTUR.GIF after any
of the five transformations have been wrought upon it. If you
rotate it and then flip the rotated image, for example, it will
become T_T_PICT.GIF, and so on, with intermediate files along the
way.
F8 - Scale
This key will allow you to scale GIF files from twenty
five to five hundred percent. Once again, we've limited this
function to working with GIF files to keep the code size down. If
you wish to scale other types of files, you'll have to convert
them to GIF first.
Your original files will not be altered when you scale
them. New files with the prefix "S_" will be created. Thus,
PICTURE.GIF will produce S_PICTUR.GIF after scaling.
Scaling a picture can produce some really ugly results,
depending on what you scale. Bear in mind that scaling by
integral values... down to seventy five or fifty percent, up to
two hundred percent and so on... will produce less ugly results
than scaling by arbitrary values.
The scaling values you enter will be rounded to the
nearest lower integral value. Thus, 42.5 percent will really be
forty-two percent.
Scaling is fairly time consuming.
You should probably avoid scaling dithered monochrome
pictures down. Nothing terribly bad will happen, but for reasons
which will become obvious if you think about it, the results will
almost always be really ugly.
The maximum horizontal image dimension which Graphic
Workshop can deal with is 8192 pixels. Avoid scaling pictures to
something larger than this. This may not be a common problem... a
picture having the dimensions 8192 by 8192 pixels would require
sixty-seven megabytes of memory.
Note that the scaling percentage you enter determines the
size of the destination image relative to the source image, not
the actual percentage of scaling. Thus, entering 25 will produce
a destination image which is one quarter... twenty-five percent... of
the original image. Entering 200 will create a destination image
twice as big... two hundred percent of... the original. Entering
100 will produce a destination image identical to the source
image.
INSTALLATION
____________
Making permanent changes to the modifiable features of Graphic
Workshop involves using the installer, GWSINSTL.EXE. The
configuration of Graphic Workshop is handled by a separate
program in order to keep GWS.EXE as small as possible, leaving
lots of memory for putting graphics in.
Using the Installer
The GWSINSTL program actually modifies GWS.EXE. In order for it
to work, GWS.EXE and GWSINSTL.EXE must be in the same directory
and must be so named. Both programs must be of the same version.
Be aware that as it directly modifies GWS.EXE, there is the
outside chance that a bug in the installer might crop up and kill
GWS.EXE beyond repair. Make sure you have a virgin copy of
GWS.EXE somewhere before you use the installer.
Place GWSINSTL.EXE and GWS.EXE in the same directory and
type GWSINSTL. The installation screen will appear. It looks
something like this:
Screen colours: COLOUR
Memory type: VIRTUAL
Display type: EXTERNAL
Default printer: LASERJET - 150 DPI
PostScript Screen size: PRINTER'S DEFAULT
Default dither destination: IMG
Default dither type: FLOYD BIDIRECTIONAL
Default conversion type: IMG
Default expansion factor: SIZE AS
PostScript preview: ON
MacPaint file extension: MAC
GEM/IMG file extension: IMG
PCX file extension: PCX
GIF file extension: GIF
TIFF file extension: TIF
EPS file extension: EPS
Print filenames: ON
Print dates: OFF
Print image size: OFF
Print image colours: OFF
Print output resolution: OFF
Print EPS titles: ON
External driver path: GRAFDRV.DRV
Move the section bar to the option you want to change and hit
Enter to step through the available options. The PgUp and PgDn
keys will show you additional options. When you're all done, hit
F10 to save your changes or Esc to abort and return to DOS.
The file name extension fields allow you to type in new
extensions. Hit enter, change the field and hit enter again to
save the changes.
Installing in Windows 3
You can install Graphic Workshop in Windows 3 as a non-Windows
application. It gets along well with Windows. Use the PIF
provided, open a new application and fill in the blanks. You'll
probably have to use the Windows PIF editor to change things like
where your copy of GWS.EXE lives.
Use the Properties item of the program manager file menu
to change the default DOS icon initially assigned to Graphic
Workshop to GWS-1.ICO, provided with the software.
The Configurable Options
These are the things which you can change in Graphic Workshop.
These parameters can be changed permanently by using the
installer or temporarily by using the command line switches.
