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LABEL MAKER VERSION 1.5
COPYRIGHT 1990-1991 BY STEFAN GÜNTER BOLDORF, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
COPYING AGREEMENT AND RESTRICTIONS:
YOU ARE ALLOWED TO COPY THIS SOFTWARE PACKAGE, CONSISTING OF THE FILES
"LABELMAKERV1.5", "LABELMAKERV1.5.INFO", "LABELMAKERV1.5.DOC" and
"LABELMAKERV1.5.ZOO" AS LONG AS ALL OF THE FOLLOWING DEMANDS ARE MET.
THE PD-COMPACT/DECOMPACT ROUTINES BY EA ARE NOT SUBJECT TO THE DEMANDS
LISTED BELOW, FOR THEIR LEGAL STATUS READ THE DOCS ON FISH DISK 185.
1. YOU MAY NOT USE ANY PART OF THIS PACKAGE COMMERCIALLY.
2. YOU MAY ONLY COPY THE WHOLE PACKAGE.
3. YOU MAY NOT CHANGE, ENHANCE, SHORTEN, LEAVE OUT OR ALTER ANY PART
OF THE PACKAGE OR THE WHOLE PACKAGE IN ANY WAY.
4. YOU MAY NOT CHARGE MORE THAN $6.00 FOR THE DISK THIS PACKAGE IS ON
,INCLUDING COPYING EXPENSES.
5. YOU MAY NOT INCLUDE THIS PACKAGE IN ANY PUBLIC DOMAIN SERIES WITH-
OUT MY EXPRESSED WRITTEN CONSENT.
6. YOU MAY NOT COPY THIS PACKAGE IF YOU ARE STEFAN OSSOWSKY, OR
ASSOCIATED WITH HIM IN ANY WAY.
7. NO COPYRIGHT MAY BE ERRECTED ON ANY FILE THAT WAS CREATED BY USE-
ING PORTIONS OF THE PACKAGE OR THE WHOLE PACKAGE.
EXECPTION FROM ANY OF THE ABOVE POINTS NEEDS MY EXPRESSED WRITTEN
CONSENT. ANY FAILURE TO OBSERVE THE RESTRICTIONS WILL RESULT IN
CRIMINAL PROSECUTION (I AM SERIOUS! ).
DISCLAIMER
YOU ARE USING THIS PACKAGE ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. NO GUARANTEE,
EITHER EXPLICIT OR IMPLICIT IS GRANTED. ANY DAMAGE RESULTING FROM THE
USE OR FOLLOWING DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY FROM THE USE OF THIS PACKAGE
WILL BE COVERED BY THE USER ONLY. IF YOU ARE NOT SURE ABOUT THIS DO
NOT USE THIS PACKAGE. I CANNOT BE MADE RESPONABLE OR LIABLE FOR ANY
DAMAGE RESULTING FROM THE USE, MISUSE OR ABUSE OF THE PACKAGE OR ANY
PART OF IT.
PREFACE
UUHHhh, I am sorry about the legal broohaha, but I have to be sure,
not to be covered by lawsuits from people who damaged their equip-
ment, and not to be exploited by greedy PUBLIC DOMAIN distributers.
This package is dedicated to all of those users, who just want a
piece of software, and not a professional relationship a la IBM.
CONTENTS:
I INTRODUCTION
II INSTALLATION
III GETING STARTED
IV HOW TO MAKE A LABEL
V COMMANDS
VI A FORMATTED TEXT
VII PROGRAMMERS INFORMATION
VIII A WORD TO THE USER
I. Introduction
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
LABEL MAKER is a piece of software, that enables you to create fancy,
full sized, colored labels for 3.5" floppy diskettes. Especially on
fanfold blank labels, this package will produce almost perfect
results.
II. Installation
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
To run the LABEL MAKER you need just your working copy of a Workbench
Version 1.2 or above and a printer, that is supported by Preferences.
