The Business Master (3rd Edition)

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------------------- -- PrintGal v2.4 -- ------------------- David Steiner DES Software February, 1990 Table of Contents Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Source Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 STATUS LINES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 FILE MODE TOGGLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 LOAD ART GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 WRITE TO GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 SORT GRAPHICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 VIEW GRAPHICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 CONVERT NM TO PM/PS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 PRINT GRAPHICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 BATCH PRINT GALLERIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 TAG ALL GRAPHICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 UNTAG ALL GRAPHICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 REVERSE GRAPHICS TAGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 DIRECTORY SETUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 GRAPHICS/PRINTER SETUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 GRAPHICS DRIVER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 PRINTER SETUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 RESET PRINTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 COMPRESSED PITCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 EXPANDED PITCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 START GRAPHICS MODE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 START GRAPHICS LINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 END GRAPHICS LINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 END GRAPHICS MODE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 CHANGE LINE SPACING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 ACCEPT SPACING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 CR + LF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 FORM FEED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 CHARACTERS PER LINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 EXPANDED CHARS PER LINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 LEFT MARGIN (CHARS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 LINES PER PAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 TOP MARGIN and BOTTOM MARGIN . . . . . . . . . . 16 CHARS BETWEEN GRAPHICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 DOTS PER CHARACTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 DOTS PER LINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 PRINT EACH LINE # TIMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 IS THIS A LASER PRINTER? . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 CHECK FOR MOUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 BIOS VIDEO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 SNOW CHECKING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 BACKGROUND COLOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 OVERSCAN SET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 MENU COLORS & STATUS COLORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 ------------------ -- Registration -- ------------------ PrintGal is SHAREWARE. Yes, I said it. I have been getting enough phone support calls to justify calling this program shareware now. If you use this program beyond a few week trial period you are required to register. To register print and fill out the form in the PRINTGAL.REG text file. This file also contains cost information, my address and phone number. ----------------- -- Source Code -- ----------------- PrintGal was written in Turbo Pascal version 5.0. Although source code was available for the earliest versions of PrintGal, I have decided not to distribute it any longer. I'll be happy to answer any technical questions though. For those of you on GEnie who may have noticed a couple of messages I left in the Borland RT, I got the printer problems sorted out. My thanks to: Scott Bussinger Professional Practice Systems 110 South 131st Street Tacoma, WA 98444 (206)531-8944 Compuserve 72247,2671 Scott wrote the replacement printer unit, PRINTR, that takes care of the problems I was having. Page 2 -------------- -- Overview -- -------------- Unlike the earliest versions, PrintGal now reads all information for an art gallery into memory at once. The absolute maximum number of graphics it can hold at one time is 1,000. The practical limit seems to be about 800 on a machine with 640K of memory. Although PrintGal is now much more advanced, it is far from perfect. If you are loading a file and PrintGal runs out of memory, the program will simply abort. This isn't serious since you probably won't want a gallery to contain that many graphics anyway. Disk access is much faster than before. In prior versions of PrintGal the conversion process took a lot of time simply because Turbo reads files slowly. I accessed DOS directly for reading and writing graphics shapes and was shocked by the speed