Having installed GWS.EXE for a particular set of options, you
might find it convenient to boot it up with one or more of these
switches to override the installed configuration for particular
circumstances, such as to use virtual memory for a particularly
large file when you know you won't have enough extended memory,
or to use a different PostScript screen size.
Memory:
Select EMS for expanded memory.
Select XMS for extended memory.
Select VIRTUAL to use a disk file if you have neither extended
nor expanded memory. Consult your system documentation to if
you're unsure about the memory situation of your machine. Note
that in order to use EMS or XMS memory, you will need the
appropriate driver installed in your machine, as provided with
your memory board. Also note that XMS memory will not work
properly if you have VDISK.SYS installed.
Display card:
If you have a fairly typical display adapter, select AUTODETECT.
If this doesn't work... if your card refuses to go into the
graphics mode you expect... select the specific card type you
have. If you have a VGA card and there's a driver available for
it, you can set this to EXTERNAL. See below for some additional
discussion of drivers. Otherwise, select the straight VGA setting.
Note that some ATI EGA Wonder cards will not go into
their Hercules graphics modes reliably under Graphic Workshop.
We're looking into this one.
Print options:
This controls the printing of information at the bottom of each
page of hard copy. You can enable none, some or all of these
items, as follows:
- Print the image file name.
- Print the date.
- Print the image dimensions.
- Print the number of colours in the original image.
- Print the resolution mode selected.
- Print the EPS title for EPS files only.
Preview:
You can enable or disable the creation of a preview image when
Graphic Workshop converts files to the EPS format.
Screen size:
You can select the screen size for printing colour images as
halftones to a PostScript printer. This does not effect
converting colour images to EPS files. Unless you particularly
want to create special effects, it's recommended that you leave
this at its default setting. Note that having printed one image
with a fixed size screen, all subsequent ones will print at that
size until you reset you PostScript printer or specify a new
screen size.
Command line switches
You can always see a complete list of these by typing GWS ? at the
DOS prompt.
/EXT - use extended memory
/EXP - use expanded memory
/VIR - use virtual memory
/CGA - use CGA card
/HER - use Hercules card
/EGA - use EGA card
/PRD - disable all print options
/S80 - set screen size to 80 lines
/S60 - set screen size to 60 lines
/S40 - set screen size to 40 lines
/S30 - set screen size to 30 lines
/S20 - set screen size to 20 lines
/S10 - set screen size to 10 lines
/SDF - set screen to printer default
/IFS - Force IFF files to standard sizes
/IFX - Allow IFF files to remain size as
/IFN - No compression on IFF files
/IFC - RL compression on IFF files
/PRE - enable EPS preview creation
/NOP - disable EPS preview creation
/PFN - enable printing filenames
/MBH - MacPaint MacBinary header on
/PDT - enable printing dates
/MBN - MacPaint MacBinary header off
/PPS - enable printing image size
/TCL - Create colour TIFF files
/PCL - enable printing # of colours
/TCG - Create grey TIFF files
/PRS - enable printing resolution
/TFI - Intel format TIFF files
/PET - enable printing EPS title
/TFM - Motorola format TIFF files
/DRV - load a graphics driver
/TXP - Expand TIFF grey scale
/PRX - load a printer driver
/TXN - Do not expand TIFF grey scale
/TGN - TIFF files no compression
/TGC - TIFF files RL compression
/LPn - Print to printer port n - n can be 1,2 or 3.
VENTURA PUBLISHER TRICKS
________________________
Graphic Workshop is great for getting images into Ventura
Publisher documents. Here are a few tips for getting the most out
of it.
Monochrome bitmapped images... anything other than EPS
files... should be converted into IMG files for use with Ventura.
Note that while Ventura will import colour PCX files with up to
16 colours, the results are rarely pretty. You'll do much better
to halftone or dither colour PCX files for use with Ventura.
Having poured an image into a frame, use the Sizing and
Scaling box in the Frames menu to select "By Scale Factors." Set
the scale width to the natural size of the image... as it
defaults to... or to some integral multiple of it. This will
eliminate distortion or plaiding of the image.
