The Business Master (3rd Edition)

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Text File | 1993-02-12 | 27.4 KB | 547 lines

UTHORING TECHNIQUES The IR was developed to make it easy for non-programmers to create electronic books and other documents to be displayed on IBM-compatible PCs. Since it presents all text in graphics mode, it can also display illustrations. My goal was to design the program so that writers could concentrate on their text and illustrations, and not be concerned with technical aspects of how they are displayed. Preparing text for the IR is very simple. All you need is a text editor or word processor that produces pure text files (also known as ASCII files). ASCII files are just text files with no special codes for bolding, underlining, and so on. All the .DOC files for the IR are pure ASCII files. To examine them outside the IR, just quit the IR. Then give the following command from the DOS prompt: type author.doc | more (and press ENTER) the "| more" part of the command will show the file one page at a time. (The "|" or "stick" is usually above the backslash "\" on most PC keyboards.) After you've written your text, call it anything, but save it with a .DOC extension. That's all there is to it! The ideal tool for creating text files is a TEXT EDITOR, more or less a scaled-down word processor that programmers often use when they're writing program code. If you have Version 5.0 of DOS, then you have a fairly good text editor, called EDIT. I use a shareware editor called BOXER that is absolutely fantastic. But you can also use a word processor such as Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, or PC-Write. The only requirement here is that you must save your file in ASCII format, and most word processors allow this. Among the "goodies" that registered users receive (more on this later) are shareware copies of some of the software I have found to be excellent for preparing documents for the IR. One of these is BOXER, the text editor I mentioned before. To the right is a portion of BOXER's screen (re- duced here). It has pull-down menus, mouse support, split screens for editing multiple files, a drawing mode (using text-based box and line characters), cut-and-paste, search and replace, complete online help--in short, everything you could possibly ask for in a text editor! Registration is only $35--a real bargain. BOXER has many fans, and even has its own newsletter! There are two other requirements that are cosmetic--they make your text files display better in the IR. First, don't use TABS. Tabs show as "garbage" characters in the IR. Use spaces if you need to indent paragraph heads. Don't bother with a left margin either, the IR displays each line starting about five spaces from the left edge of the screen. So just write your text "flush left." You CAN use "extended ASCII" characters, like the line drawing characters or math symbols and international characters (ê, á, ü £). The IR fully supports these characters. The second suggestion is that the total number of lines in your file be a multiple of 21. This is because the IR shows its "pages" as 21 screen lines. The README.DOC file is 63 lines long, or three "screen pages". If it were a few lines shorter or longer, the lines would show O.K., but they would "jump" as you reached the last page. Don't worry about the length as you're writing--just fix it when you have finished. Your word processor or text editor should show a total number of lines at the end of the file. Let's say your file is 249 lines long. The next highest multiple of 21 is 252, so all you have to do is hit the ENTER key three times. This puts in three carriage returns, and makes the file 252 lines long--exactly 12 screen pages. So fine, Mr. Arithmetic. Am I supposed to memorize the "21 tables"? Of course not. All you have to do is refer to the handy chart on the next page... SCREEN-PAGE-TO-LINE-NUMBER CONVERSION CHART: Screen page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 First line: 1 22 43 64 85 106 127 148 169 190 211 232 253 274 295 Last line: 21 42 63 84 105 126 147 168 189 210 231 252 273 294 315 Screen page: 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 First line: 316 337 358 379 400 421 442 463 484 505 526 547 568 589 Last Line: 336 357 378 399 420 441 462 483 504 525 546 567 588 609 Screen page: 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 First line: 610 631 652 673 694 715 736 757 778 799 820 841 862 883 Last line: 630 651 672 693 714 735 756 777 798 819 840 861 882 903 Screen page: 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 First line: 904 925 946 967 988 1009 1030 1051 1072 1093 1114 1135 Last Line: 924 945 966 987 1008 1029 1050 1071 1092 1113 1134 1155 Screen page: 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 First line: 1156 1177 1198 1219 1240 1261 1282 1303 1324 1345 1366 Last Line: 1176 1197 1218 1239 1260 1281 1302 1323 1344 1365 1386 (To print this chart, Press F2, select Option 2, then Option 3.) This chart goes up to 66 (screen) pages, which should be a good start. The maximum line lenth in the IR is 75 characters. Any lines that are longer will be truncated. Most word