difference. This version is about ten times faster than the old. PrintGal is capable of reading, writing, converting, or printing galleries from NewsMaster, PrintMaster or PrintShop. PrintMaster and PrintShop graphics are identical, so there is no problem converting between them. However, NewsMaster graphics may be of variable sizes so the graphics must be converted to be used by PrintMaster or PrintShop. Files may be merged by loading more than one into memory at a time. When files are merged, PrintGal only remembers the name of the last one loaded. Page 3 ------------------ -- Installation -- ------------------ Installing PrintGal is as simple as copying the PRINTGAL.EXE and *.BGI files to the art gallery directory, changing to that directory and running PrintGal. You may put PrintGal in a separate directory, but you will then have to set the directories used for data and graphics drivers as per the DIRECTORIES menu option discussed below. Example of installing PrintGal, assuming PrintMaster is installed in the directory C:\PRTMSTR and PrintGal is currently on a disk in drive A: COPY A:\PRINTGAL.EXE C:\PRTMSTR COPY A:\*.BGI C:\PRTMSTR C: CD \PRTMSTR PRINTGAL After the first time PrintGal is run the file PRINTGAL.CFG will be created to keep track of changes you may have made to the configuration. For this reason you should always run PrintGal from the same directory. Page 4 ----------------- -- Terminology -- ----------------- For the purposes of this program the following terms are used: PM PrintMaster. NM NewsMaster. PS PrintShop. NewPS New PrintShop Graphic A single picture. Gallery A collection of graphics. These collections are stored on disk in two files. One file contains the names and the other contains the actual graphics. Tag PrintGal allows you to edit the contents of a gallery. This is done by loading the gallery and then choosing which files are to remain in the gallery or to be thrown out. The method used for this is to 'tag' the graphics you wish to keep. Tags are discussed in more detail under the 'View Graphics' and 'Batch Printing' menu selections. Page 5 ------------- -- Details -- ------------- This section covers each of the main menu options in depth. Before starting here are a few notes about the menu system. You select an option by using the cursor keys to move the highlight bar and pressing ENTER on the option you want. Note that if there are no graphics in memory, many of the main menu options do not work and no window is popped up. STATUS LINES ------------ Version 2.0 used a single status line at the bottom of the screen to show help information and the name of the file currently loaded. With version 2.1 I needed more room due to the addition of more status information. The bottom line of the screen is now dedicated to brief help messages. The top line of the screen shows the currently loaded art gallery, what disk file mode PrintGal is in (see the next section), how many graphics are in memory, how many of the loaded graphics are tagged, and the percentage of memory in use. Most of the status indicators are self-explanatory. The percentage of memory in use is a rough estimate, since the area used to store graphics is also used for other things, like popping up windows. So don't fret if you don't have any graphics loaded into memory but the status bar claims the program is 1% full. Be careful when loading PrintGal more than 80% full, since it still aborts if it runs out of memory. FILE MODE TOGGLE ---------------- In the top PrintGal status bar there is a cryptic File Mode indicator that will either be 'PM/NM', 'PS' or 'NewPS'. This tells you whether PrintGal is in PrintMaster/NewsMaster compatibility mode PrintShop compatibility mode or New PrintShop compatibility mode. This mode is only important for reading from or writing to the disk. Once graphics are in memory it doesn't matter what mode the program is in. The ability to switch modes once graphics are in memory means that you can use PrintGal to convert art galleries between PrintMaster and PrintShop. Simply load a graphic while in one file mode, switch modes, and write it back out (see the load and write options below for special notes). Page 6 The only thing you will notice immediately when selecting this menu option is that the top status line changes. Later, if I add support for other icon-oriented programs, I'll pop up a menu for choosing the File Mode. For now, I think it would have been a waste to do that with only two modes. This option defaults to PrintMaster compatibility the first time PrintGal is run. After that, it remembers what mode you left it in last. LOAD ART GALLERY ---------------- Selecting this option will pop up a window showing all art galleries in the current directory that match the current file mode. Use the cursor keys to select the art gallery you wish to load and press ENTER. I should mention here how files are stored on disk. PrintMaster and NewsMaster art galleries are stored in two separate files having the extensions .SDR and .SHP. The files hold the graphic's names and actual pictures respectively. PrintShop uses the same method, but uses different file name