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--------------- PC-Draft I (TM) --------------- User Manual Version 1.01 July 28, 1986 This program and documentation are being distributed as Shareware. This means that you may make copies for others to try. But, you may not sell it. Shareware software is supported by your becoming a registered user. Please read the introduction for further details. (C) Copyright 1986 - All Rights reserved Michael Allen 19 South fifth Street St. Charles Illinois, 60174 (312) 377-7320 ------- LICENSE ------- PC-Draft I IS COPYRIGHTED, ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED. AS SHAREWARE, PC-Draft I MAY BE COPIED AND SHARED WITH OTHERS. HOWEVER, TO PROTECT THE QUALITY OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF THIS PROGRAM AND TO SUPPORT FUTURE DEVELOPMENT CERTAIN LIMITATIONS APPLY. COPIES OF PC-Draft I MAY BE MADE FOR TRIAL USE BY OTHERS ON A PRIVATE NON-COMMERCIAL BASIS ONLY. PC-Draft I MAY NOT BE RE-SOLD UNDER ANY CONDITIONS. PC-Draft I MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED IN CONNECTION WITH ANY OTHER PRODUCT OR SERVICE. THE SHAREWARE RIGHT TO COPY DOES NOT APPLY TO THE REGISTERED USER PROGRAMS: PC-Draft II AND SLIDESHOW WHICH ARE SUBSTANTIALLY DIFFERENT PRODUCTS. THIS SOFTWARE WILL PERFORM AS DESCRIBED HEREIN ONLY IF PROPERLY APPLIED. OUR LIABILITY TO YOU IS LIMITED TO REPLACING THE SOFTWARE (FOR REGISTERED USERS). WE HAVE NO LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGE OR LOSS, INCLUDING SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUEN- TIAL, CAUSED BY THIS SOFTWARE, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY. YOU AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE BY YOUR DECISION TO USE THIS SOFTWARE. Table of contents ----------------- Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Shareware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 What registered users get . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Files used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 File Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Cursor Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Using Cursor Increment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Suspending Cursor Increment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Changing Cursor Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Menu Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Display Menu Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Drawing Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Moving around the Drawing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Clearing the Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Saving Your Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Ending PC-Draft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Drawing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Rectangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Circle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Paint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Move . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Write (Graphic Font) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Drop Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Zoom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Transfer to Font . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Loading Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Selecting Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Creating and changing Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Saving Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Saving Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Retrieving Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Using Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Creating and changing Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Saving Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Graphic Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Using Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Creating Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Suspend Cursor Increment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Relative [+/-] Cursor Increment . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 .MAC file structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Editing Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Saving Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 loading Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Graph Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Drawing graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Drawing Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Printer resolution modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Print current screen window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Print full drawing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Print partial screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Update History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Introduction ------------ PC-Draft I is a high resolution pixel oriented drawing