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1991-07-30
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SCRNDISK User's Guide -Page 1-
Description
-----------
SCRNDISK is a memory resident screen snapshot utility. You can
use SCRNDISK to capture the contents of a 40 or 80 character wide
text screen to disk. Each time SCRNDISK's hotkey combination is
pressed, SCRNDISK will append the image of the current screen to
the file that you have selected. SCRNDISK works with text-modes
only, it will not capture graphics-mode screen images. ANSI
graphics, however, since they are displayed in text-mode, can be
captured with SCRNDISK.
Just before making itself resident, SCRNDISK requests the name of
the file to which you want it to write the screen snapshots. Any
valid DOS filename may be used, in the standard format for file
identifiers, "drive:path\name.ext". Specification of the "drive"
and "path" is optional, but recommended. The maximum permitted
length of the filespec is 64 characters. Examples of valid
filespecs follow:
C:\PROJECT\DOCUMENT\SCREENS.IMG
\PROJECT\DOCUMENT\SCREENS.IMG
DOCUMENT\SCREENS.IMG
SCREENS.IMG
The last example would create and append to the file named
SCREENS.IMG in the current working directory, whatever that
happens to be each time that SCRNDISK is invoked. The first
example would cause SCRNDISK to always append to the file named
SCREENS.IMG in the subdirectory \PROJECT\DOCUMENT on drive C, no
matter what the current working directory happens to be each time
SCRNDISK is invoked. This "complete" form of the file specifier
is recommended, to avoid ending up with lots of files scattered
among your various disks and subdirectories.
Note that if the file does not yet exist when SCRNDISK is
invoked, it will be created automatically. SCRNDISK will append
each snapshot to the end of the file, so a single file will, in
general, contain images of more than one screen; each image
occupies 25 lines of the file. If the "End-of-Screen" mark
facility is active (see description of the /MarkOn switch,
below), an additional 3-line marker will be appended after each
screen image. If the file to which you are writing screen images
is erased, moved, or renamed, SCRNDISK will simply create it
again when the next snapshot is requested.
SCRNDISK 1.21 Copyright (C) Ken Bell 1991. All rights reserved.
SCRNDISK User's Guide -Page 2-
Installing SCRNDISK
-------------------
At its simplest, installation may be accomplished by merely
typing "SCRNDISK /INSTALL" (without the quotes) at the DOS
prompt. If you choose this method of installation, SCRNDISK will
display its banner and ask you to enter the name of the screen
image file.
If only a filename, without drive and path identifiers, is given,
the screen image file will be created in the current drive and
subdirectory. In fact, if you simply press the <Enter> key
without typing any filename at all, the default filename,
SCREEN.IMG, will be used, and the file will be created in your
current working directory. I recommend that you specify a full
pathname so that you may change your current drive and working
directory freely, while always writing to the same file. This
will avoid littering your subdirectories with screen image files.
Although SCRNDISK does not accept a filename from its command
line, input can be redirected from a file. You may create a
response" file containing only the filespec of the file you want
SCRNDISK to use. Type the filespec into your response file
exactly as you would if entering it at the "File:" prompt that
SCRNDISK normally displays upon installation. Then, when you
install SCRNDISK, use DOS' ability to redirect input so that your
file is used in place of keyboard input.
For example, suppose you want to automatically load SCRNDISK when
you start your computer, and you want the file to which SCRNDISK
writes to be named SCREEN.IMG in the \PROJECTS subdirectory of
your hard drive. In other words, the file that is to receive
your screen snapshots will be named C:\PROJECTS\SCREEN.IMG. To
accomplish this, you can create a small, plaintext file,
containing the single line, C:\PROJECTS\SCREEN.IMG. This
"response" file can be given any name you wish. If you name it
SCRNDISK.INI ("INI" for "initialization") and put in the C:\UTIL
subdirectory, along with SCRNDISK.COM, you may then include in
your AUTOEXEC.BAT file the line:
C:\UTIL\SCRNDISK /INSTALL < C:\UTIL\SCRNDISK.INI
This will cause the pathname contained in SCRNDISK.INI to be
accepted by SCRNDISK at the time it makes itself resident.
SCRNDISK 1.21 Copyright (C) Ken Bell 1991. All rights reserved.
SCRNDISK User's Guide -Page 3-
Enabling and Disabling SCRNDISK
-------------------------------
When resident, SCRNDISK may be in one of two possible states,
"Enabled" or "Disabled". When enabled, SCRNDISK will copy the
current screen image to the specified file, each time that its
special hotkey combination has been pressed. In the disabled
state, SCRNDISK ignores its hotkey combination, and is
essentially dormant. By default, SCRNDISK installs itself in the
enabled state.
If you prefer, you can override the default by specifying on the
command line that SCRNDISK should start in the disabled state.
For example, if place the command
SCRNDISK /INSTALL /DISABLE < C:\UTIL\SCRNDISK.INI
in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, you may leave SCRNDISK disabled until
you want to start using it, at which time you can enable SCRNDISK
by typing "SCRNDISK /ENABLE" at the DOS prompt.
By the way, each of SCRNDISK's command switches may be
abbreviated to their minimum recognizable length, which is
usually just the first letter of the command. You may, for
example, shorten "/ENABLE" to "/E", "/DISABLE" to "/D", and so
on. In fact, either "/" or "-" may be used, and the case, upper
or lower, of the switch is ignored, so "/E", "/e", "-E", and "-e"
are all equivalent forms of the "/ENABLE" command. Thus the
following command is equivalent to the previous example:
C:\UTIL\SCRNDISK /I /D < C:\UTIL\SCRNDISK.INI
Another command switch that you might find useful during
installation (or after, for that matter), is the /KEYS command.
By default, SCRNDISK's hotkey combination is the three-key chord,
"Ctrl-LeftShift-RightShift". You may prefer a different hotkey
combination. Any two or more of the keys {Alt, Ctrl, LeftShift,
RightShift} may be used to invoke a screen dump. To change
SCRNDISK's hotkey combination, specify the first letters of each
of the desired keys after the /KEYS switch; be sure to leave a
space, however, between /KEYS and the list of keys. To expand
upon our previous example, one can install SCRNDISK in the
enabled