The Business Master (3rd Edition)

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GIFDOT (c) Copr. 1988-89 Lawrence Gozum & Marvin Gozum ────────────────────────────────────────────────────── User Manual DISCLAIMER This product is distributed AS IS. The authors specifically disclaim all warranties ,expressed or implied, including ,but not limited to, implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose with respect to defects in the diskette and documentation, and program license granted herein, in particular, and without limiting operation of the program license with respect to any particular application use or purpose. In no event shall the authors be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential or other damages. LICENSING AGREEMENT You may use this program on a TRIAL BASIS only; this means that you may freely evaluate the usefulness of this program for 10 DAY TRIAL PERIOD. Should you find this program useful, you must register it (see last section of this manual). You will then be provided with the latest releases of applications that will run on your system; these range from Hercules, CGA, EGA and VGA. All programs developed, with the exception of VGACAD and VGA2EGA are being modified to run on virtually ANY graphics system down to Hercules and CGA. You may freely distribute copies of this program in its UNMODIFIED state provided you do not include it in other software packages, with the exception of distributing it as part of a bundle of Public Domain or shareware programs on a single diskette. In addition you may not charge more that $3.50 for copying and/or distributing this program in the absence of recognized Users Group guidelines (e.g. ASP - Association of Shareware Professionals or NYACC/PC-Blue -New York Amateur Computer Club.) WHAT IS GIFDOT ? GIFDOT is a dot matrix printer utility for printing: 1) ANY colored GIF picture (4 colors and up recommended), with any size (up to 2048 x 2048 x 256) - NO VIDEO REQUIRED WHEN LOADING ANY GIF FILE; 2) ANY VIEWABLE VGA/MCGA 320x200x256 color picture captured with VGACAP; 3) VGACAD pictures; 4) 16-color pictures converted to 320x200x256 with EGA2VGA; 5) Colorized or Grey-Scale converted MacPaint (READMACs) with MAC2GIF. GIFDOT is a totally revised version of VGAPRN which is graphics card independent - NO VIDEO CARD IS NECESSARY. Even if you are using CGA or Hercules cards, you can still print VGA or SuperVGA GIF pictures as long as you have GIF picture files or 320x200x256 BLD/PLT files. GIFDOT converts your colored pictures to 256 grey shades on a 64 grey scale continuum; adjust the brightness and contrast levels through sophisticated Grey Scale Skewing (Brightness Adjustment) and Histogram-based Contrast Stretching algorithms, respectively. GIFDOT uses the Floyd-Steinberg algorithm for dithering pictures; this error-distributed technique provides the illusion of a continuous grey scale limited only by your printer resolution. As such, GIFDOT has the capability to print in several sizes, as discussed below. WHAT IS VGACAP ? VGACAP is a terminate-stay-resident (TSR) utility that allows you to capture the 256 color palette and screen in the 320x200x256 color mode and save both the palette and screen in "Bloadable" formats. VGACAP's main purpose is to capture and "Bsave" the pictures of commercial and shareware viewing programs as well as painting/graphics and CAD programs available now and in the future. REQUIREMENTS NO VIDEO CARD REQUIRED FOR USING GIFDOT. About 512KB of memory is required, although it uses about half of that. You MUST have a VGA or MCGA adaptor (at least BIOS compatible) present and an analog monitor to use VGACAP. VGACAP uses less than 2K of your available memory ! Note: When in DOS or using a picture viewer (e.g., VGAGIF) or application which requires a keypress to continue, it is necessary to hit any key or a specified key (e.g., spacebar or return) after hitting the 'HOTKEY' before VGACAP saves the screen and palette. COMPATIBLE PRINTERS GIFDOT was designed to run on Epson and IBM compatible printers that support 120 dpi (horizontally) and 72 dpi (vertically) at the minimum. Epson (e.g., LQ,FX,GX,RX,JX, ...) IBM (e.g., Graphics Printer, Proprinter, ...) The following partial list of manufacturers have compatible "ESC" codes to run GIFDOT; if your printer supports "ESC L" (sets double density graphics) and "ESC J" or "ESC A" (sets n/216 or 1/72 inch single line spacing) GIFDOT will run on your system. Check your printer manual. Canon (e.g., PW series) Centronics C.Itoh NEC (e.g., Pinwriter, ...) Okidata (e.g., 92/93, 192/193, 292/293, ...) Panasonic (e.g., 1080i,1090i, ...) Star (e.g., Gemini, Micronics SG series) Tandy DMP NOTE: YOU MUST DISABLE AUTO-LINEFEED; THIS SETTING IS NORMALLY 'OFF' (BY DEFAULT). IF YOUR PRINTER HAS THIS FEATURE 'ON', YOU MUST SET THE DIP SWITCHES TO TURN IT 'OFF' OTHERWISE YOUR PICTURE WILL BE PRINTED WITH 'SKIPPED' LINES. HOW TO USE VGACAP Simply run VGACAP before entering your painting/CAD or digitized picture viewer. After loading, press <ALT-F10>, while viewing your picture in any drawing/paint/CAD or viewing