extensions (.NAM and .DAT). PrintShop has the additional requirement that all art gallery names begin with the two letters 'GR'. The New PrintShop uses a similar technique, but has two graphic file extensions .PNG and .POG for New graphics format and Old graphics format. The graphic names are kept in a file with the .PNM extension. The New PrintShop graphic file format supports high resolution copies of the graphics in a .PNG file, however PrintGal does not access them. There is more than one copy of each graphic in a .PNG file. The first part of the file contains the same type of data as the old PrintShop program. The second part of the file stores a second copy of the pictures at a higher resolution. These high resolution graphics normally only show more detail, so I did not consider it vital to support them. The only major problem this creates is that I can't write out .PNG files, so they may not be written back out to disk. Initially, there is no art gallery in memory so PrintGal just loads the file you selected. However, subsequent loads from disk will first ask if you wish to merge the graphics in memory with the new gallery. If you answer yes to the merge option the graphics in the selected file will be appended to those in memory. The default answer for this question is no, since it has been assumed that you will not want to merge files often. Page 7 WRITE TO GALLERY ---------------- This option writes the graphics in memory to disk. PrintGal only writes those graphics that you have tagged. When a file is loaded all graphics are tagged automatically, so if you don't wish to mess with tagging you may safely forget about it. Before writing, PrintGal checks whether or not all of the graphics in memory are tagged. If not, a warning message is displayed to make sure you really wish to leave some of the graphics out of the new disk file. Next you are prompted for a file name. You are only allowed to enter eight characters since the extensions are defined by the File Mode. The default file name is the name of the file last loaded, but any valid DOS name may be entered instead. If you enter a name that is unacceptable to DOS you receive an error message and will have to try again. Finally, PrintGal checks to see if the output file name you entered is already present. If it is, PrintGal asks to make sure you wish to replace the old file. As mentioned above, PrintShop gallery names must start with 'GR'. PrintGal makes sure that all file names start with these two characters when writing PrintShop files. If necessary the 'GR' will be inserted at the beginning of the default file name in order to remind you of this. You don't have to keep this naming convention, but if you don't PrintShop won't recognize it as a valid file, and neither will PrintGal later when loading PrintShop files. Note that this option is the only one that actually writes anything to disk. All other PrintGal operations are performed on the data in memory. As mentioned above, PrintGal does not fully support the New PrintShop .PNG file format. For this reason it will not write out a .PNG file. If you simply must output a .PNG you will have to settle for renaming it and saving it as a .POG file. This may done at the cost of the high resolution capability. SORT GRAPHICS ------------- Selecting this option will sort all of the graphics currently loaded into memory. A window pops up to let you know PrintGal is working, though sorts on normal sized galleries (100 graphics) take little time. Page 8 VIEW GRAPHICS (TAG, UNTAG AND RENAME) ------------- The name for this menu option not entirely accurate, since viewing is not the only thing allowed here. After selecting this option, a window pops up showing the names of all graphics currently in memory. Graphics that have been tagged are shown highlighted. While you are in this menu several keys are active: N,F1 : Rename the currently highlighted graphic. T,F9 : Tag the currently highlighted graphic. U,F10 : Untag the graphic. ENTER : View picture in graphics mode. ESC : Return to Main Menu. Pressing R or F1 pops up a window that allows you to rename the current graphic. This renaming may also be done while viewing pictures in graphics mode. The main use for tagging is to delete graphics. The graphics are not actually deleted from memory, but when the WRITE TO GALLERY option is chosen, untagged graphics will be left out of the output gallery. Pressing ENTER puts PrintGal into graphics mode. The chosen graphic is displayed on the screen, along with a bit of information about it. You may return to text mode by pressing ESC. While in graphics mode you may step through the graphics in memory by using the SPACE and BS keys to step forward and backward. The cursor keypad may also be used to move through the graphics. The 'T','U','F9' and 'F10' keys work here also to tag or untag files. --> A graphic that is tagged will have a frame around it. <-- Note that if PrintGal cannot initialize graphics mode, when it should be able to, there are three possible causes: 1) PrintGal is not autodetecting the proper graphics adapter. Go to Setup and explicitly tell PrintGal which driver to