Graphics Plus

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Graphics Plus / Graphics Plus.iso / msdos / grabbers / gemcap40 / gemcap.doc < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1990-07-25 | 19.7 KB | 594 lines

GEMCAP (TM) 4.0 USER MANUAL (C) Copyright 1985 - 1990 All Rights Reserved Natural Software 19 South Fifth Street St. Charles, IL 60174 (708) 377-7320 LICENSE THE GEMCAP SOFTWARE AND MANUAL ARE COPYRIGHTED, ALL RIGHTS ARE RESE- RVED. YOU HAVE PURCHASED A LICENSE TO USE THIS SOFTWARE ON ONE MACHINE AT A TIME. YOU ARE AUTHORIZED TO MAKE COPIES OF GEMCAP FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF BACKING UP YOUR SOFTWARE AND PROTECTING YOUR INVESTMENT FROM LOSS. Note: this copy of GEMCAP is being distributed as ShareWare. This means that you may copy the disk just as you received it and you may give it to others for their trial use. You are also permitted and encouraged to upload this version to electronic bulletin board servic- es. You may not, however resell or collect any fee for the distribu- tion of GEMCAP without the permission of Natural Software. (This does not include the normal fees for using bulletin boards.) If you contin- ue to use GEMCAP after your trial use, you must pay the purchase price as detailed below. WARRANTY THIS SOFTWARE WILL PERFORM AS DESCRIBED HEREIN ONLY IF PROPERLY AP- PLIED. OUR LIABILITY TO YOU IS LIMITED TO REPLACING THE SOFTWARE (FOR REGISTERED USERS ONLY). WE HAVE NO LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGE OR LOSS, INCLUDING SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL, CAUSED BY THIS SOFTWARE, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY. YOU AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE BY YOUR DECISION TO USE THIS SOFTWARE. _______ This program is produced by ____|__ | (tm) a member of the Association --| | |------------------- of Shareware Professionals | ____|__ | Association of (AS). ASP wants to make sure | | |_| Shareware that the shareware principle |__| o | Professionals works for you. If you are -----| | |--------------------- unable to resolve a shareware |___|___| MEMBER related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at P.O. Box 5786, Belle- vue, WA 98006 or send a Compuserve message via easyplex to ASP Ombuds- man 70007,3536" Table of contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ShareWare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Using GEMCAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Starting GEMCAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Hot Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Customizing the Hot Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Removing GEMCAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Text Mode Screens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Text mode fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Image Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Graphic Mode Screens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 ii Introduction GEMCAP.COM is a Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) program that cap- tures screen images from other programs. It saves these images in separate GEM .IMG files. In the case of text based screens, the text is converted to a bitmap. The GEM .IMG graphic file format is one of the several "standard" formats that many other programs can read. The primary use of GEMCAP is to incorporate screen images into desktop publishing documents. Both Ventura Publisher and WordPerfect version 5.0 (and 5.1) can read GEM .IMG format. GEMCAP supports a variety of display adapters and different display modes: Monochrome Standard IBM monochrome display adapters support text modes only. GEMCAP will capture text mode displays and convert them to bitmap files. To use the resulting .IMG files, however you must have some type of display adapter that can display graphics. CGA On IBM Color Graphics Adapters (CGA), the high resolution 640 by 200 pixel (mode 6) is supported in addition to the various text modes. EGA GEMCAP can capture EGA 640 by 350 pixel 16 color (mode 10h) graphics screens. VGA GEMCAP can capture VGA 640 by 480 pixel 16 color (mode 12h) graphics screens. Hercules GEMCAP will not work on Hercules displays in graphics mode. It will capture text mode screens from Hercules. You can use your desktop publishing program to use the resulting GEM .IMG files with Hercules displays. On EGA and VGA displays in text mode, GEMCAP uses the RAM resident font to convert the screen to a bitmap. This means that the resulting bitmap represents the captured text screen exactly as it appears on the screen, even if the program loads a specialized font. Introduction 1 ShareWare The GEMCAP package is being distributed as shareware. This means