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Text File | 1994-12-20 | 17.7 KB | 408 lines

FOR LOGO-FREE SCREEN CAPTURES, BECOME A REGISTERED USER ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ █ ▀ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ ▀▄ ▄▀ █ █▄▄▄█ █▄▄▄█ █▄▄▄ █▄▄▄ █ ▀▄▀ █ ▀█ █▀▄ █ █ █ █ █ ▄▀ ▀▄ █▄▄▄█ █ ▀▄ █ █ █ █ █ ▄▀ ▀▄ (TM) FOR WINDOWS AND DOS ▀ v4.1 ▀ SHAREWARE EDITION Copyright 1994 ANDROMEDA SOFTWARE. All Rights Reserved. This is the Shareware Edition of GRAFFIX, a screen-capture system that includes two executable program files: DGFX.EXE for DOS, and WGFX.EXE for Windows. The DOS program can capture full-screen text or graphics from DOS applications running in DOS or under Windows, while the Windows program can capture graphics from Windows applications or text from character-mode DOS applications running full-screen under Windows. DGFX.EXE and WGFX.EXE can run simultaneously on the same computer and be activated independently of each other. For simplicity, the explanations that follow focus first on the Windows version of GRAFFIX, then on the DOS version. GRAFFIX for Windows GRAFFIX is a clipboard viewer that can save all or part of the image on the clipboard to a graphics file in BMP, GIF, or PCX format. In Windows, the entire screen can be captured to the clipboard at any time by pressing the PrtSc key (Shift-PrtSc on 84-key keyboards), or just the currently active window by press- ing Alt-PrtSc. GRAFFIX does not need to be running in order to do this. GRAFFIX can then be opened to save the entire clip- board, or the image can be cropped by using the mouse to frame a rectangle of any size within the window before saving to disk. To save, choose the desired format from the File menu. A dialog box will list the files of the selected format in the current directory. You may select one of the files listed or type a new file name in the edit box. You may also switch to another direc- tory or disk drive. GRAFFIX for Windows will also display text captured to the clip- board. Text can be saved to an ASCII file or to a monochrome graphics file in BMP, GIF, or PCX format. Two character sets are available, OEM and ANSI. Text can be captured to the clipboard by pressing PrtSc while a DOS character-mode application is run- ning full-screen under Windows. When minimized to an icon or hidden by another window, GRAFFIX is still active in "popup" mode, which means it will pop up onto the screen or become visible whenever an image is placed on the clipboard. You can then save the entire image or any rectangular portion. To return to the application that was interrupted, simply click on that application's window or minimize GRAFFIX back to an icon. You can turn popup mode off by clicking on "Popup" in the Options menu, which will remove the checkmark next to this menu item. In popup mode, GRAFFIX will pop up when you press the PrtSc key OR when another application places a bitmap on the clipboard that is compatible with GRAFFIX. The compatible formats are DDB (Device-Dependent Bitmap) and DIB (Device-Independent Bitmap), two commonly-used bitmap formats. If you attempt to save a clip- board bitmap whose format is not one of these two, GRAFFIX will respond with a dialog box that says "No bitmap exists on the clipboard." GRAFFIX will not pop up immediately when text is captured to the clipboard from a DOS application running full screen in character mode. In this case, GRAFFIX will pop up after the DOS program is terminated or minimized to an icon by pressing Ctrl-Esc to activate Task Switcher. If the GRAFFIX window becomes hidden by another window, it can be brought back to the foreground by double-clicking its icon in Program Manager. Cropping the Clipboard Image The GRAFFIX display window can scroll the clipboard image hori- zontally and vertically by means of the scroll bars. To mark a rectangular area for cropping, move the cursor to one of the top corners of the desired rectangle, depress the left mouse button, move the cursor to the diagonally opposite corner and release the button. Repeat this process to erase the rectangle and draw a new one. The width and height of the rectangle in pixel units will be displayed in the title bar, as will the x,y coordinates of the upper-left (UL) and lower-right (LR) corners of the rec- tangle. The origin of these