Using EPS files is a bit different if you want to get the
optimum image quality. (If you aren't too fussy, just pour 'em,
stretch 'em and see what happens.) In this case, you must load
the EPS file as line art... it's a PostScript file... and use the
"Fit in Frame" option of the Sizing and Scaling box. Set the
frame size initially to the natural size of the picture. If you are
working in inches, you can work this out by dividing the
dimensions of the image in pixels by 300.
If you have forgotten the dimensions of the original GIF
file you halftoned the picture from, use the DOS TYPE command to
look at the first few lines of your EPS file. You should see
something like this:
/width 640 def
/depth 480 def
These are the natural dimensions of the image in pixels.
The initial frame dimensions for this picture would be
2.13 by 1.60 inches.
Next, select "By Scale Factors" and "Distorted". Set the
scale dimensions to the same values as the frame size.
You can now change the frame size if you want to. You can
also expand the image dimensions by some integral amount.
EPS files used this way can be cropped just like any
other picture.
In addition to EPS files, you can create halftones from
colour images by converting them to grey scale TIFF files. There
are several advantages to producing halftones this way rather
than using EPS files. The files will be much smaller... by about
half... and Ventura will import them with less requisite fiddling
in the Sizing and Scaling box. In addition, Ventura allows you a
great deal of control over the way the grey scale and screening
information is handled in a TIFF file.
You might want to experiment a bit with these two types
of files to get a feel for the results produced by them in
Ventura chapters.
If you use the Define Colours option of the Frame menu to
display colours as shades of grey rather than as colours... and
if you're using an EGA or VGA monitor... grey scale TIFF files
will appear in your chapters as pretty slick little photographs.
COREL DRAW TRICKS
-----------------
If you import bitmapped images into Corel Draw, you can decide
how they'll be handled once they get there by choosing the image
type you use. Imported PCX files will be scaled to an arbitrary
size upon entering Corel Draw, with the result that it's almost
impossible to adjust them to get a one to one relationship
between the image pixels and the printer pixels. This will make
many PCX print badly.
TIFF files, on the other hand, import initially with one
to one scaling. If you use TIFF files and leave them at their
initial size, or stretch them to integral multiples of their
original sizes, they'll print without distortion or plaiding.
Grey scale TIFF files imported into Corel Draw come up as
PostScript halftones... these can look very slick as part of a
line drawing. Colour TIFF files are useful if you'll be
outputting your Corel Draw files to a colour output device or if
you'll be getting them separated.
Another book plug here: you might want to check out
"Mastering Corel Draw" by Steven William Rimmer, published by
Sybex Books.
CUSTOM SCREEN DRIVERS
_____________________
If you have a super VGA card you can use its super VGA modes by
having Graphic Workshop drive your card through an external
driver. External drivers are little blocks of code which know all
about your specific VGA card, and present it to Graphic Workshop
in a useful form.
In order to have Graphic Workshop use an external driver,
you must select EXTERNAL for the display type in GWSINSTL and set
the screen driver path to reflect the name and location of your
driver. For example, if your driver was called TATUNG.DRV and it
lived in the directory \COMMON\DRIVERS on drive C:, you would
enter C:\COMMON\DRIVERS\TATUNG.DRV in this field.
The drivers included with this version of Graphic
Workshop are discussed in a separate file called DRIVERS.DOC.
Note that every super VGA card must have a custom
Graphic Workshop driver if it is to work in its super VGA modes.
The driver for one brand of card will not work for a different
card. If there's no driver for your particular card you can still
use Graphic Workshop in its default VGA mode, but you'll see
fewer pixels on your screen at a time.
In future releases we hope to include a number of SVGA
drivers. If you write one using the GRAFDRV.ASM skeletal driver
and care to send us the source, we'll be pleased to include it
with future releases of Graphic Workshop, with suitable credit.
CUSTOM DOT MATRIX PRINTER DRIVERS
_________________________________
Custom dot matrix printer drivers are used to support dot matrix
printers or other similar output devices which Graphic Workshop
doesn't know how to deal with directly. In order to load one, you
must enable the external printer driver option in GWSINSTL and
fill in the path to your printer driver.
When Graphic Workshop boots up with an external printer
driver in place, a ninth entry will be added to the printer
selection menu, this being the name of the printer your driver
drives.
Only monochrome pictures can be printed to dot matrix
printers... even if you have a colour dot matrix printer.
