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SnagIt Horizon Technologies Incorporated 1745 Hamilton Road Suite 300 Okemos Michigan 48864 SnagIt SnagIt is the print utility that Windows forgot. SnagIt is a screen print and capture program for Windows. SnagIt processes input from the screen, the clipboard, or a BMP file and outputs to the default printer, the clipboard, or a BMP file. SnagIt provides control over color intensity, monochrome intensity threshold, and gray scaling. SnagIt may be controlled by DDE to provide other applications the ability to output screen data. Credits Program Development: Stewart Nutter Documentation:Tim Pearl, Dewey Hou 2 HTI Overview Horizon Technologies Inc. (HTI) is a computer consulting and software development company located in Okemos, Michigan. We provide a full range of services to organizations assessing or implementing Windows or OS/2 applications for use in distributed systems. We concentrate our services on those areas that are most likely to complement the capabilities within our customer's organizations. We offer assistance during the assessment and design and development phases. We offer an extensive background in the successful implementation of distributed applications on Windows and OS/2 platforms. Our experience includes projects using all major network topologies, protocols, LAN operating systems, and many LAN-based commercial products. Copyright Horizon Technologies Inc. 1990, 1991 All Rights Reserved. 3 Table of Contents Introduction .....................5 Installation .....................6 Getting Started ..................7 Feature Reference Mouse Conrrols.................9 Input..........................9 Output........................10 Format........................11 Options.......................12 Save Setup....................13 Advanced Topics Monochrome Conversion.........15 Color Boost...................16 Gray Scaling..................16 DDE Usage.....................16 Appendix A DDE Command Reference.........17 Appendix B Other HTI Products............19 4 Introduction This Manual is divided into several sections. The first section contains installation instructions and directions on how to create basic screen prints with SnagIt. The second section is the feature reference. The feature reference will explain each of the SnagIt menu items and it effects. The Last section is Advanced Topics. It contains discussions of how to make use of the advanced features of SnagIt such as, gray scaling and using Dynamic Data Exchange This document was created using SnagIt and Microsoft Word for Windows 5 Installation System Requirements: - Windows 3.0 - A printer that supports Bitmaps such as an HP Laserjet or Postscript Printer Installing SnagIt is easy. Simply copy the file SNAGIT.EXE to your windows directory. Example: COPY A:SNAGIT.EXE C:\WINDOWS Next start Windows and create a new program item with the Program Manager. If you need help with this, consult your Windows Users Manual. We recommend placing SnagIt in the Accessories Group. To have Windows load SnagIt automatically, edit your WIN.INI file in the WINDOWS directory and add SNAGIT to the load line. Example: Load=CLOCK SNAGIT This will load the clock and SnagIt as icons. 6 Getting Started Printing a Screen In this section you will learn how to use some of the basic features of SnagIt and how to create your first screen print Loading SnagIt If you chose to have SnagIt load automatically during the install procedure, you should see the SnagIt icon displayed after you start windows . If SnagIt has not been automatically loaded for you, double click on the SnagIt icon in the Accessories Group Selecting The Print Area SnagIt can print the entire screen, a selected region of the screen or a single window.. To select what to print, double click on the SnagIt icon to restore SnagIt to a window. The SnagIt windows will display the current settings. Click on the Input menu item to view the list of options. Select one of the following options: Screen: Prints the entire screen. Entire Prints a single window. Window: Client Area: Prints only the window client area Region: Allows you to select a rectangular region anywhere on the screen. If you selected Entire Window,Window Client Area or Region SnagIt will allow you to select the window or region when you print. Printing To print press [Ctrl][Shift]P. Entire Window or Window Client Area as the input area, position the pointer on the title bar of the window you wish to print and press the left mouse button. 