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Text File | 1990-03-19 | 14KB | 336 lines

Here is a little docfile for Osnap 2.9, the BEST Clipping Utility EVER! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I lost the original doc (which was in french anyway) but you should be able tu use this wonderful piece of software effectively with a minimum of instructions. The author of Osnap 2.9 is named Pierre Baillargeon and he lives in Montreal, Québec, Canada. He can be reached on BECAQ BBS, at (514)849-1630. Pierre used the sources of SNAP 1.4 (I forgot the original author name) to create Osnap but he added a lot of functions!: - Configuration window, with a configuration file which can be loaded when starting the program. - Many functions to allow you to use Osnap to Quote other persons messages on a bulletin board system for example. It can look like this: -> Many functions to allow you to use Osnap to Quote other persons -> messages on a bulletin board system for example. I can look -> like this: - Many ways of clipping text: by characters, by lines, by words, by boxes, etc... - Many clipped texts can be kept in memory and you can select in a window the one you want to send back! (GREAT!) - Allow clipping of graphic brushes! The brush can be easily saved for any further usage. - The addition of a "Serial Thief", a great utility if you are a heavy user of communication programs. - etc.... For the program to work, you will need to copy the supplied ARP.LIBRARY to your LIBS: directory. Ok, tu start the program, it's very easy. You go in a CLI (or a Shell) and you type: RUN OSNAP If you want to close this CLI or Shell without closing Osnap, you should use the wonderful RUNBACK command instead of RUN. RUNBACK is available on almost any Amiga BBS. In the next lines, I will explain how to configure Osnap to your liking and save your configuration file. The next time you will start Osnap 2.9, you will be able to use your own configuration by typing: RUN OSNAP S:OSNAP.CONFIG or RUNBACK OSNAP S:OSNAP.CONFIG Note that you can give any name you want to your configuration file and you can place it wherever you want, not only in the S: directory. How to Configure Osnap? ----------------------- The first thing to do is to pop up the configuration screen. All you have to do is to press Left-Amiga-S. You can be in any screen to do that. You will now see four Text Fields, Four number fields, 4 Radio Buttons, and five gadgets to perform different operations. Here are the significations of the various elements: Text Prefix - Phrase which will be displayed on the first separate line when you will send back your clipped text. Text Suffix - Phrase which will be displayed on the last separate line when you will send back your clipped text. Line Prefix - Text that will be appended at the beginning of each line when you will send back your clipped text. This is where you can put a little arrow such as "-->" to make Quotes. Line Suffix - Text that will be appended at the end of each line when you will send back your clipped text. Her, you can add a fancy touch to your quote by appending a reverse arrow such as "<--". Your quote will then look like --> This is a test of a double arrow <-- --> quote performed with Osnap 2.9! <-- Line Delay - Here you can enter a number which indicate how long the program will wait between each line when it will send back the clipped text. 0 = no wait, 1 = little wait, etc... Character Delay - Same thing here, but for characters instead of lines. Line Width - Indicate to Osnap the width at which you want the clipped text to be formated. On BBS text editors, 70 should cause no problem of word wrap. Handler Priority - Self explaining.... you shouldn't have to touch it, the default is 51. Line Frame - To clip text line by line... you will see later this can be controlled in a much better manner. It can look like: __________________ |________________| ____________________________ or: ____| ____| |__________________________| ________________________________ or: | | |________________________________| As you can see, Osnap is very versatile... Box Frame - Self explaining: ___________________________________ | | | | |_________________________________| Merge Bitplanes - I don't know the inner working of this but I know that sometimes, when you want to clip colored text on colored background, you have to set this option...my advice: always let this on... By the way, Osnap should be able to clip Bold and italic characters, but don't blame me if it doesn't work, I didn't test it... Add Return - Self Explaining.... add a return character at the end of your clipped text. SAVE - Saves your configuration file to disk. LOAD - Loads a configuration file saved previously. OK - Close the configuration window and keeps the modification you made. CANCEL - Close the configuration window without keeping the modifications you cold have made... QUIT - Quit the program. You can also do this like that: RUN OSNAP -Q (It worked in previous versions of Osnap, it still should work...) GREAT! But how do I clip some texts?! ------------------------------------- Easy! It it very simple but a little tricky also... Ok, put the cursor over the first letter of the text you want to SNAP, hold the LEFT-Amiga button and drag the mouse over the text you want to keep... Depending of the number of time you click before dragging the mouse, you can be in different clipping mode. If you activated the Line Frame button in the configuration window, it will work this way: 1 click : character mode 2 clicks : word mode 3 clicks : line mode 4 clicks : box mode But!... if in the configuration window you activated the box frame, it will be: 1 click : box mode 2 clicks : word mode 3 clicks : line mode .... no character mode! It is a little tricky at first but you will become used to it very quickly... Ok, it is not over... now that you are in the clipping mode you want, surround all the text you want to keep and leave the Left mouse button BEFORE the Left-Amiga key. If do the opposite, the clipping will be