that it is not free. This means that you must pay to use it. However, you do not have to pay to try it, test it, and to determine if it is going to be useful to you. You are probably familiar with the concept by now. Shareware programs give you the advantage of "test driving" them. The advantage to the developer is a relatively inexpensive distribu- tion method. For this concept to work and keep working for our mutual advantage, you really must register and pay for the software you actually find useful. Please feel free to pass along a copy of this disk to others for their trial use. But please distribute it in its original unaltered state. The compressed arc file: GEMCAP.ZIP is intended for uploading to your local bulletin boards. To register your use of GEMCAP, send $35.00 to Natural Software at the address above. This entitles you to one upgrade to the next new release for free (please specify the version you currently have when registering). We will also send you a description of our other soft- ware offerings (including PC-Draft II which lets you to edit and enhance your captured images) and provide free telephone support as needed. You may use the order form provided in the file: ORDER.FRM. Please read the file: PRODUCTS.LST for descriptions of other products from Natural Software. 2 GEMCAP Using GEMCAP GEMCAP is a Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) program. When you run it from the DOS command line, it will announce its presence and quietly sink into the background and wait to be called into action (when its "hot key" is pressed). Starting GEMCAP When you run GEMCAP, you must provide it with the location and start- ing file name to use to store the screen images it captures. For example, you might start GEMCAP with this command: GEMCAP C:\SCREENS\SCREENA.IMG Now GEMCAP will store its screens in the SCREENS sub-directory. Note that the SCREENS sub-directory must already exist. The first screen it saves will be called SCREENA.IMG, the second will be called SCREENB.IMG. Each subsequent .IMG file will increment the character in the filename just before the extension. These files are graphic bit image files compatible with any program that reads GEM .IMG files, regardless of whether the original screen was in text mode or graphics mode. Note that this convention (of incrementing the last character in the filename for each file) limits you to 26 screen saves at a time. This is because if you start with the letter A, it will cycle through the alphabet until it gets to Z, then the next character in ASCII sequence is a "[", which is invalid for a filename. If you need more than 26 files, you must remove GEMCAP from memory and reload it with a differ- ent initial filename. The Hot Key To activate GEMCAP and save the current screen to a .IMG file, you Press the (Alt + .) keys (that's the period key and the Alt key) togeth- er. You will hear a beep when GEMCAP is called. Three beeps means it successfully wrote an .IMG file to the specified directory. Only one beep means it was unable to create the file (could not find the directory?). Only two beeps means it created the file, but could not write the full screen buffer, (disk full?). Using GEMCAP 3 The size of the file GEMCAP creates depends on the current display mode. GEMCAP will detect the current video mode and adjust. It converts text mode screens into bit mapped graphics. Like any other TSR, GEMCAP may have compatibility problems with other software, especially other TSR's. If you have trouble, try installing GEMCAP by itself and adding your other TSR utilities one at a time after you get GEMCAP to work. Customizing the Hot Key If you have a conflict with other resident programs, you may need to change GEMCAP's hot key. You must use DEBUG to make the change. There are two bytes in the GEMCAP.COM file that may be changed. The first byte represents the keyboard scan code and the second byte represents the shift key state. The following two tables show the values (in hexadecimal) for all the possible keyboard scan codes and shift key states. After consulting the tables, use DEBUG to enter the values as shown below (for example to change the hot key to (Ctrl+Z): DEBUG GEMCAP.COM E 0103 xxxx:0103 34.2C ; shows existing scan code, enter new code: 2C (for 'Z') E 0104 xxxx:0104 08.04 ; shows existing shift state, enter new code: 04 (for 'Ctrl') W ; save changes Q ; quit DEBUG 4 GEMCAP This table shows keyboard scan codes for alternate hot keys: Key Hex Key Hex Key Hex ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- Esc 01 Enter 1C PrtSc 37 !1 02 Ctrl 1D Alt 38 @2 03 A 1E Space 39 #3 04 S 1F CapLk 3A $4 05 D 20 F1 3B %5 06 F 21 F2 3C ^6 07 G 22 F3 3D &7 08 H 23 F4 3E *8 09 J 24 F5 3F (9 0A K 25 F6 40 )0 0B L 26 F7 41 _- 0C :; 27 F8 42 += 0D "' 28 F9 43 backsp 0E ~` 29 F10 44 tab 0F L Sft 2A NumLk 45 Q 10 |\ 2B ScrLk 46 W 11 Z 2C Home 47 E 12 X 2D Up 48 R 13 C 2E PgUp 49 T 14 V 2F - 4A Y 15 B 30 Left 4B U 16 N 31 5 4C I 17 M 32 Right 4D O 18 <, 33 + 4E P 19 >. 