program. Your current screen and palette will be saved in your default drive and directory in the standard Bsave format for all BASIC programs. The first time you run the program it will save your screen and palette to SCREEN00.BLD and SCREEN00.PLT respectively. If there is an existing SCREENxx.BLD or SCREENxx.PLT file, then it will increment to the next higher number. This can be confusing if you keep the captured files without renaming them since you can have unmatched screens and palettes. You can use your favorite memory managers to remove this TSR or reboot to release it from memory. LOADING PICTURES INTO GIFDOT Two formats are accepted by GIFDOT: GIF and BLD/PLT files; At the start of the program, you will be prompted to select [G]IF or [B]LD files to to selected or [Q]uit if you forgot the filename. When loading GIF pictures, if you have a VGA/MCGA card, GIFDOT will display the picture as it decodes it and show its conversion to a 256 grey scale picture. All other cards will load in memory; GIFDOT automatically senses if you have a VGA/MCGA or SuperVGA card. All pictures are interpolated to a 320x200 size. As such, LARGE SuperVGA GIF files (e.g., 640x480x256, 800x600x256 and 1024x768x256) are interpolated to 320x200x256; succeeding updates will take advantage of the rich color information in LARGE GIFs by creating virtual disk buffers. SQZGIF is recommended for LARGE GIF pictures to retain more color information for better printing results. 16-color EGA/EEGA/VGA pictures will also be interpolated; it is highly recommended that you use EGA2VGA to process such pictures before loading into GIFDOT. 2-color pictures will have very poor results since there is not much grey information to create nice dithering patterns from; these are mostly in a dithered form to begin with. Use MAC2GIF if you want to print MacPaint pictured with GIFDOT. You can select any filename by moving a highlighted bar (with the arrow keys) and pressing the <return> key. Pressing <Spc> allows you to select a different PATH, while <Esc> exits. When selecting a *.BLD file, be sure it has a corresponding *.PLT file or a error message will result. PATHs *MUST* end with a backslash character "\" or your specified PATH will be rejected (an error beep will result). The following are legal PATH examples: "A:\" "B:\" "C:\GIF\" "D:\GIF\VGA\LARGE" Every captured picture, VGACAD picture, converted EGA2VGA picture, and converted MAC2GIF picture will have two files: the screen and palette. The screen should have the extension .BLD (for BLoaD) and .PLT (for PaLetTe). THE MAIN MENU After successful loading of your picture (a LARGE GIF may take 1-2 minutes to load and interpolate) you will see this: Select Print Size (inches) (pixels) [P]ortrait 10.0 x 8.0 960 x 768 [L]arge Landscape 8.0 x 6.0 960 x 432 [M]edium Landscape 6.0 x 4.5 720 x 320 [S]mall Landscape 4.0 x 3.0 480 x 216 [T]iny Landscape 2.6 x 2.2 320 x 144 [H]istogram Analysis [B]rightness Threshold [K]ontrast Threshold [R]estore Screen [N]ew Picture [Q]uit Simply select the letter to initiate that function or option. CONTRAST STRETCHING & ENHANCEMENT [K] - Contrast Stretching is performed using a "histogram" of your pixel value distribution. Each pixel can have a grey value 0 to 255 which corresponds to each of the colors 0 to 255. What Contrast Stretching does is to equalize the distribution of grey scales to evenly span the range of grey values from 0 to 255. For example, a typically unequalized image may have the following distribution of pixels. The low and high bins are the edges of the histogram distribution. All pixels between the edges (i.e., the high and low bin) will be stretched to fill the entire 256 gray range. N ╔═════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ low ▓▓ high ║ P ║ bin ──┐ ▓ ▓▓▓▓ bin ║ i ║ │ ▓▓ ▓▓▓▓ │ ║ x ║ ▓ ▓ ▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓ ▓ ║ e ║ ▓ ▓ ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓ ▓▓▓ ║ l ║ ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓║ s ╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ 0 -------------------------127----------------------255 After Contrast Stretching the distribution will approximate this. N ╔═════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ▓ ▓ ║ P ║ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ║ i ║ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ║ x ║▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓║ e ║▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓ ▓║ l ║▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓║ s ╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ 0 -------------------------127----------------------255 When prompted "Add Contrast 1-255", select a number within that range and both the high and low bins will be move accordingly; normally a value between 5 and 30 will yield the best results. Note that when you have a picture surrounded by a large "black" area, that area may not be black BUT a very dark shade of grey resulting in a few error-distributed patterns to appear; you must use at least a value of "1" to equalize the grey distribution so that BLACK