If your are a novice in AMIGA-DOS affairs, just run the installation
script by typing "MultiInstall LMInstall.mil" and striking the return
key in a CLI or SHELL. Clicking the LMInstall.mil icon from Workbench
does the same job. Another way to use the package is to make a copy
of your Workbench disk, delete unwanted files from the copy until
about 90,000 Bytes are free and pull the programs from this disk onto
the copy. Make sure that you use the correct printer driver. If you
have got a copy of the ARP-library, the handling will be improved a
lot, if you don't get a copy of it fast ( its on KICKSTART 270 e.g.).
The LABEL MAKER can be started by both double-clicking its icon or
running it from CLI or SHELL.
III. Getting Started
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Before you start designing your own labels, adjusting the labels is
vital! Printing outside the label boundaries can damage your printer
seriously! To see where your printer actually starts printing, run
the LABEL MAKER(see II) and click on the field called 'Load Picture'.
A requester should appear, asking you for the name of the picture.
There is a file called 'WholeLabel.pic' in the 'Images' drawer of
this package If you have ARP select the file and load it, if you have
not type ":LabelMaker/Images/WholeLabel.pic" and press return.
Your disk drive will begin to work and after a while the label dis-
play will change. Click the left mouse button now. There is a full
sized label on the screen momentarily. From here on the 'hardware'
stuff follows. Make sure that your printer is ON and ONLINE, that
there is normal, sull size paper and a black & white or colored
ribbon to print with is in the printer. After all that has been
checked, click on the 'Print Label' field and then the 'Continue'
field in the requester. After a short while the printer should start
its work. When it has finished, a complete label will appear on your
paper, and you are able to judge where your printer starts and stops
its work. Make sure that it stays within the boundaries of the label
paper and adjust the labels accordingly.
IV. How to 'make' a Label
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
First a label contains one or no picture and numerous text lines.
A picture is a picture drawn using a program like Deluxe Paint, or my
very own Free Paint, a text can be typed in directly using this pro-
gram. Some of the above and below descriptions may sound strange and
complicated, but they are not, I just use a strange and complicated
English, since I am out of practise for some years now, do not fear,
this program is quite easy to use and understand.
When started, the program presents itself separated into two main
sections. On the left, the layout of your label is shown, on the
right, a panel of commands appears. These commands are divided into
three sections.
First there is the disk section ( yellow print on red ground). These
commands deal with access to your disk drives and drawers. You can
load or save an entire label, and load a picture or a text.
Then, white on blue, the edit commands follow. The most important one
is the 'Enter Text' command. If you click on this field, a requester
will appear, in which a lot of options can be chosen. You do not have
to know all about all of them at once, see the chapter 'Commands' for
more information about all of these command fields.
At last, the special commands (they appear purple on green) finish
the panel. They range from starting the print to ending the program.
To actually design a label you want to enter some texts, perhaps load
a picture you have drawn and arrange the whole how it suits you. If
you are about to destroy a whole label a requester will warn you to
avoid loss of data by mistake.
V. Commands
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
(i) Disk Commands:
'Load Label'
A requester will appear and ask you to type in the name and lo-
cation of the label you want to load. Note that this commands
will erease the label currently on the display and replace it
with the label you want to be loaded. This command will load only
labels, that have been saved by this program. If an error should
occur, you will be informed about the reason why the label could
not be accessed.
'Save Label'
Like in 'Load Label' you will have to enter the name and location
of the label to be saved on disk. If you have ARP it will be
easy, and tiresome if you have not. The whole label display is
written on disk for later usage, this includes all texts and the
optional picture on the label as well.
'Load Picture'
And here again the name and location of the picture is needed. In
addition, the picture has to be in IFF-ILBM format, which means,
that it has to be drawn using Deluxe Paint or something similiar.
The colors of the label will be taken from this picture a former
color table is lost. After the disk activity has stopped, the
picture will appear inside the label area. You can move it by
simply moving your pointer. Pressing the left mouse button puts
the picture down and fixes it on the label.
Note that a picture will ALLWAYS appear BEHIND any text!
'Load Text'
You may have guessed it by now, the name an place of the file is
needed here, too. The text has to be in a special form, discussed
in the chapter 'A formatted Text'. Note that any text on the label
will be lost if you have not saved it by now.
(ii) Edit Commands:
'Enter Text'
Selecting this command will cause a requester with an input mask
to show up on the screen. This command is used to enter a new
text into the label. There are various input fields on this re-
quester, which I will explain in order of their importance.
