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Text File | 1986-08-20 | 12.0 KB | 433 lines

C A P PCPAINT-Compatible Picture and Clipping Capture Utility Written by John Bridges and Doug Wolfgram for Microtex Indutstries Another USEware product from: Microtex Industries, Inc. 2091 Business Center Drive Irvine, Ca. 92715 (714) 476-0777 (714) 545-8100 - PCPaint Picture Swap Line Current release number: 1.1B Current release date: 08/86 WHAT IS CAP? CAP is a utility to aid GRASP users in capturing clippings and pict- ures from programs other than PCPAINT PLUS(tm). With CAP, a user can capture images from virtually any other program and quickly move images into presentations running under GRASP. The pictures and clippings created by CAP are completely PCPAINT PLUS(tm), GRASP(tm) and ARTOOLS(tm) compatible. CAP is memory resident and occupies approximately 26K of memory. HOW TO RUN CAP To run CAP, just be sure that CAP.COM is either on the current drive and directory, or is accessible by your PATH statement. If this isn't clear, the put the GRASP distribution disk into drive A, close the door, and type the following: A: {enter} CAP {enter} You should see a message that looks like: Resident Capture Utility v1.1 Written by John Bridges Microtex Industries, Inc. 1986 Press ALT rightSHIFT to capture screen CAP is now loaded and ready for use. WARNING: Please do NOT run CAP twice. Sometimes, depending on your machine, it will cause the system to hang. Keep track of whether you have loaded CAP or not and only load it once. If you need to remove it, use the procedure below, REMOVING CAP. BRINGING UP CAP To activate CAP, hold down the ALT key and press the shift key that is on the right side of the keyboard (opposite from ALT). Release both keys and you should see a flashing crosshairs in the center of the screen. At this point, you would do whatever you want to do inside CAP (see USING CAP for more details), then quit CAP by pressing ESC. CAP - Resident Capture Utility for GRASP(tm) Page: 1 REMOVING CAP If CAP is the LAST memory resident utility you loaded, and you want to free up the memory it occupies, just press CTRL-Q while you have the CAP crosshairs on the screen. In other words, where you would normally press ESC to quit CAP, press CTRL-Q to quit and remove it from memory instead. CHANGING THE CAP KEYS As was stated before, to bring up CAP you press the ALT and right- SHIFT keys together. If this particular key arrangement conflicts with your application software, you may change it. There are 4 keys available, of which you must choose 2. The 4 keys are: C - Control L - Left-side Shift Key A - ALT R - Right-side Shift Key If you want to use any combination 2 of these 4, just specify so on the command line when you first run CAP. For example, if you want the 2 shift keys together to being up CAP, type: CAP /k:LR Or if you want Control ALT (the same as Sidekick - be careful!), type: CAP /k:AC That's all there is to it! Remember you must use 2 keys. If you specify just 1 key, no keys, or invalid keys, CAP will use its default keys, AR. USING INTERRUPTS One other thing you can do is to enable a user interrupt for CAP initialization. This is very useful if the software you are using is being particularly stubborn about allowing you to capture screens. To assign a user interrupt to CAP, use the /i: parameter as follows: CAP /i:x where x is the number of the interrupt you want enabled. For exam- ple, if you want to invoke CAP with the SHIFT-PrtSc key, interrupt 5, you would type: CAP /i:5 CAP - Resident Capture Utility for GRASP(tm) Page: 2 USING CAP Saving Pictures The simplest way to save a picture is to use the following procedure: Assuming you have already run CAP and are now in your application program... 1) Set the screen set up the way you want with your application pro- gram. 2) Bring up CAP by pressing ALT rightSHIFT. You will see the CAP crosshairs in the middle of the screen. 3) Press ENTER. You will see the top lines of the screen disappear and be replaced with the prompt: PIC name: Enter up to 8 characters for your picture name and press enter. If you want to use an extension other than .PIC, you must specify it here. The drive will spin and your picture will be saved. 4) You should now see your screen with the crosshairs again. Press ESC to go back to running your application. You picture is now save and you can go on using your application program. If you need to capture another screen, just repeat this pro- cedure. CAP - Resident Capture Utility for GRASP(tm) Page: 3 Saving Clippings Saving a clipping is much like saving a picture, except that you must first tell CAP which portion of the screen you want to be your clipp- ing. This is done using the arrow keys to move the crosshairs and the SPACEBAR to tell CAP to start a new clipping. Here is the proc- edure: Assuming you have already run CAP and are now in your application program... 