WILL BE THE DARKEST COLOR and avoid error-distributed pixels in areas that are supposed to be black. VGA/MCGA users will have interactive feedback; they will see the results and can abort the process; all other cards will not have this option. BRIGHTNESS ADJUSTMENT When this option is selected, you will be prompted with "Adjust Brightness (+100-)"; the brightness of all pixels will be adjusted acoordingly. A value of "-10" will "darken" all pixels by 10% (it will skew the distribution towards BLACK); conversely a value of "20" will "brighten" all pixels by 20%. This feature is VERY IMPORTANT since what you see is normally NOT what you get (for VGA/MCGA users); Since dot-matrix printers tend to emphasize BLACK rather than its absence, WHITE, a picture that looks fine on screen (VGA/MCGA users) will look much darker in print. HISTOGRAM ANALYSIS Non-VGA useers will find this function VERY useful; it is the only way you can get feedback on the screen about the quality of your picture. This function will display TWO(2) histograms. The first, labelled "Original", is the screen that will be restored with the [R]estore Screen function, while the second is the "Modified" picture which reflects all the changes in Contrast and Brightness. The scales used in the histograms are based on the MODE, which is the highest grey scale frequency in the picture; normally these are the far bins: BLACK and WHITE. There are 64 points on the x-axis and 10 points on the y-axis. The 64 x-axis points correspond to the 64 grey scale continuum; the entire picture is "stretched" to 256 grey shades, which means that each point on the x-axis represents 4 grey levels. Each point on the y-axis varies with the MODE. If the most frequent grey shade is BLACK and 20,000 pixels (about 1/3 of the screen) is BLACK, then each point on the y-axis will represent 2,000 pixels. With this in mind, grey shades with less that 2,000 pixels will appear as a "flat line". You will notice that changing the Contrast or brightness may make your "Modified" histogram appear as a "flat line" with a few very high bins. You can magnify the scale (i.e, reduce the value each y-axis point represents) by pressing the <Spc> bar. Bins with the "┼" character show grey shades that extend beyond the MODE (as you magnify the scale, more Bins will have this symbol). After modifying a picture (Contrast Stretching or Brightness Skewing), the "modified" picture may not display the full distribution since the highest bins are so large that smaller bins come out as a "flat line". To see more data, reduce the [B]ins and/or magnify the scale with the <Spc> bar. Pressing the [B]ins key option will cut the "edges" or "anchors" of your "Modified" histogram by 1. Thus, the first time you press [B]in, you grey scale continuuum will become a 2-62 grey scale; the next will be 3-61 and so forth. Since pure BLACK and WHITE pixels tend to dominate the MODE, adjusting the [B]ins will make the distribution more viewable. Experiment freely with the scaling options; you can always press [R]eset to start over. TEST.GIF will appear as a "perfect binomial distribution", almost a normal curve, and is a good picture to use in becoming familiar with Histogram Analysis. LANDSCAPE and PORTRAIT PRINTING This is self-explanatory; a picture with the corresponding size in inches and pixels will be printed accordingly. A [P]ortrait, which is the largest possible print size, will be printed sideways; Landscape is the normal way we view a picture. Before printing, you will be asked if you want to adjust the settings. You can select between an [E]pson, [I]BM driver or [O]kidata driver. You can also opt for single or double pass printing (when your ribbon is worn), and printer port #1 or #2. While printing, you can press <Esc> to abort the printing process. A Horizontal Tab feature has recently been added. This feature will allow you to fit as many as 8 Tiny pictures on one page. Simply input the number of pixels that will be "tabbed". If the Horizontal Tab causes the picture to print out of an 8 inch sheet, you input will be rejected (error beep will result). A full 8 inches is calulated at 960 pixels at 120 pixels per inch. OPTIMAL PRINTING To get the BEST possible print-out, we suggest that you experiment with the [T]iny Landscape option while interactively adjusting the brightness and contrast stretching variables; you can always [R]estore Screen if you have "messed-up" your picture. When satisfied with the results, you can progress to larger prints. Become familiar with the Histogram charts and the results on your printer. After a while, you will be able to guage the quality of your print-outs by simply looking at the Histograms before printing.. VGA/MCGA users, remember that what you see is not necessarily what you get. In this respect, all other users are equal; you have to interactively adjust the picture quality with your printer. I suggest keeping 1-3 pages of tractor-feed paper during your experiments. REGISTRATION BONUS: Registered users of VGACAD v1.4-1.5, VGA2EGA v1.0, SQZGIF v1.0-v1.2, GIFPUB v1.0-1.2, MAC2GIF v1-2 and/or EGA2VGA v1-2 