First there is the TEXT field. You can enter the actual text line
into here. Above that the color of the text and the ground are
marked by squares. Click on the color you like to select it. Note
that the same color for text and ground is not allowed. On the
top left edge the current fonts is shown, use the arrows to
select a new font. To the right you can select the fonts styles,
such as italic, boldface or underlined. Below the switches for
placing the text line can be found. The two alternate arrows
mean, that you will place the text line manualy, the arrow and
the box will cause the program to append the line on the bottom
of the last line previously entered. To the right we have fields
for left, right and centered alignment. Then the switches for
an optional border complete the display. Note that a border will
always appear in the color of the screen background, not the
text background. When you have finished your creative work, click
on the 'ACCEPT' field to create the text line, or on 'CANCEL' to
leave without creating a line. If you have selected manual place-
ment of the line, the text line will be printed under your mouse
pointer and can be moved around the label area. Use the left
button to place the text on the label.
'Edit Text'
To use this command, you have to select a text by clicking on it
first. It will change its color to show it is selected. When you
have used this command on a text line, the same requester as in
'Enter Text' will appear, with the difference, that it will be
filled with the contents of the selected text. Feel free to
change anything here. Clicking on 'ACCEPT' will execute the
changes, 'CANCEL' will make the program ignore them. Note that if
you change the placement switch the current position of the line
will not be affected.
'Move Text'
Like in the paragraph above a text has to be selected here first.
If the selected text uses bottom placement it will be moved to the
bottom immediately. If not, the text line can be moved manually by
moving your pointer. If you move above the front area, the text
will be turned ,which takes a while. The text can be placed by
pressing the left mouse button. If you have clicked on this
command the text has to be put down before you click on a new
one!
'Move Picture'
If you have loaded a picture before, it can be moved both
horizontally and vertically, like you could when you loaded it.
When moving the picture, it will appear in front of the text
lines, but when placed by pressing the left mouse button, it
jumps back behind them. Note that the picture has to be put down
before you select another command or a text.
'Remove Text'
The currently selected text will be removed without a warning!
Make sure that the right text line is selected. You cannot get a
text line back, once it has been removed.
'Remove Picture'
This will only hide the picture from the label screen. If you
wish to get the picture to the screen, simply click on 'Move
Picture'. Note that a hidden picture will not be saved with the
text lines by the 'Save Label' command.
'Remove All'
Both all texts and a picture will be removed from the label area.
While the picture is only hidden, the text lines are really lost
and gone.
(iii) Special Commands:
'Print Label'
Perhaps the most important command of all, this one starts the
printing process. A requester allows you to adjust your labels,
before the real printing begins. Make sure that your printer is
ONLINE and everything is in order.
'Setup Defaults'
For the experienced user, here are some values, that affect the
width of the printed label and the space between two labels.
The dimensions of the label are set to the ones of the fanfold
labels I use and may differ from other ones. The space between
labels may vary even more and should be set to the appropriate
value by all users. The 'Set Text Defaults' field lets the user
set the switches for the 'Enter Text' command, which will make
it easier to use if a lot of text lines are used. The 'SET'
field activates the changes, the 'OUT' field causes the program
to ignore them.
'Information'
Some info about me an this package is displayed. Beware, there is
a hidden field on the screen for the adventureous!
'Quit'
Selecting this will stop the program. You will be warned if any
data will be lost by this action.
VI. A formatted Text
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
The Label Maker uses a special text format for its text input.
If you want to write a label text using an ASCII text editor the
following syntax rules have to be obeyed.
This feature had been included once to test the capabilities of
the Label Maker before actually designing its graphic desktop.
But then the desktop was created in a matter of days and this
feature was never really used by either my testers or me. This
documentation is provided for resons of completeness. A demon-
stration file 'LMDemoTxt.txt' is in the Labels drawer.
A text file is divided into lines. Each line is finished with a
';' character, just like a C or MODULA2 line. Inside a line a
number of options can be specified. An option may stand alone or
have an additional parameter. A list of all options and their
parameters is given below. If the option needs a numerical value,
the value has to start right after the option letter, no spaces in
between are allowed. If a text or name is the parameter, it has to
be enclosed in '"' characters.