BUGS
____
There are bound to be some. If you encounter a problem with
Graphic Workshop, please contact us. We'll also be interested in
hearing your suggestions for future releases of this software. If
you encounter a file which Graphic Workshop won't read, we'll be
interested in having a look at it.
COMING NEXT VERSION
___________________
These are the features we're working on for the next major
release of Graphic Workshop:
- Targa support
If you register your copy of Graphic Workshop, you'll be notified
when the next release is available.
ROLL YOUR OWN
_____________
This is yet another book plug. If you're interested in writing
programs which use graphics, you'll find everything you need to
know in "The Book of Bitmapped Graphics", also by Steven William
Rimmer. It's published by TAB books, (TAB book 3558). It features
code to pack and unpack MacPaint, IMG, PCX, GIF and TIFF files,
as well as chapters on screen drivers, dithering and printing.
SHAREWARE DISTRIBUTORS
______________________
We are happy to have Graphic Workshop distributed by shareware
distributors, provided you distribute a copy which has come
directly from us and that you don't modify the package in any
way.
We will provide a free master copy of the current version of this
software to those distributors which we feel make a reasonable
effort to promote the registration of our shareware. Other
distributors are welcome to distribute the package if they
purchase a registered copy of it.
If you wish to request a free master copy of this package for
distribution, please send us a copy of your current catalog and a
letter requesting a copy on your letterhead. We will not consider
requests which are not accompanied by a printed catalog.
Sorry... we've been getting deluged with requests.
MORAL DOGMA
___________
If you like this program and find it useful, you are requested to
support it either by buying the book mentioned at the top of this
file or by sending us $35.00. We'd rather you bought the book.
This will entitle you to telephone support, notification of
updates, a free copy of the latest version of Graphic Workshop
and other good things like that. More to the point, though, it'll
make you feel good. We've not infested the program with excessive
beg notices, crippled it or had it verbally insult you after ten
days. We trust you to support Graphic Workshop if you like it.
Oh yes, should you fail to support this program and
continue to use it, a leather winged demon of the night will tear
itself, shrieking blood and fury, from the endless caverns of the
nether world, hurl itself into the darkness with a thirst for
blood on its slavering fangs and search the very threads of time
for the throbbing of your heartbeat. Just thought you'd want to
know that.
We are
Alchemy Mindworks Inc.
P.O. Box 500
Beeton, Ontario
L0G 1A0
Canada
Other programs we've done that you might like include:
DESKTOP
PAINT - Is a powerful monochrome paint package fine tuned for
use with desktop publishing applications. It will
read and write MacPaint, Ventura IMG, PCX,
WordPerfect WPG and TIFF image files. It has EMS
support to handle images of virtually any size, an
intuitive user interface and a wide selection of
image creation and manipulation tools. Desktop Paint
can utilize fonts from many other sources, including
Ventura Publisher, Macintosh FONT and NFNT resources
and Windows FON files.
VFM - Ventura soft font manager deluxe with a side of fries.
Adds new fonts and creates width tables with menu
driven simplicity.
GRAFCAT - Prints a visual catalog of your image files, with
sixteen pictures to a page. Drives all LaserJet and
PostScript laser printers, and works with any mixture
of GIF, PCX, MacPaint, TIFF, WPG, MSP, IFF/LBM, EPS,
BMP, PIC and IMG files.
CROPGIF - allows you to crop smaller fragments out of your GIF
files. Use graphic Workshop, above, to convert other
formats into GIF files for cropping. This program
uses a simple mouse interface to make cropping image
fragments no more complicated than using a paint
program Requires a Microsoft compatible mouse.
CINEMA - Display a continuous "slide show" of image files. You
can set up the images to be displayed using a simple
script language. Cinema works with most super VGA
cards, using the same drivers as Graphic Workshop,
and with CGA, EGA and Hercules cards. It works with
any mixture of GIF, PCX, MacPaint, TIFF, WPG, MSP,
IFF/LBM, EPS and IMG files.
FI - File Information... this is a small utility which
will examine mystery image files and tell you what
they are and some details of what's inside them.
GIFINFO - Creates catalog files from your GIF collection,
allowing you to store fifty or more miniature full
colour representations of GIF files on a single quad
floppy.