and graphing utility, which is designed to facilitate a variety of drawing and drafting needs. With PC-Draft I you can produce drawings up to 1280 by 700 dots using IBM's color graphic adaptor high resolution graphics mode (640 x 200 dots per screen). Such a drawing will fill an 8-1/2 x 11 inch printed output (at 150 dots per inch resolution). Built-in functions allow you to draw circles, lines, boxes; draw bar, line and pie graphs; create patterns with which to fill areas; cut and paste objects and save objects to files for later use. You can record graphic keyboard macros saved in files for later playback and for animation effects. You can load and edit fonts. And you can print your drawings on Epson compatible graphic printers or HP Laserjet+ printers. Shareware PC-Draft I is copyrighted. It is not a public domain program. It is being distributed as Shareware, which means that unmodified copies of the software and documentation may be freely copied and shared. We ask in return that should you find PC-Draft I to be useful, you become a registered user. You become registered by sending $45.00 + $5.00 for postage and handling to the address on the cover. Call (312) 377-7320 for quantity prices or to order with your VISA or Master Charge card. What do you get by becoming registered? What registered users get o The registered version of the software: PC-Draft II. PC-Draft II includes the following enhancements : - Drawing grids displayable at any spacing with optional "grid-lock". - A pop-up status panel showing x and y cursor position, position of the screen window in respect to the full drawing area, the current pattern, the current cursor increment value, and more. - New drawing commands including c[U]rve and r[E]verse. - Support for more printers. - Undo function. o A graphics presentation language called PIX which performs all PC-Draft II commands from a script you write without displaying any cursor or menu interac- tion. SlideShow allows you to create animated sequences of: loading screens, drawing forms and graphs and adding text and more. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 1 o The latest additions to the Font, Macro, and Object libraries. These require too much disk space to distribute with the Shareware version. And, as a registered user you will be notified when new libraries become available. o A collection of drawings made with PC-Draft II which you can incorporate into you own work. o A typeset quality user manual profusely illustrated with drawings made with PC-Draft II and full of helpful tutorials. The shareware philosophy is to pay smaller amounts for well crafted and useful software from developers who cannot spend the millions of dollars on marketing necessary to compete with the large software development companies. You benefit by being able to try a wider variety of software products to find the ones that suit your particular purpose. And the trial is free. The share- ware developer benefits from being able to distribute his work to a wider audience than would be possible through normal channels. Your share of the responsibility for shareware to continue, and to support the development of more and better products is to distribute your shareware programs to others and become a registered user of those products you like and use. System Requirements PC-Draft I is compatible with the IBM PC, XT, and AT and "true compatible" microcomputers with at least 256k of memory and with MS-DOS or PC-DOS versions 2.0 or later. An IBM or compatible Color Graphics Display adapter is required. PC-Draft I performs direct access of the display buffer at address B8000 hex. PC- Draft I will not work with monochrome displays or foreign display interface boards such as Hercules. PC-Draft I is memory hungry. For the sake of speed, an entire bit mapped drawing is kept in memory, rather than being paged to and from disk. If you like to load lots of stay resident utilities, you better have a 512k machine, or unload them before running PC- Draft I. The PC-Draft I program itself occupies about 85k. As you move the screen window to new portions of a large drawing more memory is allocated, 16k per screen. If you start with less than 128k available, you will surely get an error message: Out of memory!, then all you can do is save your drawing and quit PC- Draft I. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 2 Terminology Brackets are used to indicate keystrokes. For instance: [Ctrl + PgUp] means to press the Control key and the Pg Up keys togeth- er. Whereas: [F3][P][S] means to press those keys in sequence. The four arrow keys on the numeric keypad are indicated as: [^][<][>][v]. Filenames are given in all uppercase such as: PATTERN1.PAT. Installation If you are using a hard disk, create a sub-directory for PC-Draft I with the following sub-directories: PAT, MAC, FON, OBJ, PIC, DWG. These sub-directory names correspond to the default filename extensions for the various files PC-Draft I uses and will help keep the things organized. If yours is a floppy based system, simply make a backup copy of the distribution floppy for use. If you have down loaded PC-Draft I from a bulletin