Option Key | Parameter | Function
-----------+-----------+-----------------------------------------
B | NONE | Sets the font style to BOLDFACE
C | NUMBER | Specify the foreground color number
D | NUMBER | Specify the Y-position of the text line
F |NAME/NUMBER| Specify the font name and height
G | NONE | Draw a line on the bottom border
I | NONE | Set the font style to ITALIC
L | NONE | Align the text to the left side
M | NONE | Center the current text line
O | NONE | Draw a line on the top border
P | NUMBER | Specify the background color number
R | NONE | Align the text to the right side
S | NONE | Draw a line on the sides of the text
T | TEXT | Specify the text for the line!
U | NONE | Set the font style to UNDERLINED
V | NONE | Add the text line below the previous
Examples for correct text lines:
f"topaz"8 c d50 c3 t"Das ist centered und topaz 8";
This line will create a text line using the Topaz font, size 8,
on the 50 pixel line, centered, in the third color and will read
"Das ist centered und topaz 8" if you can read German!
Other examples:
f"topaz"9 l d70 c4 t"This is left adjusted and topaz 9";
f"topaz"9 r d80 c5 t"Das ist rechtsbündig und topaz 9";
f"topaz"8 c d90 c6 t"Das ist zentriert und topaz 8";
VII. Programmers Information
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
This piece of software reads either IFF-ILBM files, my very own
text format or my special label IFF-like format. It writes only
my label format. For a description of this format see below.
(i) The 'LABL' Format
Like any IFF file this starts with a FORM, the ID is LABL. The a
LBLD (LaBeLHeader) chunk follows. This chunk contains four LONG
fields. First the PictureOn flag, 1 stands for a picture, 0 for
text only. The the left and top edge coordinates of the picture,
and finally the number of text lines.
If a picture is used, a complete IFF-ILBM chunk follows. This
Chunk will have a compacted body.
If no picture is included, a CMAP chunk is written instead of an
entire ILBM.
The the text line chunks follow. Their ID is LMTC (LabelMaker
Text Chunk). The fields of this chunk are the same as those of
the structs in the LabelDef.h file.
(ii) The Printing
It is done via a DUMPRASTPORT call to the printer device, no
fancy hacking is done to be compatible with most of the
printers (and a bit slow, I know, I know ...).
(iii) Recreating the LabelMaker
This program was written using the Aztec C 3.6a compiler. Use
the +L -S switches with the compiler and the +cd switch for the
linker. The sourcecode has been provided in the LabelMakerV1.5.lzh
file. Also in that file is a detailed description of how to re-
create the executable.
Note that you cannot errect a copyright on a file that
uses code/sourcecode of this package other than the EA compact/
decompact routines from the Amiga Library Disk 185.
VIII. A Word to the User
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Well, hmmm, this program was made to create fancy labels, not to
organize thousands of disk. You will find it tiresome to create
labels for all your disks at once, but for special occasions,
this package may be just what you need.
If you have questions about the LabelMaker or want the latest
version of it feel free to write me, but please make sure that
you have included a disk, the money to buy the postage back to
you, and a letter that specifies WHAT you want. I cannot guarantee
that further versions of the LabelMaker will appear, but any disk
sent to me that fulfills the above criteria will be send back
with something new on it!
Any letters that do not have the correct postage, no disk or
no money for the trip back cannot be mailed back to you. I do
not have the money or time to provide disks or postage for the
lazy and cheap! Make sure that you know how much it costs to
send the disk back to you. If you should decide to send more
money than needed for the postage, the overhang will be accepted
as a donation (thanks a lot!). Please send German currency if
possible.
Donations are accepted, but there is no moral obligation to
send me something, I do not like the SHAREWARE concept.
This offer expires on Jan. 1st 1993, because I do not want to be
haunted by people to the last of my days.
Mackenbach, July, 2nd 1991,
Stefan G. Boldorf.
My Address:
Stefan Günter Boldorf
Flürchenstraße 16
W-6751 Mackenbach
GERMANY