1) Set the screen set up the way you want with your application pro- gram. 2) Bring up CAP by pressing ALT rightSHIFT. You will see the CAP crosshairs in the middle of the screen. 3) Move the crosshairs using the arrow keys. You will see a rectangle being created. This is the boundary of your clipping. When the cross- hairs gets to one of the corners of what you want to be your clipp- ing, press SPACEBAR. This tells CAP to start a clipping definition from here. 4) Move the crosshairs to the opposite corner of the region you want to be your clipping. 5) Press ENTER. You will see the top lines of the screen disappear and be replaced with the prompt: CLP name: Enter up to 8 characters for your clipping name and press enter. If you want to use an extension other than .CLP, you must specify it here. The drive will spin and your clipping will be saved. IMPORTANT NOTE: The way that CAP decides whether you want to save a picture or a clipping is that if there is a rectangular area defined, CAP will save a clipping. If not, it will save the whole screen. If you start to define a clipping with the arrow keys, then change your mind and want a picture, just press SPACEBAR to clear current clipping definition and the press ENTER to save the whole screen as a picture. Also note that when CAP saves a clipping, it saves the rows and columns of points UNDER the rectangle as part of the clipping. This is consistent with the way the 'edit-box' or 'marquee' works in PCPAINT PLUS(tm). CAP - Resident Capture Utility for GRASP(tm) Page: 4 Special Features CTRL-B ... BSAVE mode - After you bring up CAP and are looking at the crosshairs, pressing CTRL-B will toggle BSAVE on and off. You cannot BSAVE multiple bit-plane screens like EGA 16 color mode. BSAVE is really only useful for mode A, or CGA 4 color mode screens that you may want to load into a BASIC program. Pressing CTRL-B again will return to packed page format. CTRL-V ... Forced Video Mode - After you bring up CAP and are looking at the crosshairs, pressing CTRL-V will enable forced video mode. You will be prompted to enter a video mode letter and then CAP will try to save the current screen in the format of the requested video mode. Video modes are the same as for PCPAINT PLUS(tm) and GRASP(tm). For example, if you are in EGA 16 color hi-resolution mode, but the program you are running didn't set it up properly according to BIOS, just force video mode G and CAP will save out a 16 color hi-resolution screen. Please note that modes 0, 1 and 2 are text modes and are not available in PCPAINT PLUS(tm). Also note that H1 and H2 only refer to CAP. PCPAINT PLUS(tm) and GRASP both use Hercules page 1 and the video mode is set with just the letter H. Valid Video Modes for Forced Video Over-ride 0 - 40 column color text 1 - 80 column color text 2 - 80 column monochrome text A - 320x200 4 color CGA B - 320x200 16 color PCjr / STB / TANDY 1000 C - 640x200 2 color CGA D - 640x200 16 color CGA E - 640x350 2 color EGA F - 640x350 4 color EGA G - 640x350 16 color EGA H - 720x348 2 color Hercules/AST Preview - page 1 H1 - (same as H) H2 - 720x348 2 color Hercules/AST Preview - page 2 I - 320x200 16 color Plantronics/AST CGPLUS J - 320x200 16 color EGA CAP - Resident Capture Utility for GRASP(tm) Page: 5 ; ... Seek a clipping - During the clipping definition process, if the rectangle you are stretching completely surrounds the object you want to grab, and lies entirely in a region of a single color, pressing the ; key will cause all 4 edges of the rectangle to seek inward until an edge is found. This is useful for isolating objects when you don't want a lot of extra 'white space' surrounding your object. Try a few tests to get the feel of it. . ... Change active corner - During the clipping definition process, you are dragging one of the corners of the rectangle. This corner is called the 'active corner'. To change the active corner, press the . key. You will notice that the corsshairs moves around in a clockwise direction to the adjacent corner. This is useful for altering regions without having to start a new one. 1-0 ... Change crosshairs step - by pressing one of the number keys at the top of the keyboard while the crosshairs is up, you can change the number of points the crosshairs moves each time you press an arrow key. Pressing 1 means move the crosshairs one point for each arrow key press. 0 means move the crosshairs 10 points for each arrow key press. This is useful for moving more quickly or finer adjustments. CAP - Resident Capture Utility for GRASP(tm) Page: 6