board, de-ARC the files into sub-directories corresponding to their file extensions, ie: the .PAT files should be placed in the PAT sub- directory. The executable PC-Draft program consists of the main program: PC- Draft.COM and one overlay file: PC-Draft.000 for your particular printer. Printers The current version of PC-Draft I will work with two printers for graphics output; Epson dot matrix graphics compatible printers, and Hewlett Packard LaserJet+ laser printers. There are two files included with the file extension of .PRT. You must rename the appropriate file for your printer type to PC-Draft.000. For instance if yours is an Epson printer, rename EPSON.PRT to PC- Draft.000, and if you have a LaserJet+, rename HPLASER.PRT to PC- Draft.000. Files used The only necessary files used by PC-Draft are the main code file: PC-Draft.EXE and the printer driver overlay file: PC-Draft.000. all other files are optional. File Names The file naming conventions used are also optional. However, it is recommended that you follow them. When PC-Draft saves a file PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 3 of a particular type, say a font file for instance, it uses the appropriate filename extension unless you override it by entering a different extension. This helps prevent accidental data loss by overwriting files and by loading the wrong type of file. The default filename extensions are: Screen dump files: filename.PIC Drawing files: filename.DWG Pattern files: filename.PAT Font files: filename.FON Object files: filename.OBJ Macro files: filename.MAC Graph Point files: filename.PTS The Basics ---------- To start PC-Draft, type the command: PC-DRAFT with the files PC- DRAFT.EXE and PC-DRAFT.000 on the currently logged drive. The Shareware notice will appear. Please read it, send us your money, then press any key to display the graphics screen. Cursor Movement The cursor will appear as a small cross in center screen. Press the cursor movement keys on the numeric keypad to move about the screen: [Home] [^] [PgUp] [<] [>] [End] [v] [PgDn] Initially, the cursor will move 8 dots for each key pressed. Using Cursor Increment The amount the cursor moves (in dots or pixels) is called the cursor increment. To change the cursor movement increment, enter a number (using the top row of number keys, or press Num Lock to use the numeric key pad keys). For instance, enter 24 to cause the cursor to move 24 dots for each cursor movement keystroke. You will quickly get into the habit of adjusting the cursor increment value to a larger number to quickly move to a new position on the screen, then to a smaller number (try 1) for detailed work. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 4 Suspending Cursor Increment Pressing the [S] key Suspends the current cursor increment value, causing the cursor to move one dot at a time. Pressing [S] again restores the increment value. This allows you to quickly change from coarse to fine movements and is also useful when creating graphics keyboard macros as described below. Changing Cursor Type There are two cursor types. Initially, the cursor appears as a small cross. Press [K] ([K]ursor) to change the cursor to a full screen cross. This cursor type is helpful when positioning lines and objects in line with other elements in your drawing. Press [K] again to toggle between the two cursor types. Menu Selections Initially, the eight main menu selections are displayed across the top of the screen. To make a selection, press its correspond- ing function key. For instance, press [F1] to display the pop-up Draw functions menu. With the pop-up menu displayed you may now: 1. Press the Escape key: [Esc], to exit from a menu without making a choice. 2. Select a choice from the menu by: a. press the [L]etter in brackets for your choice. b. use the arrow keys: [^] and [v] to move the arrow cursor to point to your choice. Then press [Enter] to make your selection. For example; press [F2], then press [B] for the [B]ox command, then press [Enter]. The Draw menu will disappear. Now, move the cursor with the arrow keys. A box will form with its diagonal corners determined by the original cursor position and the opposing current cursor position. When you are satisfied with the final position of the box, press [Enter] to complete the [B]ox command. Most of the other menus work the same, press the function key, then up and down arrows, then [Enter]. Display Menu Bar By pressing the [F1] key, you can pop-off the menu bar to allow full screen drawing. When you press [F1] again, the menu bar PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 5 will pop-up again. The drawing obscured by the menu, will be untouched, but inaccessible, until you pop-off the menu. The Drawing Area One screen represents 640 pixels or dots horizontally, and 200 dots vertically (with the menu bar popped-off). All drawing operations are confined to this screen area. You can draw a line to the screen edge only. However, the full drawing area avail- able to PC-Draft is 1280 dots wide by 700 dots vertically. visualize the monitor screen as a window positioned over a larger drawing area. You can move this window