Software of the Month Club 1996 May

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TO ELIMINATE SHAREWARE NOTICES, BECOME A REGISTERED USER SuperClip (tm) 2.6, Shareware Edition A Screen Capture Program for Microsoft Windows Copyright 1993-96 Andromeda Software. All Rights Reserved. CONTENTS Introduction.............................................. 1 Capturing the Screen...................................... 2 Cropping the Clipboard Image.............................. 3 File Menu Item: Save as BMP............................... 3 Save as GIF............................... 3 Save as PCX............................... 4 Save as TIF............................... 4 Save as TXT............................... 4 Open BMP.................................. 4 Main Menu Item: Display................................... 4 Options Menu : Capture rectangle......................... 4 Clear clipboard........................... 4 Enter coordinates......................... 5 Invert colors............................. 5 Popup mode................................ 5 Reverse x-axis............................ 5 Reverse y-axis............................ 5 Stretch bitmap............................ 5 Text colors............................... 5 Text to bitmap............................ 5 TIF compression........................... 6 Main Menu Item: Print..................................... 6 Help Menu................................................. 6 Installation.............................................. 6 Registration.............................................. 7 Legal Notices............................................. 7 Introduction SuperClip is a clipboard viewer that can save all or part of the image on the clipboard to a graphics file in BMP, GIF, PCX, or TIF format. In Windows, the entire screen can be captured to the clipboard at any time by pressing the PrtSc key (Shift+PrtSc on 84-key keyboards), or just the currently active window by pressing Alt+PrtSc. Text can also be captured to the Windows clipboard by pressing PrtSc while a DOS program is running full- screen in text mode. SuperClip can save clipboard text to an ASCII file or to a monochrome graphics file. - 2 - To run SuperClip in Windows 3.1, select "Run" in the Program Manager "File" menu and enter the path to SCLIP.EXE. In Windows 95, click on the "Run" item in the "Start" menu and enter the path to SCLIP.EXE. The Installation section of this document explains in detail how to install the SuperClip icon into a program group window on the Windows 3.1 desktop, or into the Windows 95 Start Menu. Capturing the Screen SuperClip was designed to run minimized in "popup" mode, mean- ing it will pop up when you press the PrtSc key to capture the entire screen, or Alt+PrtSc to capture the currently active window. You can then save the entire image or any rectangular portion. To return to the application that was interrupted, simply click on that application's window or minimize SuperClip back to an icon. You can turn popup mode off by clicking on "Popup" in the Options menu, which will remove the checkmark next to this menu item. SuperClip doesn't need to be running in order to make a screen capture. Once you have pressed the PrtSc key, you can launch SuperClip to display the clipboard. You can then save the entire image or crop a rectangular area with the mouse or key- board before saving to disk. To save a captured image to disk, choose the desired format from the File menu. A dialog box will list the files of the selected format in the current directory. You may select one of the files listed or type a new file name in the edit box. You may also switch to another directory or disk drive. SuperClip will also display text captured to the clipboard by pressing the PrtSc key while a DOS character-mode application is running full-screen under Windows. Two character sets are avail- able for the display of text, OEM and ANSI, which may be selected from the Options menu. Text can be saved to an ASCII file or to a monochrome graphics file in BMP, GIF, PCX, or TIF format. While in popup mode, SuperClip will also pop up when another application puts onto on the clipboard a bitmap that is compa- tible with SuperClip. The compatible formats are DDB (Device- Dependent Bitmap) and DIB (Device-Independent Bitmap), two commonly-used bitmap formats. If you attempt to save a clip- board bitmap whose format is not one of these two, SuperClip will respond with a dialog box that says "No bitmap exists on the clipboard." - 3 - Because of the internal complexities of the popup feature, SuperClip will not allow more than one instance of itself to run. Double-clicking the SuperClip icon in Program Manager will therefore activate a currently-running instance if one exists, instead of launching a new instance. This property can be put to good use if the SuperClip window should become hidden by another window; double-click its icon in Program Manager to make the SuperClip window visible. Cropping the Clipboard Image The SuperClip display window can scroll the clipboard image hori- zontally and vertically by means of the scroll bars. To mark a rectangular area for cropping, move the cursor to the top-left corner of the desired rectangle, depress the left mouse button, move the cursor to the lower-right corner and release the button. Repeat this procedure to erase the rectangle and draw a new one. The width and height of the rectangle in pixel units will be displayed in the title bar, as will the x,y coordinates