STORYTELLER -
A hypertext program with a mouse driven graphical
user interface which will allow you to create
reports, manuals and interactive fiction, among other
things, which has a tree structure. Each page of a
storyteller document can lead to related sub-pages,
which can in turn have their own sub-sub pages, and
so on. It looks slick and is exceedingly user
friendly.
If you can't find them in the public domain, they're available
from us for $35.00 each.
REVISION HISTORY
________________
For them what cares...
Version 5.0 - Fixed a bug which prevented 256 colour PCX files
from printing. Added several new screen drivers.
Version 4.9 - Added colour TIFF support. Fixed a cosmetic bug in
the file delete function. Added LPT2 and LPT3 printer support.
Version 4.8 - Fixed an IFF bug that caused some odd sized 16
colour IFF files to be incorrectly saved. Added selectable TIFF
grey scale expansion. Added two Tseng Labs super VGA card
drivers... see DRIVERS.DOC.
Version 4.7 - Fixed another obscure TIFF bug and a MacPaint bug.
Version 4.6 - Fixed an obscure TIFF bug.
Version 4.5 - Added PIC file support.
Version 4.4 - Several bug fixes.
Version 4.3 - Fixed a bug in the EPS file conversion routine.
Version 4.2 - Tidied up the file finder functions. The rename and
delete commands don't reset the cursor position and the program
can survive attempting to log onto an empty floppy drive with its
dignity intact. Tidied up the TIFF details. The TIFF functions
can now read files with Macbinary headers, and can generate
Motorola format TIFF files.
Version 4.1 - Fixed a bug which prevented BMP files from printing
or being converted into other formats.
Version 4.0 - Added Windows 3 BMP support.
Version 3.9 - Allowed for optional IFF file compression and fixed
some IFF bugs. All IFF files generated by Graphic Workshop are
now ILBM compressed... ignore this if it doesn't mean anything to
you... and all files with colours in them get Deluxe Paint
previews.
Version 3.8 - Fixed several TIFF bugs.
Version 3.7 - Fixed a few cosmetic bugs and one persistent one
which would cause error messages and deletion of incomplete files
to use the previous file name, rather than the current one in
some cases. This tended to delete good files in conditions when
one's disk was full and such.
Version 3.6 - Got the IFF/LBM compression working properly,
improved the IFF details, allowed for optional TIFF grey scale
file compression. Added Deluxe Paint preview images for 256
colour files.
Version 3.5 - Added scaling, perhaps against our better
judgement. Changed the TIFF compression routine so the version of
Graphic Workshop used to create files is included as a tag. You
can see it in the TIFF details. Improved a few cosmetic things.
Version 3.4 - Fixed a bug in the monochrome EPS previews. There
aren't many uses for monochrome EPS files. Improved the
monochrome IMG file reader considerably... it now loads pretty
well any two colour IMG file, even the weird ones which Ventura
creates when it imports EPS files.
Version 3.3 - Added halftoning to the dither... now the
dither/halftone... functions.
Version 3.2 - Added detailed tag analysis for tag based formats.
Also added drop shadows to the menus and such... this adds four
bytes of code to the program. Fixed a bug of sorts in the TIFF
display code which made it a bit finicky.
Version 3.1 - Improved several of the image compression
functions... they're a lot more effective now. Also fixed a
cosmetic bug in the wait box which caused it to completely close
on files longer than about 1600 lines.
Version 3.0 - Added descriptive comments to some of the F4 Get
Info functions. Added IFF/LBM/CE support.
Version 2.9 - Fixed a potential bug in the PCX palette code,
added file renaming in the finder. Also, one of our users pointed
out that the compiler was adding a debug table to the final EXE
file without being asked to do so. Eliminating this has made the
code about twenty kilobytes smaller. Thanks, Don... things you
learn...
Version 2.8 - Added loadable drivers for dot matrix support,
fixed a few obscure bugs in the printing and display code. Added
image rotation and flipping.
Version 2.7 - Added VGA colour adjustment in the view mode. Added
Microsoft Windows Paint (MSP) file support. One might ask why...
Microsoft Windows Paint is not one of the leading lights in
digital artistry. It was mostly in the interest of completeness.