up, down, left and right to reach all parts of the drawing. The full drawing size is two screens wide, and three and one half screens high. Moving around the Drawing To move the screen window down on the larger drawing, press the [Ctrl + PgDn] keys together. The screen moves one half screen width for each window movement. To move up, press [Ctrl + PgUp]. [Ctrl + >] moves right, and [Ctrl + <] moves left. When you reach the edge of the drawing area, you'll know it (beep). Clearing the Screen To clear the current screen window (not the whole drawing), press the [F9] key. A warning pop-up will ask if you're sure. Press the [Y] key for [Y]es, if you are. Saving Your Work Once enough of your masterpiece is constructed to make you nervous about losing your work, you should save it to a file on disk. You can save the current screen window to a .PIC file or you can save the entire drawing to a .DWG file. 1. Press the [F3] key to pop-up the File menu. 2. Select [S]creen to save just the current screen window (just what is currently displayed). Or, select [D]rawing to save your drawing that may consist of several screens worth. (Only those screens PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 6 that you have visited will be saved. If you have not moved from the initial screen window, the drawing file will be the same size as a screen ".PIC" file.) 3. Then, select the operation from the next pop-up: [S]ave. 4. Then, enter a filename in the next pop-up. Enter any valid DOS file path specification, including drive and sub-directories unless you want to save the file on the currently logged drive and path. You need not enter a filename extension. PC-Draft will automatically add the appropriate extension for you if you leave it off. Simply enter a filename such as: "DRAWING1" or "A:SUBDIR1\DRAWING1" PC-Draft will save your drawing as: DRAWING1.DWG (or: DRAWING1.PIC if you selected to save the screen). (See note below for directory searches.) 5. Press [Enter] to complete the operation. Once you've done this a few times, the operation of saving and retrieving screen and drawing files should become easy, intuitive and obvious with the help of the pop-up prompts. The method is the same for other file operations such as saving and retrieving patterns, fonts, objects. When entering a filename for any file operation, you can obtain a directory search by pressing either the up or down arrow keys [^] or [v]. Any existing files with extensions that match the current default will be displayed in the file path name window. For example, when you are retrieving a screen file, press the [^] key in response to the filename prompt, the name of the first file with a .PIC extension will be shown. Press the [^] to show the next (if any) .PIC file, and so on. When the file you want to retrieve is shown, press [Enter] to retrieve it. To search the directory other than the current one, enter the DOS path information, for instance to refer to the directory contain- ing pattern files, enter: "FON\", then press [^] or [v]. Other useful keys to use when entering filenames: [<] and [>] move the cursor non-destructively. Backspace [<-] moves left destructively. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 7 The [End] key clears the field from the cursor position to the end. The [Esc] key restores the field to its original contents. Ending PC-Draft Press [F10] to exit PC-Draft. If you have made changes to your drawing but not saved it yet, a warning pop-up will ask if you want to. Similarly, changes to the current font, pattern and/or graph point values, will be checked and you will be warned before actually exiting to DOS. If everything is safetly saved, when you press [F10] you will immediately be returned to the DOS prompt. Drawing Commands ---------------- The basic drawing operations can be specified in two ways. You can press [F2] to choose from the Draw menu, or you can press the mnemonic character associated with the command. For example to select the line command either press [F2][v][v][v][Enter] or [F2][L][Enter] or simply press [L]. Most drawing operations follow the same sequence of operations: 1. Position the cursor to a starting anchor point. 2. Select the drawing command. 3. Move the cursor to the desired ending point. 4. Press any key other than cursor movement or numeric to complete the operation. Remember, at any time while moving the cursor, you can fine tune cursor movement or speed up cursor movement by pressing the numeric keys to change the current cursor increment. Also you can press the [S] key to [S]uspend the cursor increment for fine work. Line 1. Move the cursor to one end of the future line. 2. Press [L] to start the line. 3. Move the cursor to the other end. 4. Press [Enter]. I think you get the idea. Box Press [B] to begin the [B]ox command. The starting position is one corner of the box, the ending cursor position is the opposite corner. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 8 Rectangle This is similar to [B]ox, but the rectangle is filled with the current fill pattern. The [R]ectangle command is useful for erasing areas of the drawing, by selecting a completely blank pattern as the current fill (and the [R]eplace drawing mode). Circle Press [C] to draw a circle. The starting position is the center of the circle. Move the cursor outward to establish the diameter and press [Enter]. Paint Position the cursor within a bounded area on the screen. Press [P] to [P]aint the area with the current fill pattern. See below for how to select and edit patterns. Note that the selected area must be tightly bounded by white dots. A single missing dot provides an escape route for the pattern to fill adjacent areas. Home Press [H] to move the cursor to center screen. Move Pressing [M] will pop-up a prompt box asking for a screen window number. You can enter a number from 1 to 28 to directly move the display window to a new area of the larger drawing. The full drawing is logically divided into 28 sections. Each section represents one forth of one screen's area. +----+----+ Initial | 1 | 2 | +----+----+ Screen ---> +----+----+ | 3 | 4 | Window | 5 | 6 | +----+----+ +----+----+ | 7 | 8 | +----+----+----+----+ | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | +----+----+----+----+ | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | +----+----+----+----+ | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | +----+----+----+----+ | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | +----+----+----+----+ | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | +----+----+----+----+ PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 9 When PC-Draft is first started, drawing sections 1, 2, 5 and 6 are displayed. To move the screen window to the bottom right of the drawing area; press [M] and enter 23 to display drawing sections 23, 24, 27 and 28. Text To add text to your drawing, position the cursor and press [T] to enter [T]ext mode. The cursor will become an underline and what you type next will be shown using the built-in IBM graphics font. You can use backspace and the [<] and [>] arrow keys for simple editing. To exit text mode, press [Enter]. Note that this mode always positions the text on an 8 dot boundary both vertically and horizontally. To position the text between this 8 dot grid, first type the text, then exit text mode and use the [O]bject and [D]rop commands to move it to a new location. Write (Graphic Font) Pressing [W] places you in [W]rite mode. The cursor changes to a box the size of the currently loaded graphics font. When first started PC-Draft does not have a font loaded. To experiment with [W]rite mode, press [F3][F][R] to retrieve a font. In the filename pop-up prompt box enter: FON\EURO and press [Enter]. The eurostyle font will be loaded from the font sub-directory: FON. Now enter [W]rite mode. You can move the box cursor with the arrow keys and enter text in your drawing. Object By Object, we mean a portion of the drawing, a bit mapped image. The [O]bject command allows you to grab an area of the drawing from within the current screen window. Once you have grabbed an area, you've got an object which can then be [D]ropped (re-drawn) in a new position. Also objects can be saved in a file (.OBJ files) to create a library of objects. And, of course, object files can be retrieved to be added to other drawings. This command works like the [B]ox command. Position the cursor to one corner of the area to be grabbed. Press [O]. Then move the cursor to the opposite corner of the area and press [Enter] to grab it. Drop Object When you have an Object currently in memory either by using the [O]bject command or by retrieving it from an ,OBJ file, you use the [D]rop command to re-draw the object in the current drawing. When you press [D], the cursor takes the form of a box the size PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 10 of the current object. Move the box to the position in your drawing where you want the image and press [Enter]. Zoom [Z]oom allows you to edit a portion of your drawing at the pixel level more easily by enlarging the dots. Position the cursor in the center of the area to zoom and press [Z]. When the box appears, you can move the cursor with the arrow keys. The [F9] key lets you cycle through three drawing modes: o Press [F9] once to draw pixels as you move. o Press [F9] again to erase as you move. o Press [F9] again and you are back to the original state, no change will be made as you move the cursor. While in Zoom mode these function keys perform new functions: [F1] shifts the zoomed image left one pixel. [F2] shifts the zoomed image right. [F3] fills the zoomed area (all white). [F4] clears the zoomed area (all black). [F5] reverses each pixel in the zoomed area. [F8] will print the screen with the zoom window. Transfer to Font This command ([X]fer) is like the [O]bject command. With [X]fer, you grab an area of the drawing to be copied to a specific character in the current graphics font. When you pares [X], the cursor becomes a box the size of the current font. Move the box to the image to be grabbed and press the key for the character to copy to. For example, to grab an image to use for the A charac- ter, press [A]. You can then move to another area and grab again for another character. Press [Enter] to exit this mode. Note that you cannot [X]fer to numeric characters (0 to 9), because these keys are used to change the cursor increment value. First [X]fer the image to another temporary character. Then use the font copy function: [F10] to copy from the temporary to the one you want. Patterns -------- Patterns are created as 8 by 8 pixel grids which are repeated to fill areas. PC-Draft keeps 8 patterns resident in memory at a time which are used by the [R]ectangle and [P]aint commands to fill areas. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 11 Patterns are stored in .PAT files in the PAT sub-directory. You can create your own patterns or edit those that come with PC- Draft. When first started, a default set of patterns is defined. Press [F4] to pop-up the current pattern list. Loading Patterns Press the sequence: [F3][P][R] for "File menu, [P]atterns, [R]etrieve". Then in the filename prompt box, enter: [PAT\], then press [^] or [v] to step through the directory of patterns. Press [Enter] to retrieve a pattern. Selecting Patterns Press [F4] to display the list of current patterns. Either press the number of the pattern you want, or move the arrow cursor to point to it, then press [Enter] to make it the current pattern. Creating and changing Patterns Once you have selected a pattern as "current", return to the pattern pop-up by pressing [F4], then press [E] to edit the current pattern. Within the pattern editing box, you will see happy faces representing pixels that are "on". The cursor position is shown as a single dot when over an "off" pixel and as a solid face when over an "on" pixel. You can move with the arrow keys and toggle pixels on and off with the space bar. Saving Patterns If you create your own patterns, you must save them in a .PAT file. Press [F3][P][S] for: "File menu, [P]atterns, [S]ave". Enter a filename (no extension, PC-Draft will add .PAT as the default extension). Objects ------- Above we discussed Objects and how to grab an area of the drawing as an object that could be saved and [D]ropped in new positions. Saving Objects To save your current object (after you have performed an [O]bject command), press [F3][O][S] for: "File menu, [O]bject, [S]ave". Then enter a filename (PC-Draft will add the default .OBJ filename extension). PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 12 Retrieving Objects PC-Draft comes with several example object files in the OBJ sub-directory. Press [F3][O][R] to retrieve an object. In the filename prompt box enter: [OBJ\] and press [^] or [v] to step through the object directory. Press [Enter] to retrieve. Fonts ----- With PC-Draft you can load, edit and create a variety of fonts. Each font is stored as a file with a .FON extension. Fonts may consist of characters or may be all symbols. Using Fonts You can load an existing font by pressing: [F3][F][R] for: "File menu, [F]ont, [R]etrieve". In the filename prompt box, enter: "FON\" and press [^] or [v] to step through the font directory. Press [Enter] to retrieve. Once you have loaded a font, when you press [W] (for [W]rite) the cursor becomes a box the size of the font. Some fonts contain only a subset of alphabet. So, if nothing happens when you try to type a character in [W]rite mode, perhaps the current font has no character defined for that key. Try uppercase. To leave [W]rite mode, press [Enter] or [Esc]. Creating and changing Fonts Press [F6] to pop-up the font editing window. You will see the filename of the current font on the top line followed by the current key shown in brackets (also on the top line). The current range of characters in the current font is shown on the next two lines in the window as, for instance: "START: A", "END: Z". This means that this font contains a character for each keyboard character between uppercase A to Z. It is important to make the distinction between font characters and keyboard characters. With some fonts loaded, for example, pressing the [A] key may draw an Apple rather than an 'A'. Also shown at the top of the font window is the current font's height and width. These are expressed in pixels. The maximum character height is 32 pixels. The maximum width is 48. Warning: you should not change the height and width of an existing font. Set these values only when you are creating a new font. The "SPACE:" field indicates the amount of space needed for the particular character currently displayed. By varying this from PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 13 character to character, you can create proportionally spaced fonts. For instance, in a font whose size is 32 dots high by 24 dots wide, the 'I' character may need 8 dots of space, while the 'M' character would need 24 dots. When you press any character key that falls within the range of the current font, that character will be displayed for editing. You can move the cursor with the arrow keys. Similar to the [Z]oom command discussed above, the [F9] keys controls the editing of pixels: o Press [F9] once to draw pixels as you move. o Press [F9] again to erase as you move. o Press [F9] again and your back to the original state, no change will be made as you move the cursor. The usage of