of the upper-left (UL) and lower-right (LR) corners of the rectangle. The origin of these coordinates is the upper-left corner of the clipboard image. You can use the keyboard to modify or enter rectangle coordi- nates. To do this, select "Enter coordinates" from the Options menu. The dialog box will allow you to specify the position of the upper-left corner of the rectangle. You can specify the position of the lower-right corner by entering the x and y coordinates or by entering the width and height. You may save the cropped image directly to disk by means of the File menu, or you may capture the rectangle to the clipboard by selecting "Capture rectangle" from the Options menu. To erase the rectangle, press Esc or position the cursor anywhere on the image and click the left mouse button. File Menu Item: Save as BMP Select this menu item to save the contents of the clipboard to an uncompressed Windows Bitmap File with the filename extension BMP. Monochrome, 16-color, 256-color, and 24-bit TrueColor modes are supported. File Menu Item: Save as GIF Select this menu item to save the contents of the clipboard to a CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format file with the filename ex- tension GIF. This format utilizes LZW compression, and supports monochrome, 16, and 256-color modes. GIF does not support 24-bit color modes. - 4 - File Menu Item: Save as PCX Select this menu item to save the contents of the clipboard to a PC Paintbrush file with the filename extension PCX. Mono- chrome, 16-color, 256-color, and 24-bit TrueColor modes are supported. File Menu Item: Save as TIF Select this menu item to save the contents of the clipboard to a Tagged Image Format file with the extension TIF. Three com- pression modes are available: LZW, PackBits, and no compression, any one of which may be selected from the Options menu. The defaults are LZW for 24-bit TrueColor images, and PackBits for monochrome and palette color images. File Menu Item: Save as TXT Select this menu item to save clipboard text to an ASCII text file. Two character sets are available. The OEM character set is the DOS-compatible IBM extended ASCII character set. The ANSI character set is the one used by Windows. If you save text to a file that already exists, the text will be appended to the file. File Menu Item: Open BMP Select this item from the File menu to open a BMP file and place it on the clipboard. The image can now be saved in any of the four available formats, or cropped and then saved. Main Menu Item: Display This pull-down menu allows you to select which of the available clipboard formats to display. Normally, Windows will clear the clipboard when the PrtSc key is pressed. However, applications can place a bitmap or text on the clipboard without first clear- ing it, so that text and graphics can coexist. This is the case when you select Open BMP. By default, SuperClip will display the format most recently added to the clipboard. Main Menu Item: Options Eleven options are available: Capture rectangle. Select this menu item to capture the current rectangle to the clipboard. You must first draw a rectangle with the mouse or by entering coordinates from the keyboard. Clear clipboard. Select this menu item to empty the clipboard. - 5 - Enter coordinates. Select this menu item to modify or draw a rectangle by entering its coordinates from the keyboard. The values that appear in the dialog box are those of the current rectangle, if one has been previously entered or drawn with the mouse. If there is no current rectangle, the values default to a rectangle that contains the entire client area of the SuperClip window. Co- ordinates may be entered that exceed the boundaries of this client area, and may include the entire image on the clipboard, up to a full screen. The origin of the rectangle coordinates is the upper-left corner of the clipboard image. To erase the rectangle, press Esc or click the left mouse button. Invert colors Select this menu item to invert the colors of the image on the clipboard, creating a negative image. The original colors can be restored by selecting this menu item again. Popup mode. This is the default mode of SuperClip. When minimized to an icon or hidden by another window, SuperClip will pop up onto the screen whenever a bitmap image or text is put onto the clipboard. Select this menu item to turn popup mode off or back on again. To return to the application that was inter- rupted, click on that application's window or minimize Super- Clip back to an icon. Reverse x-axis. Select this menu item to reverse the horizontal axis of the clipboard image. This will result in a mirror image. Reverse y-axis. Select this menu item to reverse the verticle axis of the clipboard image. The effect is the same as flipping a trans- parency over, top-to-bottom, and viewing it from the back. To simulate the effect of turning an image upside-down, it is necessary to reverse both the x and y axes. Stretch bitmap. Select this menu item to stretch or compress the clipboard image along the horizontal and/or verticle axes. Text colors. This menu item allows you to choose the displayed colors of clipboard text. The choices are black-on-white (the default) and white-on-black. Text to bitmap. Select this menu item to convert clipboard text to a bitmap image, so that it can be subjected to any of the transformation options and/or saved to disk in one of the graphical formats. - 6 - TIF compression This menu item allows you to select the compression scheme for TIF