use. 2) PrintGal could not find the graphics driver files (.BGI files). Go to the Directories option and make sure the graphics driver directory is set correctly. If that is not the problem then make sure that the following files are in the directory you specified: Page 9 ATT.BGI CGA.BGI EGAVGA.BGI HERC.BGI PC3270.BGI 3) PrintGal does not have enough free memory to start graphics mode. This is possible when a large number of graphics are currently in memory. To determine if this is the problem, load a smaller file and try viewing the graphics again. CONVERT NM TO PM/PS ------------------- This menu option allows you to convert NewsMaster files to PM or PS format. This is necessary since NewsMaster allows variable sized graphics, while the other two programs do not. The standard graphic size for PM and PS is 88 by 52 pixels. When this option is selected PrintGal pops up a window showing a bit of information about the graphics currently in memory. It tells you how many of the graphics are already compatible, how many are too small for PM/PS, and how many are too large. In order to let you look at this information and give you a chance to abort the conversion PrintGal then asks whether or not you really want to perform the conversion. Graphics that are too small will be filled in with whitespace and centered. Graphics that are too large will be untagged so that they will not be written back to disk. Version 2.0 deleted large graphics from memory, but I changed it because this seems more consistent. PRINT GRAPHICS -------------- Well, there isn't much to say about this one as there isn't a whole lot that isn't obvious. However, you should note that you can configure how the output is printed by changing the margins and such from the Setup menu. Also, for those of you printing NewsMaster files, take notice that the graphic spacing is based on the largest graphic in memory. This could potentially create a printout with a lot of space around some graphics. I don't know exactly how well this method will work so let me know if something needs to be done. One new feature as of version 2.1 is that PrintGal will put the number of the first graphic in each row in the left margin. This will be done as long as there is enough room on the paper. To Page 10 make sure, set the left margin to at least five characters in the Printer Setup section (it defaults to 17). BATCH PRINT GALLERIES --------------------- Here is an option that I think everyone wanted. After selecting it a window pops up showing all of the galleries that match the current File Mode. Simply tag any art galleries you want to print and hit ENTER. PrintGal goes into batch mode: loading each gallery and then automatically printing. Now you can stick the computer in the basement and let it print all night if need be (may your printer never jam). TAG ALL GRAPHICS ---------------- This selection marks all graphics in memory for output to disk. You will not normally need to use this since all graphics are tagged by default when loaded from disk. UNTAG ALL GRAPHICS ------------------ This option is supplied to give you the option for how you like to think of tagging. Since all graphics are tagged by default, the default method of tagging is to look through the graphics and decide which are to be left out (untagged). By clearing all tags first, you may instead look through the graphics and decide which ones you want to keep. REVERSE GRAPHICS TAGS --------------------- Selecting this option will reverse all tagged graphics to untagged and vice versa. This may not have any obvious uses, until you wish to split an art gallery into two smaller files. To do this, load the large gallery and tag all the graphics you want in the first file. Save these graphics to disk and then reverse the tags and save again to the second disk file. DIRECTORY SETUP --------------- This menu option is useful for hard disk owners. Its main use is for setting where the graphics galleries are found. You may elect to keep PrintGal in its own directory rather than in the art gallery directory. Also if you use more that one of the Page 11 programs, PM, NM, or PS then you may change to the graphics directory of each program without exiting PrintGal. The graphics driver directory is provided mostly for my own use. I prefer not to have to keep a copy of the .BGI files everywhere they are used. Instead I just leave them in the same place as the Turbo compiler and tell PrintGal where to find them. You may have use for this option also if you use other programs that require .BGI files. GRAPHICS/PRINTER SETUP ---------------------- This option allows access to most of the remaining PrintGal variables. Selecting it pops up submenus that allow you to set the graphics driver, configure the printer, or change the screen colors used. GRAPHICS DRIVER --------------- By default PrintGal takes a guess at what video mode to use. It determines what type of graphics adapter you have and then selects the video mode that will provide the highest resolution. I recommend that you leave the graphics driver as DETECT, unless you encounter specific problems or prefer a video mode other