the other function keys is shown in the Font window: [F1] Shifts the current character left one pixel. [F2] Shifts it right. [F3] Fills the entire character. [F4] Clears it. [F5] Reverses each pixel. [F6] Allows you to change the character size of the font and/or the space for the current character. [F7] Allows you to change the range of characters included in this font. [F8] Prints the screen, including the font window. [F9] Toggles the setting or clearing of pixels. [F10] Allows you to copy the image from another charac- ter to the current one. Note that you can copy images drawn on the regular drawing area into specified characters in the font with the [X]fer command described in the Drawing Commands section above. Saving Fonts To save a font, press: [F3][F][S] for "File menu, [F]ont, [S]ave". And enter a filename. PC-Draft will automatically add the .FON file extension. Graphic Macros -------------- This feature of PC-Draft provides a way to store a sequence of keystrokes in a .MAC file for later playback. This is another way to create a library of images. MAC files are stored as normal ASCII text files and can be edited by your favorite text editor. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 14 As well as a way of saving drawing commands, macros can be used to provide a variety of interesting animation effects. Using Macros To start the playback of a macro (for example use one of the samples supplied with PC-Draft), press [F3][M][R] and in the filename prompt box enter: [MAC\] and press [^] or [v] to step through the MAC directory. Press [Enter] to start. The sequence of keystrokes stored in the selected macro file will be immedi- ately played back. By changing the current cursor increment value, and then replay- ing the macro, you can redraw a given shape larger or smaller (as long as the cursor increment value was not changed within the macro itself). Creating Macros To start creating a new macro, press [F3][M][S], and enter a filename. When you press [Enter] to return to the drawing screen, each keystroke from that point on will be recorded and saved in the specified file. To end the recording of keys, press [%] (the percent symbol key). The .MAC file will be closed. You can then replay the macro in different positions, and with different cursor increment values. Suspend Cursor Increment It is useful to be able to move one pixel at a time within a macro without actually changing the cursor increment value so that the macro can be replayed for different sized objects. This can be accomplished with the [S]uspend command to temporarily cause the cursor to move one dot at a time. Relative [+/-] Cursor Increment Similarly, you can use the [+] and [-] keys to increment and decrement the cursor increment value to make changes relative to the value in effect when the macro is started. .MAC file structure Macro files are created as standard ASCII text files and may be edited with your ASCII text editor (even EDLIN!). .MAC files simply consist of each keystroke as entered during their creation. Control keys are represented by their keyboard scan value as an ASCII character preceeded by a "^" character. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 15 The common PC-Draft keystrokes are as follows: [F1] = ^; [^] = ^H [Ctrl + PgUp] = ^(value 132) [F2] = ^< [v] = ^P [Ctrl + PgDn] = ^v [F3] = ^= [<] = ^K [Ctrl + <] = ^s [F4] = ^> [>] = ^M [Ctrl + >] = ^t [F5] = ^? [Home] = ^G [F6] = ^@ [End] = ^O [Enter] = ^m [F7] = ^A [PgUp] = ^I [F8] = ^B [PgDn] = ^Q [F9] = ^C [F10] = ^D For example the shadow box macro: SHADOW.MAC is: B^Q^M^M^M^HS^P^P^P^P^MR^M^M^M^M^M^MS^PR^K^K^K^KS^H^H^HS^H% Note that the macro file must end with the "%" terminator character. Graphs ------ PC-Draft's graphing function allows you to automatically create line, bar and pie charts. While this function is not as sophisti- cated as you might find in business graphics programs dedicated to that purpose, PC-Draft provides the means to enhance your graphs with labels, pattern fills, etc. in a much more flexible and free form way. You are the artist. PC-Draft is the tool. Creating graphs involves three steps: 1. Enter a set of value pairs (for X and Y graph axis). 2. Select the type of graph: Bar, Line, Points, or Pie. 3. Draw the graph (similar to the [B]ox command or the [C]ircle command for pie charts). Editing Points Press [F7] to pop-up the graph menu. Then press [E] to edit points. Enter values for each element in your graph. Normally the values on the X axis would be equal for equally sized Bars in a Bar graph for example. So, enter a 1 for each element down the X column. The first X axis entry of zero signals the end. If your graph has 8 elements, the ninth entry in the X column should be zero. If your Y values are decimal, enter them without the decimal point. For instance, enter 12.34 as 1234, and then 56.00 as 5600. Saving Points PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 16 You can save your graph data to a .PTS file by pressing: [F7][S] and specifying a filename. loading Points Similarly, you load graph data with: [F7][L]. Graph Type Specify the type of graph you want to draw by pressing [F7][T]. Then select either [B]ox, [L]ine, [D]ots, or [P]ie. Drawing graphs Once you have entered or loaded point values and selected a graph type, you can draw your graph anywhere in your drawing. For graph types other than Pie, position the cursor at one corner of a rectangular area, press [G], then move the cursor to the opposite corner and press [Enter]. PC-Draft automatically scales the graph to fill the rectangular area specified. To overlay two or more sets of graph point values: 1. Draw a bar graph for the first set of points. 