processors and text editors have a "status line" at the bottom of the screen that will tell you when you've reached Column 75. (I have to put in a plug for registration here. Registered users get a LOT of goodies to make the authoring process even easier. First, they get a hardcopy of the screen lines chart that goes up to 200 pages--4200 lines--the IR's limit. They also get a shareware copy of the BOXER text editor, and more...) Bolding and Underlining Text Version 1.5 of the IR now supports bolded and underlined text. Most word processors use control characters embedded in the file to "signal" that a word or phrase should be bolded or underlined. The IR uses a different approach. Ignore this issue until you've finished writing your document. Then read through your file while in the text editor or word processor and locate the words/phrases to be bolded, etc. Write down: (1) the word or phrase itself, (2) the column number of the first character of the word or phrase (plus 4 for the IR left margin), and (3) the line number of the line in which it appears. Use the line number figure to calculate the "screen page" on which the word/phrase appears. Refer to the screen lines chart if necessary. Say you want to underline a book title that is on line 340 of your document. The screen lines chart shows lines 337-357 will be "screen page" 17. Now count the lines from the beginning of the screen page to the line where the title occurs, inclusive. Line 340 is the 4th line on screen page 17. Now you have all the information you need. Create a small text file called MYFILE.CIF, where "MYFILE" is the same name as the .DOC file it refers to. Starting with the first word or phrase to be bolded or underlined, enter the information for each in this form: Hamlet 36 4 17 2 The CIF file should include this information for each word or phrase to be bolded or underlined. Examine the .CIF files for the IR to see examples of CIF files. This may seem complicated at first, but it's really pretty simple. You want to use bolding or underlining sparingly, so you should have only a few words or phrases in each document that need this treatment. It's really harder to explain it than it is to actually do it. Print the screen lines chart and use it. All you have to do to check your work is start the IR, then load your DOC file. If your numbers are off, you'll know it! So just leave the IR, edit your CIF file, then run the IR to check it again. Preparing Documents with Illustrations Displaying graphics in the IR is done just like bolding and underlining text--you create a small text file with an .FIF extension (for Figure Information File) telling the IR the name of the file and where to put it. It should follow this format: penbook <-- name of the .PCX file This is the README.FIF 40 <---horizontal location (column) file for the README.DOC 10 <---vertical location (row) document for the IR. 1 <---page (screen page) Each picture has four files ──┐ items of information: 90 ├── info. for next (1) the name of the 138 │ illustration file, without extension, 2 ──┘ (2) the horizontal and joek ──┐ (3) vertical coordinates, 470 ├── info. for next and (4) the screen page 150 │ illustration on which the picture 3 ──┘ will appear. The IR operates in EGA video mode. This means that the display you're looking at consists of 350 rows of 640 colored dots called PIXELS (short for "picture elements"). In the example above, the FIF file tells the IR to place the upper left corner of the "penbook" graphic 40 pixels from the left edge of the screen, and 10 pixels from the top, and to do this when displaying screen page 1 of the README document. Check out the chart on the next page... 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 6 6 4 5 7 8 0 2 3 5 6 8 0 1 3 4 6 8 9 1 2 4 6 7 9 0 2 4 5 7 8 0 2 3 5 6 8 0 1 0 6 2 8 4 0 6 2 8 4 0 6 2 8 4 0 6 2 8 4 0 6 2 8 4 0 6 2 8 4 0 6 2 8 4 0 6 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 056 | 070 Of course, the positions on this chart are not exact, but | 084 they're much better than guessing (believe me!). The numbers | 098 across the top represent the horizontal coordinates, and should | 112 be read vertically. The beginning of this sentence, for example, | 126 is approximately 216 pixels from the left edge of the screen. | 140 | 154 The numbers in the FIF file refer to the UPPER LEFT CORNER | 168 of the picture. This is where the upper left hand corner of the | 182 picture will be when the page is displayed. For example, the | 196 tools shown to the left are 40 pixels from the | 210 left edge of the screen, and 210 pixels from | 224 the top. (Check the AUTHOR.FIF file if you | 238 don't believe me.) Try this--press F2, select | 252 Option 3 and change the screen colors. Now you | 266 can see the actual outline of the picture! You'll probably want | 280 to print the text of this page as well, to keep for reference. | 294 Even with the help of the chart, it will probably take a couple of tries to get the picture exactly where you want it. Fortunately, it's a pretty easy process. Write the .FIF file, then run the IREAD program, and select the file (the text and FIF files should have the same name left of