coordinates is the upper-left corner of the clipboard image. To save the cropped image, select the desired format from the File menu. To erase the rectangle, press Esc or position the cursor anywhere on the image and click and release the left mouse button. File Menu Item: Save as BMP Select this menu item to save the contents of the clipboard to an uncompressed Windows Bitmap File with the filename extension BMP. Monochrome, 16-color, 256-color, and 24-bit TrueColor modes are supported. File Menu Item: Save as GIF Select this menu item to save the contents of the clipboard to a CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format file with the filename ex- tension GIF. This format utilizes LZW compression, and supports monochrome, 16, and 256-color modes. GIF does not support 24-bit color modes. File Menu Item: Save as PCX Select this menu item to save the contents of the clipboard to a PC Paintbrush file with the filename extension PCX. Mono- chrome, 16-color, 256-color, and 24-bit TrueColor modes are supported. File Menu Item: Save as TXT Select this menu item to save clipboard text to an ASCII text file. Two character sets are available. The OEM character set is the DOS-compatible IBM extended ASCII character set. The ANSI character set is the one used by Windows. If you save text to a file that already exists, the text will be appended to the file. File Menu Item: Open BMP Select this item from the File menu to open a BMP file and place it on the clipboard. The image can now be saved in any of the three available formats, or cropped and then saved. Main Menu Item: Display This pull-down menu allows you to select which of the available clipboard formats to display. Normally, Windows will clear the clipboard when the PrtSc key is pressed. However, applications can place a bitmap or text on the clipboard without first clear- ing it, so that text and graphics can coexist. This is the case when you select Open BMP. By default, GRAFFIX will display the format most recently added to the clipboard. Main Menu Item: Options Three options are available: Clear clipboard. Select this menu item to empty the clipboard. Popup mode. This is the default mode of GRAFFIX. When minimized to an icon or hidden by another window, GRAFFIX will pop up onto the screen whenever the clipboard receives a new bitmap image or text. Select this menu item to turn popup mode off or back on again. To return to the application that was interrupted, click on that application's window or minimize GRAFFIX back to an icon. Enter coordinates. Select this menu item to draw a rectangle by entering its coordinates from the keyboard, instead of using the mouse. The values that appear in the dialog box are those of the current rectangle, if one has been drawn with the mouse. If no rectangle has been drawn, the values default to a rectangle that contains the entire client area of the GRAFFIX window. Coordinates may be entered that exceed the boundaries of this client area, and may include the entire image on the clipboard, up to a full screen. The origin of the rectangle coordinates is the upper-left corner of the clipboard image. To erase the rectangle, press Esc or click and release the left mouse button. Help Menu Online Help is available to explain the features of GRAFFIX. * * * * * * * * * * * * * GRAFFIX for DOS is a memory-resident utility that captures gra- phics and text-mode screens directly to disk files. It can be activated from within a running DOS application, such as a video game, by pressing the "hot key" combination Ctrl-Alt-Space. Graphics screens can be saved to either GIF or PCX files, and text screens to either ASCII or ATF files. The ATF format pre- serves text color attributes. GRAFFIX supports all EGA, VGA, and SVGA gray-scale and color graphics modes, including 16 and 256- color, 24-bit color (VESA modes), monochrome EGA and VGA modes, and text modes up to 132 columns by 60 rows. To minimize memory requirements of this TSR, the old CGA and Hercules graphics modes are not supported. SVGA modes are supported for adapters whose BIOS is VESA-compliant, which includes most SVGA adapters. USING GRAFFIX for DOS Super-VGA modes are supported for video cards that have the VESA BIOS extension. GRAFFIX looks for this extension when you make it resident, and prints a message on the screen indicating