files. The choices are LZW (Lempel, Ziv, & Welch), PackBits, and no compression. The defaults are LZW for 24-bit TrueColor images, and PackBits for monochrome and palette color images. Main Menu Item: Print Select this menu item to send clipboard text or graphics to the printer. Before printing begins, Windows will first present a dialog box that will allow you to select various options, such as resolution and intensity, then SuperClip will present a dia- log box that will allow you to position the image on the page and stretch or compress it vertically and/or horizontally. Help Menu Online Help is available to explain the features of SuperClip, and includes a glossary of terms used in this document. Select "System info" from the Help menu to display the resolution and color capability of the Windows screen driver currently run- ning on your system. Installation To install the SuperClip icon into a group window in Windows 3.1, first create a directory on your hard disk where you want the SuperClip files to reside (the DOS manual explains how to do this). Next, copy the files SCLIP.EXE and SCLIP.HLP into that directory. Now start Windows and open the program group window into which you want to install the SuperClip icon. Next, pull down the File menu in Program Manager and click on New. Select "Program Item" and click OK. The "Program Item Properties" dialog box will now appear. For Description, enter "SuperClip." Press the Tab key, and for Command Line, enter the full path to SCLIP.EXE, such as C:\SCLIP\SCLIP.EXE. Press the Tab key, and for Working Directory, enter the path to the default directory where you want screen-capture files to be saved. Now click OK, and the SuperClip icon will be installed into the group window. To install SuperClip into the Windows 95 Start Menu, first click the "Start" button. Move the arrow to "Settings." Click "Task- bar." Click "Start Menu Programs," then click "Add." Now enter the path to SCLIP.EXE or select "Browse" to locate the file. Click "Next" and select the folder in which to place the Super- Clip icon. * * * - 7 - SuperClip for Microsoft Windows, Shareware Edition, Version 2.6 Copyright 1993-96 Andromeda Software. All Rights Reserved. The Professional Edition of SuperClip does not superimpose any shareware notice or logo on saved or printed images. To register and receive the Professional Edition, send $39 by check or money order to: Andromeda Software 125 North Prospect St. Washington NJ 07882 U.S.A. NJ residents please include sales tax. Steven A. Brown, Programmer INTERNET : 73140.3340@compuserve.com CompuServe: 73140,3340 Fax : 908-689-0047 CREDIT CARD ORDERS You may e-mail or fax your order with your name, address, VISA or MasterCard account number, and expiration date. Please include your signature on fax orders, and specify one of the following methods of delivery: 1. First-class mail on 3.5" disk. 2. SCLIP-PE.ZIP e-mailed to a CompuServe address. 3. SCLIP-PE.ZIP e-mailed to an America Online address. 4. SCLIP-PE.UUE e-mailed to an Internet address (requires UUDECODE.EXE utility to recover ZIP file). 5. SCLIP-PE.MME e-mailed to an Internet address (requires a MIME decoder to recover ZIP file). The total amount charged to your credit card will be $40.00. Orders may also be placed by telephone to (908) 689-0047. - 8 - SHAREWARE NOTICE The Shareware Edition of SuperClip is freely distributed. You may use it over a ten-day period to determine its suitability for your needs. To continue using SuperClip beyond this evaluation period, you will be required to purchase the registered Profes- sional Edition. Registration fees are the only compensation the programmer re- ceives for the work and expense of writing this program. Please support the shareware concept of quality, "try-before-you-buy" software. Registered users are entitled to unlimited technical support and low-cost upgrades. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY THIS SOFTWARE IS SOLD "AS IS," WITHOUT WARRANTY AS TO PERFORMANCE OF MERCHANTABILITY OR ANY OTHER WARRANTIES WHETHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. BECAUSE OF THE VARIOUS HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE ENVIRON- MENTS INTO WHICH THIS PROGRAM MAY BE PUT, NO WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE IS OFFERED. GOOD DATA PROCESSING PRO- CEDURE DICTATES THAT ANY PROGRAM BE THOROUGHLY TESTED WITH NON- CRITICAL DATA BEFORE RELYING ON IT. THE USER MUST ASSUME THE ENTIRE RISK OF USING THE PROGRAM. ANY LIABILITY OF THE SELLER WILL BE LIMITED EXCLUSIVELY TO PRODUCT REPLACEMENT OR REFUND OF PURCHASE PRICE. - 9 - LZW LICENSE NOTICE Use of this software is permitted only to the extent reasonably required to determine whether to purchase the software. After payment is made, use of this software is limited to use on only a single personal computer or workstation which is not used as a server. An additional payment of $10 is required for each use on another personal computer or workstation. Only a single copy may be made of this software solely for backup or archival purposes. The software may also be transferred to a single hard disk. Any use of this software in violation of the above is not licensed. For information concerning licensing the LZW compression and/or decompression capability, please contact: Unisys Corporation Welch Licensing Department - C1SW19 Township Line & Union Meeting Roads P.O. Box 500 Blue Bell, Pennsylvania 19424 Graphics Interchange Format and GIF are service marks of CompuServe Incorporated. # # #