2. Turn off the Graph s[C]ale by pressing: [F7][C] so that the scale indicator shows: [OFF]. This will cause PC- Draft to use the same scale established from the previous graph. 3. Load the second set of point values. 4. Select the drawing mode: [O]verlay (see below). 5. Draw the graph for the second set of points in the same location as the first. For the Pie graph type, move the cursor to the center of a circular area, press [G], and move the cursor outward to size the pie chart. Drawing Mode The drawing mode determine what happens pixel by pixel when you draw over existing (set) pixels. When first started PC-Draft is in [R]eplace drawing mode. To change drawing mode, press [F5] to pop-up the drawing mode menu. Then press the letter in brackets for the mode you want, or press [^] or [v] to move the pointer and press [Enter] to make your selection. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 17 The effect of each drawing mode is as follows: [R]eplace: The resulting pixel equals the drawing pixel. [O]verlay: The resulting pixel is changed only if the drawing pixel is "on". [T]ransparent: The resulting Pixel is made the opposite of the drawing pixel. This is "XOR" mode. Printing -------- PC-Draft will print your drawing using either an Epson compatible dot matrix printer or a laser printer compatible with the Hewlett Packard LaserJet+. Before attempting to print be sure that you have renamed the appropriate printer driver file (.PRT filename extension) to: "PC-Draft.000", and that this file is available on the currently logged drive. This is an overlay file that will be loaded when you select the print function. You can print a portion of the current screen window, the whole screen or the entire drawing. The printing function is evoked by pressing the [F8] key. If you press [F8] with a pop-up menu "up", you will print the screen with the menu pop-up included. Other- wise, the menu bar will not be printed. Printer resolution modes Each printer has different graphics resolution modes. The current version of PC-Draft supports two modes for each printer support- ed. For Epson dot matrix compatible: [L]ow density mode prints at 120 dots per inch (Esc "L" mode). [H]igh density mode (for FX+ compatible printers only) prints at 144 dots per inch. The high density mode is best for round circles. For HP LaserJet+ compatible: [L]ow density mode prints at 150 dots per inch. [H]igh density mode prints at 300 dots per inch. Both modes for both printers, print double the number of pixels vertically to more closely match the proportions of the screen, so that squares and circles are printed square and round. If your drawing is the equivalent of two screens wide, you should use the high density modes to fit on 8 1/2 inch wide paper. If you have a printer that you would like PC-Draft to support, please send a copy of the dot graphics section of your printer manual and we will supply you with a printer driver for your printer and add it to our collection. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 18 Print current screen window Press [F8] to pop-up the print menu and select [S] for [S]creen. Then select a printer resolution mode: [H] for high density or [L] for low density. Print full drawing Press [F8] to pop-up the print menu and select [D] for [D]rawing. Then select the resolution mode. Print partial screen First position the cursor to one corner of a rectangular area of the screen to print. Press [F8] to pop-up the print menu and select [B] for [B]ox. After selecting the resolution mode, you then must position the cursor to the opposite corner of the area to print as if you were drawing a box. Press [Enter] to start printing. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 19 Update History -------------- Version 1.01 07/28/86 o Fixed the grab [O]bject command which sometimes malfunc- tioned for some x position starting point and x ending point combinations. The file structure of .OBJ files has been changed, so objects created with version 1.00 of PC-Draft I will not work with newer versions. If you have created your own objects with version 1.00, you must convert them to version 1.01 format: 1. With version 1.00 of PC-Draft I, create a .PIC file (screen image) with all the objects you have created. 2. Then load that .PIC image with the newer version of PC- Draft. 3. Re-capture the image of each object and save each one. The new .OBJ files will then be compatible. o The escape key now exits from the edit font [F6] screen and from the [Z]oom screeen. o The escape key lets you exit the [D]rop object command without re-drawing the object. PC-Draft I v1.01 Page 20