the period). If the picture is not where you want it, just leave the IR, then edit the FIF file and make the correct- ions. Run the IR again, and see the results. It won't be long until you're able to make an accurate placement with only one or two revisions. Preparing Pictures All pictures used in the IR must conform to two requirements. First, they must be in EGA 16-color mode, and second, they must be in the popular PCX format. If you're confused, don't worry. I'll explain each in the next paragraphs. EGA stands for Enhanced Graphics Adapter, and was the first real "high resolution" mode that supported color for the IBM and compatible PCs. In this age of VGA and Super VGA, you might wonder why I chose this mode for the IR. One reason was memory--EGA takes a whole lot less than VGA, even in 16-color mode. Both EGA and VGA have the same resolution horizontally, 640 pixels. EGA has 350 pixels vertically, while VGA has 480. In the 16-color mode, VGA is not really that much better than EGA. To get those spectacular photo-realistic images that you see on some VGA screens, you need a 256-color mode. Standard VGA supports this only in the 320x200 mode--that's 350 pixels across by 200 vertically. Nice for games, but not really adequate for the kinds of illustrations we've come to expect in books. Of course, 256 colors at 640x480 resolution is wonderful, but now we're beyond standard VGA, and are in the strange (and very memory-hungry) world of Super VGA, which requires special monitors and graphic cards to support these modes. No doubt in the future super VGA with thousands of colors at 800x600 resolutions and beyond will be common, and later versions of the IR will support these modes, but for now the 16-color EGA format produces some very impressive results while requiring lots less memory and putting much less strain on your microprocessor. Check the manual for your paint program before you start creating pictures for the IR. There should be a way to start your paint pro- gram so that it comes up in EGA mode, or a way to switch to EGA mode from a menu. DeluxePaint II has you select screen modes when you start it. In Neopaint, you just click on the "Video Mode" option (more about Neopaint later). Some paint programs may "autodetect" the video mode your monitor and card will support and start in this mode, but these programs should allow switching to another screen mode via a menu, use of a function key, etc. Again, check your program's manual if you're not sure. The PCX graphics format is a very popular format for storing graphics screens on disk. There are several other popular formats such as GIF, CUT, IMG, GEM, TIFF, PIC and several others. PC Paint- brush, a very popular paint program, saves files in PCX format. So does DeluxePaint II Enhanced (although it's an option). The new shareware program Neopaint will save in PCX, GIF or TIFF formats. Dr. Halo saves in CUT format, but has a PCX save option as well. All graphics used in the IR must be in PCX format. All PCX graphics files have a .PCX extension. Using Paint Programs to Draw Pictures The feature that distinguishes the IR from other text viewers (besides its graphic interface) is its ability to display hi-res color pictures along with the text. While you don't have to draw your own pictures, you will still need a quality PC paint program to color them, add (graphic) text captions, crop them to size, and a variety of other things so that they can enhance your document and better communicate its content. There are a variety of paint programs available for the PC, some costing $500 or more. You don't need to spend this kind of cash for a good paint program, however. Most of these expensive paint programs run only under Windows or have many sophisticated tools that you may never need. Good commercial programs that run under DOS can be had for about $100, such as DeluxePaint II Enhanced and PC Paintbrush V. I bought DeluxePaint II years ago, then upgraded to IIe, and have been very happy with it. At the time Version 1.0 of the IR was re- leased there was no shareware paint program that I found suitable for producing graphics for the IR. But now there is! Behold NeoPaint from OSCS Software! This $45 shareware program can easily hold its own with programs that cost four or five times as much! In fact, no other program seems so tailor-made to preparing graphics for the IR. It supports multiple video modes (EGA/VGA/SVGA) and multiple windows (you can work on several graphic files at the same time, cutting and pasting among them). It has up to 45 "zoom" levels so you can tweak individual pixels to your heart's content, and works with GIF and TIFF files as well as PCX files. (There are thousands of GIF files on BBSs that you can download. NeoPaint lets you load them in, alter them to suit your needs, then save them as PCX files that can be displayed with text in the IR!) But perhaps the most important feature of NeoPaint in preparing pictures for the IR is its ability to "crop" pictures. As you have probably noticed by now, the pictures I've used are generally very small, occupying only a fraction of the screen area. This not only follows the principles of