7 If you selected Region as the input area position the pointer at the upper left corner of the region you wish to print. Hold down the left mouse button and drag the pointer to the lower right corner of the region and release the mouse button. Clicking the right mouse button will cancel the operation While SnagIt is printing the following message box will be displayed. To cancel a screen print click on the Cancel button in the message box 8 Feature Reference Mouse Controls Left Button - The left mouse button is used to select SnagIt menu options and to select the screen image. Right Button - The right mouse button is used to cancel an operation Input The Input Menu is used to select what SnagIt will print. The currently selected option is marked by a check mark. The different input options work as follows: Screen - When you select screen, SnagIt will print the entire screen. Window Client Area - If you select this option SnagIt will print only the client area of a single window. The client area is the area surrounded by the window borders. The client area does not include the borders, title bar, scroll bars or the caption line. After you press [Ctrl][Shift]P, select the client are you want to print by positioning pointer anywhere in the client area and click the left mouse button. Entire Window - Selecting this option causes the entire window to be printed. After you press [Ctrl][Shift]P position the pointer over the window you want to print and click the left mouse button. Note: windows can contain many smaller windows inside of them. Items such as OK and Cancel buttons, and icons are windows themselves. Clicking on one of these will result in only the button or icon printing. It is best to click on the title bar of the window you want to print. Rectangular Region - Press [Ctrl][Shift]P then select the region to be printed by positioning the pointer over the upper left corner of the region. Press and hold the left mouse button then drag the pointer to the lower right hand corner of the region and release the mouse button. Bitmap File - If you select this option SnagIt will display a dialog box requesting the name of the file to read the bitmap from. Bitmap files are graphics files generated by some paint programs, SnagIt or other Windows programs. Bitmap files usually have a file extension of .BMP. 9 Clipboard - Selecting the clipboard option causes SnagIt to print the contents of the Windows clipboard when you press [Ctrl][Shift]P. Items are placed on the clipboard by the cut or copy commands in other Windows programs. Output The Output Menu allows you to select where SnagIt will print to. SnagIt Supports the following output devices: Printer - When printer is selected sends the output to the currently selected Windows printer. Bitmap File - If bitmap file is selected SnagIt will ask you for the name of the file to print the bitmap to. Clipboard - Selecting the clipboard option causes SnagIt to send the input image to the Windows Clipboard Using SnagIt to print images to a bitmap file, or the clipboard can be very useful for importing screen images into a word processor, desktop publishing package or a paint program. Format SnagIt supports three different format options, monochrome, color, and gray scale. Select the format option you want with the Format Menu. The current option will be marked with a check mark. The format options work as follows: Monochrome - The input image is converted to monochrome before it is set to the output device. The monochrome threshold determines the amount of black and white in the output image. 10 Monochrome Threshold Dialog Box Color - Color boosting, if enabled, is applied to the input image before it is sent to the output device. Gray Scale - Colors are mapped to up to 256 shades of gray before the image is sent to the output device. See the Advanced Topics for further discussion on formatting options. Options Alert - Setting the alert options causes SnagIt to signal you with a when it has completed processing the input image and/or when it has completed sending the image to the printer or other output device. The value entered for this field determines the number of beeps. This is a particularly useful feature when using the gray scale option. Clipboard Chain - Setting the clipboard chain option to true causes SnagIt to print each time the clipboard changes. This is useful for doing a print screen from a DOS box. When you press the Print Scrn key in a DOS box Windows copies the screen to the clipboard. If you have the clipboard chain option set, SnagIt will then automatically copy the image to the printer for you. Note: The input device must be set to clipboard for clipboard chaining to work. Color Boost - This option is used to set the amount of color boost for Red, Green, and Blue. For each color range you can enter a value between -255 and +255, and/or use the slider bar to set the boost level. The default value for each range is zero. See Advanced Topics for a discussion on color boost. 