canceled (nice trick though...) Then, you can clip any number of time you want, all the clipped texts will be kepted in a buffer in memory (Clipboard to be more precised). Later, you will be able to send back the ones you want, in any order you want. Do I have to use a special font to be able to snap some text?! -------------------------------------------------------------- No. You should be able to clip (or snap... It means the same thing BTW) text on about any screen, as long as it is 8 points high (I think... remember, I didn't write the program). BUT, with some programs, I will not work. One of them is Diskmaster. I guess DiskMaster is not very legal in it's font handling. Ok, if you use Osnap with a telecommunication program, you will surely use it to Quote in your messages. But with Jrcomm by Jack Radigan (the best Shareware Telecommunication package for Amiga), you will need to use the supplied IBM font. If you do not use it, you will have problems to send back your clipped text because with the usual IBM font has two identicals characters (graphically talking), the NULL (00) and Space (32). If you do not want to use the supplied font for Jrcomm, you can modify your own... load any font editor and edit character 00 so it looks different than the Space (put a pixel anywhere in the matrix...) and save the font back to disk. Ok, now that I can clip text, how can I send it back?! ------------------------------------------------------ Very easy... It depends on only one factor. If you want to send back the text WITHOUT the Line and the Text prefixs previously specified in the configuration window, simply hit Shift-Left-Amiga-I and select the text you want to send in the little window which will pop up in your front screen. The text choosen will now be sent at the rate specified previously. If you want to send back the text WITH the Line and the Text prefixs (and suffixes..) previously specified, hit Shift-Left-Amiga-O and select the text you want to send. Ok, now if you know that you WANT to send the LATEST clipped text, no need to hit SHIFT in the previous key combinations... it will send only the last clipped text. It goes like this: Left-Amiga-I ---> Without prefixes Left-Amiga-O ---> With prefixes You want a little shortcut? Ok, if you don't want the prefixes, only hit Left-Amiga and Right mouse button... much more intuitive isn't it?! Sorry, no such shortcut with prefixes... Ok, now that I know how to clip text, how do I clip Graphics?! -------------------------------------------------------------- Even easier! Hit RIGHT-Amiga button, Push the Left Mouse Button and drag the mouse on the part of the screen you want to grab! Then, go to your Workbench screen (If you're not already there of course) and you will see a little window with the clipped graphic inside it. You can Resize the window to your liking but I doesn't affect the image. If you want to SAVE the brush, click on the little DISK gadget beside to Front/Back gadgets on the title bar of the window, a requester will appear in which you can enter any name you want to save the brush. You can Snap many brushes before saving them, if you have enough memory (CHIP) of course... WOW! What a program! But what is the Serial Thief you talked about? ------------------------------------------------------------------- The concept beside the serial thief has been suggested by me to Pierre Baillargeon, after I've seen such a thing on an Editor for the MS-DOS communication program TELIX. David Lebel (one of my friends) has been the first one to implement it successfully on Amiga with his program HangIt 1.0 (Available on his BBS, Metropolis, (418)626-4990). The method used by Osnap is less "Legal" but it works in JRcomm and maybe in some other communications programs. Ok, what is the purpose of a Serial Thief? Simple... It simply sends a space and a backspace at a regular interval of time over the Serial port. This way, if you are on a BBS and for a reason or another you do something else (Going on a background task in another screen, Going to the bathroom, answer the phone, answer the door, go to eat, etc...), this function will FOOL the BBS that you are still there and this way, you won't loose the line for "innactivity"... How does it work? Simple.. Hit Left-Amiga-T, and a little window will appear in the middle of your front screen... At this moment, the program begins to send his sequence of Space-Backspace until you hit the quit gadget in the little window. The best place to start this function on a BBS is in the message editor... You can be absolutely sure that the BBS will not hang you up for inactivity, even if you leave it for 10 minutes or 3 hours (depending of course of the time you have there). ARGHh... how could I live without all theses wonderful functions?!!! -------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know... I have this program since last december.. ;-> I felt sorry for all the poors guys outside Quebec who didn't know it's existence so I decided to post it in the USA so it can have a larger diffusion. Remember, this program is Public Domain/Freeware, but I think that Pierre would appreciate your feedback or suggestions for additions to Osnap. Call the BBS mentionned at the beginning of this file or write to me at the address mentionned below. I tested Osnap 2.9 on my A3000 with WB 2.0 and I encountered a nasty cosmetic bug... There is a "fill" that will cover everything in the differents windows, including the gadgets.. they remain active but are covered... I told this to Pierre and hopefully, he will correct this very soon. But Everything still work as explained with WB 2.0... --------------------------------------------------------------------- Ok, that should be all... Talk about it to your friends! And if you regularly use the Paragon message editor, quit using the Quoting function of this editor... Osnap will do the job much BETTER and FASTER! Marc Vaillancourt 2760 Bel-Air Ste-Foy, Quebec Canada, G1W-1J3 Co-Sysop of Metropolis BBS (418-626-4990), running on Paragon 2.07, 135 megs HD.