good page layout and design, but also saves heaps of hard disk space. When you start a new "painting" in a paint program, its size de- faults to the size of the screen in the video mode you're working in. If you're working in the EGA 640x350 mode, then your picture will be exactly the size of the screen when it's saved, even if most of it is "white space" that you didn't use. What NeoPaint does is let you "cut out" just the portion of the drawing area that you want to show in the IR. Just click on the scissors icon, which lets you "drag" a dotted line rectangle around the area you want. Once it's marked, you click on the EDIT menu and select the COPY TO option. Write in a name for your graphic, press ENTER and voila! You've got a small illustration ready for display in your IR document! To be fair, most commercial paint programs let you do this too, but they make you jump through more hoops. Once you've marked an area to be copied, they generally give you the option of saving these small "cut-outs" as small graphic disk files. Both PC Paintbrush and Deluxe- Paint IIe let you save "cut-outs" as PCC files. It turns out that PCC files are really just small PCX files, so all you have to do is rename them with the DOS "rename" command. For example, to change PICTURE.PCC to PICTURE.PCX, type ren picture.pcc picture.pcx and press ENTER. Now your picture is ready to be displayed in the IR by specifying name, coordinates and page number in the document's FIF file. There is one more point to be made when you are creating pictures for the IR with a paint program. It has to do with palettes. Palettes The EGA mode that the IR uses will display a maximum of 16 colors on the screen at one time, from a "palette" of 64. The "default" or startup palette for this mode consists of the 16 colors shown at the bottom right. Most paint programs give you the option of altering the palette so you can select another set of 16 colors. DO NOT ALTER THE PALETTE! Stick with the default palette if you intend to use the picture in the IR. The IR is set up to use the default palette. While it will display a picture with a custom palette, the colors will revert back to the default colors, which could make your pictures look strange indeed. This may seem DEFAULT PALETTE FOR EGA MODE limiting at first, but this palette includes the primary colors and is sufficient for most purposes. Note that the default background color for the IR is light cyan, not, white, so you may want to make your picture background this color if you want the picture to "blend in" with the text background and look as if it were "printed on the page" along with the text. If you still feel restricted by the 16-color limit, let not your heart be troubled! Both DeluxePaint IIe and NeoPaint give you a set of a dozen or so additional colors. These "pseudocolors" are created by using two colors laid out in a "checkerboard" pattern. In the illustration to the left, you can see a pseudocolor made by using the green and gray colors in a checkered pattern. EGA pixels are so small that it takes a good eye to see that the color is not really solid. So don't worry about having enough colors--these "bonus" colors should give you a sufficient range for your needs. One cautionary note when working with pseudocolors: be careful when using paint tools like color fills where you fill an outlined figure with a color. If you use a pseudocolor for this, make sure it's what you want, because you won't be able to fill it with another color. (It'll look like nothing's happened because all you've filled is one pixel!) Pictures from Other Sources It is not always necessary to create your illustrations from scratch. If, like me, you lack natural art talent, then you will come to rely on a variety of sources of ready-made art that you can either use intact or load into your paint program and alter to your needs. Three common sources of artwork are BBS pictures, clip art and scanned art. BBS Pictures If you're a modem jockey and frequent the electronic bulletin boards (BBSs), then you're probably aware that there are thousands of public domain pictures, some of them quite beautiful, available for downloading. Personally, I don't use a lot of these because I live in a rural area and most BBSs involve a long-distance call. But if you have local call access to BBSs, CompuServe, GEnie, America Online or another service, then go for it. Just be careful about the video modes. Many graphic pictures available from the BBSs are not in EGA 16-color mode. Others have copyright restrictions that prevent their use if you're planning to sell your works. Most are in GIF for- mat, a compressed format developed by CompuServe. This used to be a problem for me, because DeluxePaint does not read GIF files. But now I have NeoPaint which lets me load a GIF picture and save it as a PCX file! So there's another reason to get a copy of NeoPaint. (If you register your copy of the IR, I'll send you a copy. See the LICENSE file for more details.) Again, in the interest of fairness, I have heard that PC Paintbrush Version 5.0 reads and writes GIF files. PC Clip Art Clip art is generally a collection of black-and-white line