than the default. After selecting a graphics driver a submenu will appear listing available video modes for that driver, if applicable. Some of the graphics drivers only have one mode, so the submenu only displays one option and you don't really have a choice. PRINTER SETUP ------------- Selecting this option allows about as much control over the printer driver as I could manage. The first set of prompts are for strings that are sent to the printer to perform the stated action. These strings are entered as the decimal character values, separated by spaces. There is room for quite long entries for these, but normally no more than two or three codes are required. The default codes used by PrintGal are set for Epson compatible printers. They will also work for IBM compatible printers with a few minor modifications. PrintGal now supports laser printers. Laser printer control codes are considerably longer than those for a dot matrix printer, so the string format has been changed. Decimal numbers listed will be converted to the corresponding characters. Page 12 Additionally, strings of characters may be input if they are inside of single quotes. A single quote character may be specified by two consecutive single quotes. For each of the configuration options below I will list the default Epson setup string, what it must be changed to for a laser printer and what minor changes may need to be made for other IBM compatible printers. Note that the (IBM) codes given will not always be required, they are given only to offer some direction to try to get your printer working. Here is a summary of what each string is used for: RESET PRINTER Laser: 27 'E' Epson: 27 64 This is the string required by your printer to reset it to the power-up defaults. The string is sent before each gallery is printed to make sure the printout is not affected by settings from programs previously using the printer. It is also sent after each printout to restore the line spacing and pitch settings that were changed by PrintGal. COMPRESSED PITCH Laser: 27 '(8U' 27 '(s0p16.66h8.5v0s0b0T' Epson: 15 (IBM): 27 15 This string will cause all text to be output at 17 characters per inch. For normal PrintMaster galleries the maximum graphic name length of 16 characters is long enough to make each name print wider than the actual picture. If compressed pitch were not used the names would be nearly twice as wide as the graphics. Among the many assumptions made about printer output, is the one that the dots per inch of the text pitch chosen is the same as that in graphics mode. For Epson printers this is true for double-density graphics and compressed pitch and these are the default modes. If you try to change the text pitch you will need to take this into account (see CHARACTERS PER LINE and DOTS PER CHARACTER). If your printer is not using compressed pitch then you may need to set this string to "27 15". Compressed pitch will look much narrower than the normal 10 pitch printer text. Page 13 EXPANDED PITCH Laser: 27 '(8U' 27 '(s0p10h12v0s3b3T' Epson: 14 Epson printers allow the text pitch to be changed to a wider font. This code selects expanded pitch for printing the page headers and footers. On a dot matrix printer this is an extra wide font. On a laser printer this is merely a bold courrier 10 pitch font. START GRAPHICS MODE Laser: 27 '*t150R' 27 '*r1A' Epson: (nothing) Laser printers must be told to enter a graphics mode where they will recieve a block of graphics information one raster line at a time. Dot matrix printers have no corresponding command. Note also that this command contains a command for setting the graphics resolution. By changing the 150 in the command string to 300 you can nearly double the number of graphics that can fit on a page. However, since these graphics are very small I chose to use 150 dots per inch. If you wish to try 300 dpi then you will also need to change the DOTS PER CHARACTER and DOTS PER LINE settings discussed below. START GRAPHICS LINE Laser: 27 '*b' Epson: 27 76 For each line of graphics information sent to a dot matrix printer this code is sent. Assumptions are that graphics information is sent to the printer in eight dot tall columns and that the first two characters sent after this graphics mode string will be the number of such columns being sent: GraphString <lo(N)> <hi(N)> graphics data where N is the number of columns of graphics data being sent. For each raster line of data sent to a laser printer this code will be a prefix to the line size. The characters following this prefix code will specify how many bytes of raster data will be sent. The number is sent as an ASCII string. Page 14 END GRAPHICS LINE Laser: 'W' Epson: (nothing) On a laser printer this suffix must be sent after the number following the START GRAPHICS LINE command. Immediately following this prefix will follow the specified number of bytes of binary raster data. END GRAPHICS MODE Laser: 27 '*rB' Epson: (nothing) This code tells a laser printer when all raster graphics information has been sent for a block of graphic information. The printer will then switch back to text mode. CHANGE LINE SPACING Laser: 27 27 '&l8D' Epson: 27 65 8 (IBM): 27 51 24 Graphics printing normally requires that the lines not be spaced as far apart as when printing text. If the line spacing is not shortened, thin white lines will appear in the graphics when they are printed. For Epson printers the line spacing that needs to be used is 8/72 per inch. For laser printers, the only reason this command needs to be set is to increase the number of graphics that may be fit on a page. By setting the line spacing to 8 lines per inch the text takes up less vertical space, allowing more rows of graphics on a page. Some IBM compatible printers do not allow setting the line spacing in 1/72 inch increments. It is then necessary to set the line spacing in 1/216 inch units. The equivalent setting is then 24/216 inches. You may notice this problem occuring if you are getting small vertical white lines in your printout. ACCEPT SPACING Laser: (nothing) Epson: (nothing) (IBM): 27 50 Some printers require that after you send the new line spacing you wish to use, you then send another code to activate it. This strikes me as redundant, but it is necessary. One printer that Page 15 this is required for is the Okidata MICROLINE. IBM ProPrinters and compatibles may also require this control code. If you are getting very small horizontal lines in the printout try setting this ACCEPT SPACING code to "27 50". If the spaces between lines are fairly large see the CR + LF setting (coming up next). CR + LF Laser: 13 10 Epson: 13 10 I decided to keep a separate string for sending linefeeds to the printer. I believe that a common problem with printing programs is that some printers require a CR/LF pair, while others only need the CR. When a printer is of the second type, sending the LF inserts an extra space and printouts are then double spaced. If this problem occurs with your printer then set this string to '13'. FORM FEED Laser: 12 Epson: 12 I believe the form feed code is pretty standardized, but you can configure it anyway. I couldn't see any reason to leave it out when I allowed access to all the other codes. PRINTER SETUP (cont) ------------- The remaining configuration prompts have to do with items such as characters per line, or margins: CHARACTERS PER LINE Laser: 132 Epson: 132 This number indicates how many characters will fit on one line. The main use for it is to set the carriage width. If you have a wide carriage printer you can change this variable to take full advantage of it. The secondary use is if you change the printer pitch above you will need to adjust this also. Page 16 EXPANDED CHARS PER LINE Laser: 80 Epson: 68 Same as characters per line, but for expanded pitch. LEFT MARGIN (CHARS) Laser: 17 Epson: 17 Minimum space to leave as the left margin. This value is given in characters, so pay attention to the printer pitch. The lines will be right justified, so the actual margin used may be wider. As mentioned above under the PRINT GRAPHICS menu option, the number of the first graphic in each row is printed in the left margin. To make sure that there is enough room to print this number the margin needs to be at least five characters. Setting it smaller disables the number printing function. LINES PER PAGE Laser: 80 Epson: 99 This is the total number of lines per page. This should take into account the modified line spacing. TOP MARGIN and BOTTOM MARGIN (lines) Laser: 0 & 0 Epson: 0 & 9 My preference is to leave about an inch of paper above the print head so I don't have to waste a sheet of paper to start a printout right at the top of a page (boy am I a miser). The default setting for PrintGal is 0 lines for a top margin and 9 lines for the bottom margin. If printing starts a bit down from the top, this has the desired effect of leaving room for page breaks. A setting of four lines on top and five at the bottom should work pretty well for users who leave their paper right at the top of a page. Laser printers normally enforce half inch margins at the top and bottom of a page automatically, so the software needn't add any extra margins. Page 17 CHARS BETWEEN GRAPHICS Laser: 0 Epson: 0 This is the number of characters to insert between each column of graphics. The width of each graphic is determined by the wider of the graphic itself or the maximum name length (16 characters). For PM and PS files the name is always the wider of the two. Since the names seldom reach the maximum length, no space between graphics is sufficient for PM and PS files. DOTS PER CHARACTER Laser: 9 Epson: 7 This is the number of dots across each printed character. It is used to determine how many columns of graphics can be printed on a page. You may compute what this number should be by dividing the dots per inch resolution of the printer graphics by the compressed pitch value. For example the number for a laser printer using 150 dpi graphics is 150 / 16.667 = 9. Note that fractions should be dropped. If you are printing 300 dpi on a laser printer the dots per character should be set to 18. DOTS PER LINE Laser: 18 Epson: 8 This is the number of graphics dots each printed line of text is. I should always be left at 8 for dot matrix printers. For laser