We had the format details and it was a hot Saturday afternoon
with nothing better to do.
Version 2.6 - Added WordPerfect Graphics support, fixed a bug
which kept some EGA cards from autodetecting properly, made the
TIFF and IMG packing code tighter still for large images. Fixed a
bug in the grey scale TIFF printing function.
Version 2.5 - Fixed a bug in the monochrome GIF file decoder
which caused files with horizontal dimensions not an even
multiple of eight to display incorrectly... but only on Tuesdays.
Version 2.4 - Fixed some bugs in the external super VGA graphics
drivers. Be sure to read DRIVERS.WS if you use and external
driver.
Version 2.3 - Added grey scale TIFF support (at last). Removed
the built in Paradise Plus and ATI VGA Wonder card drivers in
favour of the external ones, which frees up a bit of memory and
makes maintaining these drivers much simpler. Improved the TIFF
file creation routines, such that they now conform to TIFF 5.0,
and will import into most applications which accept TIFF,
including Corel Draw... which is a bit particular about the sorts
of TIFF files it want to deal with. Fixed a bug in the expanded
memory manager which caused a few hangs on really immense files.
Version 2.2 - Fixed a bug in the dithering code. This would cause
some machines to hang if an attempt was made to dither colour GIF
files to the screen with an external VGA driver loaded. Nasty but
obscure.
Version 2.1 - Added Macintosh GIF file reading. Macintosh GIF
files ported to a PC have a 128 byte "Macbinary" header before
the GIF file proper. Graphic Workshop now detects this, gets
around it and reads the GIF information normally. Also added a
comment field to the F4 file information box. This will display
the Macintosh file names of GIF and MacPaint files with Macbinary
headers. Fixed some very obscure bugs in the IMG and TIFF file
compression routines. These would occasionally cause very large
dithered files to compress incorrectly.
Version 2.0 - Fixed a fairly obscure bug in the 16 colour PCX
file compression code.
Version 1.9 - Added image reversal for monochrome files. The
menus got larger.
Version 1.8 - Added monochrome GIF file packing... monochrome
files in other formats can now be converted into GIF files. Added
an external driver for Headland Technologies Video Seven VGA
cards. Fixed (or rather sidestepped) a weird bug in the EPS
preview code which very occasionally generated unreadable preview
images.
Version 1.7 - Added loadable custom drivers for super VGA cards
other than the ones supported by the built in drivers.
Version 1.6 - Fixed a bug in the TIFF decoder and another really
tiny one in the file finder. Gettin' down to the aphids and fleas
now.
Version 1.5 - Added file deletion and fixed an obscure bug in the
dithering code. Added EGA palette reduction for GIF files.
Version 1.4 - Fixed a bug in the file finder that kept batch
processes from working across multiple pages. Also, a cosmetic
bug the in the wait bar graph that happened on files longer than
about two thousand lines.
Version 1.3 - Fixed a few persistent bugs in the ATI VGA Wonder
card driver. ATI cards were put in this dimension to vex us.
Version 1.2 - Fixed several bugs which prohibited PCX to GIF
conversion for 32 colour files, kept some extremely large
monochrome PCX files from converting and so on.
Version 1.1 - Added ATI VGA Wonder card driver
Version 1.0 - Sprung GWS on an unsuspecting universe.
SOURCE CODE
___________
After considerable meditation and several bad experiences, we
have decided not to release the source code for Graphic Workshop.
We do licence parts of it for specific applications... if you
want more information about using some of the functions of
Graphic Workshop in your software, please contact us.
BUNDLING GRAPHIC WORKSHOP
_________________________
If you'd like to include Graphic Workshop with your product,
please get in touch with us. We have several ways to help you do
this so your users get the most out of Graphic Workshop and we
don't have to set our leather winged demon of the night on 'em.
LEGAL DOGMA
___________
The author assumes no responsibility for any damage or loss
caused by the use of these programs, however it comes down. If
you can think of a way a picture program can cause you damage
or loss you've a sneakier mind than mine.
All the trademarks used herein are registered to whoever it is
that owns them. This notification is given in lieu of any
specific list of trademarks and their owners, which would not be
as inclusive and would probably take a lot longer to type.
That's it...