are registered for GIFDOT. Copy your REGISTER.OVL file into the directory of GIFDOT and it will operate as a registered version. IF YOU HAVE NOT REGISTERED ANY OF THESE PROGRAMS, DO SO NOW; WHEN VGACAD v1.60 IS RELEASED, THE REGISTER.OVL FILE WILL CHANGE AND ALL NEW RELEASES WILL REQUIRE REGISTER.V16 TO OPERATE AS A NON-SHAREWARE VERSION. For 19.95 (for orders outside of U.S.A. add USD $15.00) you will be entitled to the latest update of GIFDOT and REGISTER.V16 file (when released). The following programs listed below are provided (latest copy or update) to registered users. As much as possible, we are reprogramming all utilities to work with ANY video card; programs that, at present, work with ANY video card are: GIFPUB, GIFPUB, EGA2VGA (v2.0), MAC2GIF and SQZGIF. We intend to modify all utilities to have device-independent graphics capabilities (with the obvious exception of VGACAD, VGACAP, VGA2EGA, and CGA2VGA). If you are a Hercules, CGA or EGA user, and you upgrade to VGA, please inform us as soon as possible so that we may send you VGA-dependent releases too. * Device-independent utilities GIFPUB - converts 256 color GIFs to B&W images of varying sizes for desktop publishing/printing as .PCX (ZSoft format for Ventura Desk Top Publisher, First Publisher, Publisher's Paintbrush, PC Paintbrush+) or rename files to .PCC for importing in Aldus Pagemaker. SQZGIF - converts LARGE GIF pictures (up to 2048x2048x256) to 320x200x256 using interpolation and "color averaging" techniques to blend/smooth "jaggies" inherent in reducing LARGE GIFS while retaining a maximum of color information. Version 1.2 is now 300% FASTER and features the same user interface. MAC2GIF - converts .MAC ("readmac") pictures to 5-16 grey shades or color and saves results as .GIF or BLD/PLT file, and other formats; graphics are viewable in VGA, MCGA or EGA - no video card is required for direct Black & White conversion to GIF. NEW! EGA2VGA (v2.0) - converts GIFs (16 colors and below) or ANY VIEWABLE 2-16 color EGA/EEGA/VGA picture to 320x200x256 by actually creating 256 NEW COLORS; outputs load directly to GIFPUB, GIFPUB, and VGACAD. If you load .MAC pics (by converting to GIF with MAC2GIF), you can smooth/convert Black & White images to grey shades; B&W GIFs and captured pics will also be "smoothed" into grey shades. *NO VIDEO REQUIRED* * Device-dependent utilities/applications VGA2EGA - conversion utility to convert 256 color pictures to EGA or Extended EGA picture with "35" grey shades or any combination of 42,875 COLORS for the BEST possible rendition of 256 color pictures on an EGA/Extended EGA system. VGACAD - extensive paint/image processing program for VGA/MCGA users; v1.50 features extensive paintingcapabilities, an integrated GIF interface, Airbrushes, color and grey image processing functions (smoothing, noise removal, shading, contrast stertching, edge detection, high frequency-boosting, ... more), Bezier/spline curves, multi-featured Cut&Paste, variable sizing, multi-directiona 256-color gradient fills, 256 color 16x16 pattern fills, and a LOT of other 256-color capabilities. Whats next ? SYNPCX is utility to convert dithered, monochrome .PCX (Zsoft) files to smooth grey shades.This utility is primarily designed to convert scanned Black & White images, saved to a .PCX file, for use image processing with VGACAD, redithering/resizing with GIFPUB, printing with GIFDOT, or EGA conversion with VGA2EGA. SYNPCX will be graphics device independent (No Video Required). VGA2EGA is being "turbo-charged" in speed and will feature Floyd-Steinberg error-distributed dithering of EGA colors for a standardized 16-color picture resulting in excellent detail retention and, virtually, standardized viewing on any EGA/EEGA system, with the greatest possible number of colors "viewable". On the longer term, you can expect radical changes in VGACAD. We are also, developing VGASHW (a 256-color presentation system), VGACBT (the PROGRAMMABLE Computer-Based Training counterpart of VGASHW) AND MANNEQUIN (what "Weird Science" tried to do in the movie it will do on the computer screen with potential applications for Advertising and Fashion Design, aside from creating your own artistic nudes). If you support maverick authors like us, we will continue to develop innovative products like nothing seen commercially - otherwise they will, as many (sigh!) good Shareware programs, simply "DIE" from lack of support ! Compare the cost/benefit ratio of any of our products with commercial products; we want to continue supporting and developing these products. Please support the User-Supported (Shareware) concept; you, and you alone, determine whether it will be worthwhile to continue developing. To register, send in the registration form and check payable to Dr. Marvin Gozum 2 Independence Place Apt. 303-2 6th & Locust Street Philadelphia, PA 19106 NEW! 3.5" disk users: We are now supporting this format. If you want your updates in this format, add $10.00. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Graphics Interchange Format and GIF are trademarks (tm) of CompuServe Inc. an H&R Block Company.