drawings used for publications such as newspapers, magazines and newsletters. These tend to be smaller drawings that represent categories such as business topics, people, buildings, industrial and office equipment, common signs and banners, and a variety of cartoon characters. There are two major categories of clip art, hardcopy and PC images. Hardcopy clip art comes in books and must be scanned in to be used by the PC (See the Scanned Art section). PC Clip art includes collections of graphic files that can be loaded directly into PC paint or desktop publishing programs. Every desktop publishing program comes with some clip art images. These collections may be quite extensive, but most desktop publishing clip art tends to be in TIFF, PCL or other formats popular with these types of programs. By contrast, most shareware clip art collections are in PCX format. These collections can be found in vendor catalogs such as PC-SIG, The Software Labs, Public Brand Software, etc., and most are also available online through CompuServe, GEnie, America Online and local BBSs. If you purchase clip art for use with the IR, be aware of three things. First, the files must be in PCX mode (unless you have a conversion program). Second, almost all PC clip art collections are in black and white. You will have to color them with your own paint program. Third, check the copyright for the clip art collection. Some clip art collections have copyrights which limit their use to personal, home or business presentation projects. If you intend to distribute your IR masterpiece for profit, be careful not to violate the copyright. At the risk of becoming annoyingly repetitive, I'm going to have bring up NeoPaint again. NeoPaint also has a clip art collection, although it doesn't call it that. NeoPaint has a feature called STAMPS. When you click on the stamp icon, you get access to 80 small (64 x 64 pixels) images in full color. Some of these are quite good, as you can see in the sample to the right. You can also edit these images, then save them under another name. Or you can create your own stamps which can be called with the stamp tool. Among the stamps that come with NeoPaint are arrows and patterns NEOPAINT'S "STAMPS" that come in very handy. Scanned Art A scanner is a piece of hardware that can transfer images on paper to graphic images for the PC. There are two kinds, flatbed and hand scanners. Flatbed scanners transfer entire 8 1/2" x 11" paper images at a time and generally cost around $800-$1000 dollars. Hand scanners, like the name implies, are handheld scanners that can scan in an area about 4 1/2" wide by 10" to 20", depending on a num- ber of factors. The advantage of hand-held scanners is their low cost. You can get one for just under $100, and they are well worth the investment. A black- and-white scanner is all you really need (the color ones are much more expensive), since you can load the scanned picture into your paint program, "clean it up" and color it until it is exactly what you want. With a scanner you can not only scan in pictures you have drawn in marker or pen, but you can also copy images from books, magazines and newspapers. Of course, you will have to be careful about using copyrighted material, so this is where clip art books are invaluable. Many of the pictures I used for the manuals you are reading came from one book of copyright-free designs. Dover Publications puts out a whole series of these clip art books, all of them copyright-free, that just might serve 90% or more of your artwork needs. Of course, you will need a scanner, but $99 for a scanner is far less expensive than hiring an artist. There are color hand scanners for about $300-$400, but I haven't used any of these. These more expensive scanners are generally de- signed to take advantage of the 256-color VGA mode, or feature 32 or 64 "gray scales" to make scanned black-and-white photos retain their realistic attributes. Keep in mind that the IR does not support these higher video modes as yet, so if you're considering a scanner mainly for use with the IR, the cheapest hand scanners are probably your best bet. I have a DFI scanner. Other good brands are Mustek, Logitech, The Complete series, and Mars scanners. A magazine like PC Sources has dozens of ads for mail order houses where you can get good prices and service. Summary I've presented a lot of information on the preceding 25 screen pages, but I think you'll agree that, overall, developing illustrated documents for the IR is not very hard. The hardest part is writing the text and creating the pictures. PC programs can do some amazing things, but they're no substitute for imagination (thank goodness!). But they are a wonderful outlets for the innate human need to explore and create. My motive in creating the IR was to offer an opportunity for those of you who have those creative urges and want to exercise them in the PC environment, but who don't want to do it through programming. And why should you? So I did the programming for you. If you've read this far, then you must be eager to get started. If you still want more information, then check out the IDEAS.DOC article. <<END OF ARTICLE>>>