printers it may be calculated by dividing the graphics resolution by the number of lines per inch and dropping any fractions. If you are printing 300 dpi graphics on a laser printer this should be set to 37. PRINT EACH LINE # TIMES Laser: 2 Epson: 1 This option was added to help laser printers adjust for having a 1:1 aspect ratio. The dot matrix resolution used by PrintShop and PrintMaster is closer to 2:1, meaning that the dots are twice as tall as they are wide. To get circles to come out nearly round each raster line is printed twice for laser printers. Page 18 If you set this number to 1 on a laser printer you will be able to fit more graphics on a page, but they will look squashed. This option has no effect on dot matrix printers. IS THIS A LASER PRINTER? Laser: yes Epson: no Laser printers accept graphics information one row of dots at a time. Dot matrix printers, however, use the bizarre method of transfering a row of eight dot tall columns at a time. Because of these radically different data transfer methods you will have to specify which type of printer you are using. CHECK FOR MOUSE --------------- This y/n question defaults to no. If you want to use the mouse you need to change it to yes. For most computers toggling this option to yes won't hurt anything if your mouse driver is not installed. However, some compatibles (such as older Compaq Portables) lock up if the check for a mouse is made without a mouse driver installed. BIOS VIDEO ---------- Another y/n toggle. This defaults to yes, for doing all screen writes through the BIOS. While screen updates using the BIOS should make PrintGal somewhat more portable, this method is very slow. Once you have the program up and running this should be changed to no if possible in order to speed up screen writes. SNOW CHECKING ------------- If you are not using the BIOS for video I/O this y/n question determines how quickly data is written to the screen. For most CGA cards this toggle should be set to yes to avoid static during screen writes. Most other cards such as monochrome, EGA, and VGA may have this set to no for even quicker screen updates. BACKGROUND COLOR ---------------- This version of PrintGal pops up windows that have a 'shadow' behind them. For the black shadow to show up the color of the background should be set to some color other than black. When this option is chosen a window pops up showing 16 colors to choose from. Just move the arrow to the color you want. Page 19 The only special note is that the high intensity colors towards the bottom of the color list aren't normally available for background colors. Choosing a high intensity color will result in the same low intensity color being used for the backgrounds (i.e. choosing light red results in a background color of dark red). The CGA card can be set to allow these high intensity colors for text backgrounds, but this is very rarely done. You must exit PrintGal and run it again to use the new colors. OVERSCAN SET ------------ Color cards allow you to set the border of the text screen to a color other than black. If your card will allow this you may set this yes/no toggle to yes. It defaults to no to avoid trouble with cards that don't allow this option. MENU COLORS & STATUS COLORS --------------------------- Selecting this option allows you to change the colors used by PrintGal. It doesn't need much explanation so just try it out and see what happens. Note that to get PrintGal to use the new colors you have to exit the program and then run it again. Page 20 ------------------ -- Applications -- ------------------ Well, before I close up shop I'll point out a couple of uses that you may have missed if you scanned the above too quickly: CONVERTING Freely move galleries from PrintShop to PrintMaster and back. You can do the same with NewsMaster galleries, but some files will require you to explicitly convert them before going from NM to PM or PS. MERGING PrintGal can take a bunch of teeny galleries and make one nice regular sized one. Just load each file you want lumped together, answering yes to the merge prompt and save it back to disk when you are done. DELETING You can get rid of unwanted graphics from art galleries by loading a file, untagging the offensive graphics and then saving the file. SPLITTING You can break large galleries up by tagging all the graphics you want in one gallery, saving it, and then reversing the graphics tags. Then write these graphics to disk in a separate art gallery. GREATEST HITS Create a gallery of your favorite graphics by combining the techniques of merging and deleting. Simply merge a bunch of galleries, untag all of the graphics, and then view the graphics and tag any you wish to put in the goodies gallery. Finally, write the tagged graphics to disk. The only problem with this is that you'll have to be careful about how many graphics you load into memory at one time. You should try to avoid loading PrintGal more that 80% full at once. When you approach this limit, write the currently tagged graphics to your greatest hits file and reload it. This will free up some memory and allow you to append another file and continue.