11 Color Boost Dialog Box Scaling - The scaling option determines the size of the output image. There are three scaling options: Best Fit - This option scales the input image to best fit a page for the output device (ie; an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper) Screen - Selecting screen causes the output image to be printed the same as it appears on the screen. User - The user option allows you to enter an integer scaling multiplier to be applied to the output image. A multiplier of 2 will double the size of the input image. Note: scaling works only for gray scale and output to the printer Save Setup The save setup option is located under the system menu (Alt Space). When you save the setup, SnagIt will write all of the current settings to your WIN.INI file. SnagIt will read the saved setup each time it is loaded 12 Advanced Topics Monochrome Conversion When Windows converts a color image to monochrome, it converts anything that is the background color, or white to white. All other colors are converted to black. This usually results in a lot of the image converted to black. SnagIt uses a monochrome threshold when converting a color image to monochrome. SnagIt looks the intensity level of each pixel and converts higher intensities (lighter colors) to white and the lower intensities to (darker colors) black. This conversion process will usually result in a more even balance of black and white in the output image. The amounts of black and white can be controlled by adjusting the Monochrome Threshold value under the Monochrome setting of the Format Menu. Adjusting the color boost values can be used to adjust color intensities before conversion to monochrome. You may get much better results converting images to monochrome if you use the windows setup program to configure Windows for a monochrome monitor. You may need your Windows diskettes the first time you do this (you can easily switch back to color when you need to). In monochrome mode Windows will then create grays as a pattern of black and white which will print nicely to a monochrome device. In color mode gray will be converted to all black or all white. Color Boost Color boost is used to change the intensity of the colors, changing how the be output image will look. Increasing the boost value lightens the output. Color boost is performed before gray scaling or monochrome conversion, so it can be used to lighten or darken the output with these options as well.. Gray Scaling Gray scaling can be performed as an alternative to monochrome conversion. SnagIt can represent colors with 256 levels of gray. The shades of gray are determined by the intensity level of the colors. Color intensity levels can be adjusted using the Color Boost under the Options Menu. 13 Caution: Gray scaling can be very slow. It is a good idea to try a small region of the screen before printing the whole screen. You may also want to turn on the Alert feature under the Options Menu. DDE Usage SnagIt supports Windows Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE). You can invoke SnagIt from other Windows programs by sending SnagIt DDE Messages. For Example, you can print write an Excel macro that will print a portion of the screen using SnagIt. See Appendix A for the DDE command reference. 14 Appendix A - DDE Reference Initiating a DDE Session To initiate a DDE with SnagIt send a DDE_INITIATE with the application parameter of "SnagIt" and the topic parameter of "SnagIt" Setting SnagIt Options All of the SnagIt Menu options can be set using the DDE_EXECUTE command. Example [set ('string')] The parameter string can be one of the following: input screen input client input window input region input file input clipboard scale best scale screen scale n (where n is an integer > 0) output printer output file output clipboard chain b (where b is 1,True,Yes,0,False, or No) boost red,green,blue (integer value 0..1000) add red, green, blue (integer value -255..255) inalert n (where n is the number of beeps) outalert n Activating SnagIt SnagIt is activated by sending a DDE_EXECUTE command with the message: [snag("string")] The string parameter can be one of the following: snag (activates menus selected input) screen clipboard 15 filename x y (where x,y are coordinates within a window) client x y handle h (where h is a valid window handle) client handle h tx ty bx by (where tx,ty,bx,by are coordinates defining a region) 16 Appendix B - Other HTI Products Other Software Available from Horizon Technologies, Inc. DDEWatch DDEWatch is a Windows DDE monitoring utility. Each message that DDEWatch displays consists of decoded bit fields, command/data strings and atom names DDE also supports file logging. allowing DDE conversations to be captured and written to a file. DDELib DDELib offers Windows programmers an API that significantly reduces the effort required to write fully functional DDE compliant applications. Client and server demonstration programs are included. Table Update Table update is and end-user Windows front end for the Microsoft SQL Server. It facilitates data entry into a set of hierarchically related tables Table update is dynamically driven by the database schema, including primary and foreign keys, so no programming is involved. Table updatefeatures a Basic style macro language, ad-hoc table queries, Dynamic Data Exchange, Multiple Document Interface and on-line help faciltie 17