whether or not the VESA BIOS extension was found. Some SVGA cards, such as the Video Seven WIN.VGA, require that you run a utility program that installs the VESA BIOS extension in RAM before an application can make calls to the BIOS extension. In the case of the Video Seven card, this utility is named V7VESA.COM. Putting V7VESA on a separate line in your AUTO- EXEC.BAT file will automatically load this driver every time you turn on your computer. In the absence of the VESA BIOS extension on SVGA cards, GRAFFIX supports the standard VGA modes, but will terminate and return to the application when it encounters a mode it does not recognize. When GRAFFIX is activated in graphics mode, a prompt for a file name appears at the top of the screen. The cursor is invisible in graphics modes, but you can enter a file name as you would in text mode, and backspace to delete characters you may want to change. If no file name is entered before you press <CR>, GRAFFIX defaults to the file name SAVE#XXX.GIF/PCX, where XXX is the sequential number of the file, and writes the file to the current drive and directory. You may enter the file name with a drive and directory prefix, such as d:\dir\filename, where d represents any drive letter and dir any directory or subdirectory name. The prompt will accept more than one directory in the pre- fix, such as d:\dir\subdir\filename, for a total of up to 23 characters. The file name prompt is drawn with palette number 15 against a background of palette number 0. Occasionally, there may be in- sufficient contrast between these two colors for the prompt to be visible. In that case, simply press p or g to select PCX or GIF, then press <CR> to use the default file name. No file name prompt appears in 24-bit color modes, as some adap- ter cards do not support text output in these modes. Instead, the filename defaults to 24BITxxx.PCX in the current directory, where xxx represents the number in the sequence of files saved. The GIF format does not support 24-bit color. Video games sometimes use "tweaked" graphics modes that are not supported by the BIOS. GRAFFIX may be unable to capture these screens correctly. The time GRAFFIX takes to capture a graphics screen and save it to disk depends on the speed of your computer, the file format chosen, and the graphics mode. A GIF file takes longer to create than a PCX file, because the compression algorithm is more com- plex, resulting in a file that is more compact. The higher the resolution of the graphics mode, the longer it will take to cre- ate the file, because of the greater number of pixels that must be encoded. When the screen capture is completed, GRAFFIX will signal you with a beep. During a SVGA screen capture, GRAFFIX will generate a series of ascending tones; each tone indicates that the video card has switched to a new page of memory. This is to reassure you that the program is indeed processing data, and not hung up in an endless loop. TEXT MODE SCREENS Text can be saved to either an ASCII file or to an Attribute Text File with the extension ATF. An ATF file contains two bytes for each charcter: the ASCII code and the color attribute. Many DOS applications that run in text mode simulate a graphical interface by utilizing the extended ASCII character set to draw multi- colored menus and dialog boxes. Such a screen can be captured to an ATF file. GRAFFIX includes a DOS utility named AttriByte (AB.EXE) that can display an ATF file in its original colors in a graphical screen mode, so that the GRAFFIX TSR can capture the screen to a GIF or a PCX file. When you run AttriByte from the DOS command line, you will be prompted for the name of an ATF file to display. AB.EXE will then switch the screen to the most suitable graphics mode available on your computer and display the ATF file. Attri- Byte uses VESA modes to display 132-column text, so the VESA BIOS extension should be installed on your computer. If the maximum resolution of your monitor is 1024x768, AttriByte will display 132-column text in VESA BIOS mode 104h, which is only capable of displaying 128 columns. Hence, the four columns on the right of the screen will not be displayed. On 1280x1024 monitors, the full 132 columns will be displayed in VESA mode 106h, which is capable of displaying up to 160 columns of text. You can override AttriByte's choice