34 End 4F {[ 1A ?/ 35 Down 50 }] 1B RSHFT 36 PgDn 51 The following table shows the hexadecimal values for the possible shift key states: Shift key value | Alt | Ctrl | Left | Right | | | Shift | Shift ----------------+-------+--------+--------+------- 0 | | | | 1 | | | | * 2 | | | * | 4 | | * | | 5 | | * | | * 6 | | * | * | 7 | | * | * | * 8 | * | | | 9 | * | | | * A | * | | * | B | * | | * | * C | * | * | | D | * | * | | * E | * | * | * | F | * | * | * | * ----------------+-------+--------+--------+------- 5 GEMCAP Removing GEMCAP You can remove GEMCAP from memory by running GEMCAP with a command line argument: -R. for example: GEMCAP -R GEMCAP must be the last TSR program loaded for this to work properly. By removing and then reloading GEMCAP you can change the filename so that you can save more than 26 screens. Text Mode Screens When the screen is in text mode when GEMCAP is run, it converts each screen character to a bitmap. This means that when you display or print the resulting GEM .IMG files with your desktop publishing program, you will get exactly what is displayed on the screen. Text mode fonts With monochrome, CGA, or Hercules display adapters, an internal (within GEMCAP.COM) 8 by 8 pixel font is used. On EGA or VGA display adapters, the RAM resident font (on the EGA or VGA adapter) is used. GEMCAP does not produce color GEM .IMG files. It converts color attributes to monochrome (Black & White) as described below. GEMCAP converts reverse video areas of the screen appropriately. Any color attribute combination that results in darker characters with a lighter background will be converted to reverse video. The following color attribute combinations on the captured screen will result in reverse video: any of these background With these foreground ----------------------- --------------------- green black grey cyan blue lt blue brown red lt red white magenta lt magenta If you wish to reverse the entire screen, for example from white on black to black on white, load GEMCAP with the following command line argument (-R) as shown below: GEMCAP -R C:\SCREENS\SCREENA.IMG GEMCAP will correctly capture different sized text mode screens. For example, it can handle EGA text mode screens with 43 lines and VGA text mode screens with 50 lines. It adjusts the internal pixel size so that screens with different numbers of lines will display with the correct aspect ratio. Text Mode 6 Image Size Note that with Ventura Publisher or WordPerfect 5.0, the size of the image when incorporated into your document is dependent on the size of the frame (VP) or figure (WP). For best results, you must adjust this size (within VP or WP) so that pixels are not truncated or compressed. You can calculate the best size for the image in your document based on the horizontal and vertical resolution of your printer. For example lets say you capture a VGA text mode screen that has 80 columns and 25 lines. The font size in this mode is 8 by 16 pixels. This means that there are 400 (16 times 25) scan lines in the image and it is 640 pixels horizontally (80 times 8). You must size the image so that the number of pixels in the image is evenly divisible by the printer resolution. Therefore, if you have a laser printer or DeskJet printer that prints at a resolution of 300 dots per inch (both horizontal and vertical), a frame size of 2.13 inches by 1.33, or 4.27 inches by 2.67 inches would produce non-distorted output. Note that you must account for the inside border space and border width when sizing figures in WordPerfect. 7 GEMCAP Graphic Mode Screens When the screen is in a graphics mode, GEMCAP stores the image pixel by pixel in the GEM .IMG file. The most common high resolution graph- ics modes of the various display adapters are supported as follows: CGA 640 x 200 x 2 color (mode 06h) EGA 640 x 350 x 16 color (mode 10h) VGA 640 x 480 x 16 color (mode 12h) Since GEMCAP does not produce color GEM .IMG files, when EGA/VGA 16 color modes are detected, it converts the color to monochrome (Black & White) as described below. These dark colors are converted to Black: Black Gray Blue Hi-intensity Blue Green Hi-intensity Green Cyan Hi-intensity Cyan These light colors are converted to White: Red Hi-intensity Red Violet Hi-intensity Violet Yellow Hi-intensity Yellow White Hi-intensity White The size of the GEM .IMG file will vary. GEMCAP compresses the data in the file as much as possible (for GEM .IMG file formats) by checking for duplicate scan lines in the original image. The more complex the image, the larger the file size. Graphics Mode 8