of screen mode by running AB.EXE with the /x command-line switch. This will cause Attri- Byte to display the ATF file in whatever screen mode happens to be in effect. Therefore, it is necessary to put the screen into the desired graphics mode before running AB.EXE with the /x switch, by means of a screen mode utility such as the one included on the software disk that came with your video card. When AttriByte displays an ATF file, the image will remain on the screen while you activate GRAFFIX for DOS by means of the hot key combination. After you've saved the screen as either GIF or PCX, press any key to return to DOS. If you used the /x switch, the screen will still be in the mode you selected, and the DOS prompt will be superimposed on the image that was displayed. Use the DOS command CLS to clear the screen, or reset the screen to text mode 3 by means of your screen mode utility. When you save a text mode screen to an ASCII file, the text will be appended to a file if you enter the name of a file that al- ready exists. If you do this when you save text to an ATF file, a new file will be created and the existing file deleted. RUNNING DGFX.EXE AND WGFX.EXE Since DGFX.EXE is a TSR, it must be launched from the DOS prompt BEFORE opening Microsoft Windows. It cannot be properly in- stalled in memory from a DOS "shell" activated by clicking a DOS icon in Windows, nor can it be run from the Windows "Run File" menu. However, once DGFX.EXE has been installed as a memory- resident program, it can be activated from within a DOS program that was launched from DOS, from Windows, or from a DOS shell in Windows. GRAFFIX for DOS is activated by pressing the "hot-key" combination Ctrl-Alt-Space. This is the way to save a full- screen graphic image that is not framed by a window. WGFX.EXE can be launched from the Program Manager "Run File" menu or by clicking on its icon, having first installed it in a program group window. The Windows documentation explains how to add a program's icon to a group. WGFX.HLP and WGFX.EXE should reside in the same directory. * * * * * * * * * * * * * GRAFFIX for Windows and DOS, Shareware Edition, Version 4.1 Copyright 1993, 1994 ANDROMEDA SOFTWARE. All Rights Reserved. The Professional Edition of GRAFFIX for Windows and DOS does not display the GRAFFIX logo on saved files. To register and receive the Professional Edition, send $39 to: ANDROMEDA SOFTWARE 125 North Prospect St. Washington NJ 07882 NJ residents please include sales tax. Steven A. Brown, programmer INTERNET: 73140.3340@compuserve.com CompuServe [73140,3340]. CREDIT CARD ORDERS You may e-mail your order with your name, address, VISA or MasterCard account number, and expiration date. Please specify which of the following methods of delivery you prefer: 1. First-class mail on 3.5" disk. 2. GRAFFIX.ZIP via binary e-mail on CompuServe. 3. GRAFFIX.ZIP as attached file via e-mail on America Online. 4. GRAFFIX.UUE via ASCII e-mail on the Internet (requires UUDECODE.EXE utility to convert back to ZIP file). The total amount charged to your credit card will be $40.00. Orders may also be placed by telephone to (908) 689-0047. SHAREWARE NOTICE The Shareware Edition of GRAFFIX is freely distributed. You may use it over a ten-day period to determine its suitability for your needs. To continue using GRAFFIX beyond this evaluation period, you will be required to purchase the registered Profes- sional Edition. Registration fees are the only compensation the programmer re- ceives for the work and expense of writing this program. Please support the shareware concept of quality, "try-before-you-buy" software. Registered users are entitled to unlimited technical support and low-cost upgrades. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY THIS SOFTWARE IS SOLD "AS IS," WITHOUT WARRANTY AS TO PERFORMANCE OF MERCHANTABILITY OR ANY OTHER WARRANTIES WHETHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. BECAUSE OF THE VARIOUS HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE ENVIRON- MENTS INTO WHICH THIS PROGRAM MAY BE PUT, NO WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE IS OFFERED. GOOD DATA PROCESSING PRO- CEDURE DICTATES THAT ANY PROGRAM BE THOROUGHLY TESTED WITH NON- CRITICAL DATA BEFORE RELYING ON IT. THE USER MUST ASSUME THE ENTIRE RISK OF USING THE PROGRAM. ANY LIABILITY OF THE SELLER WILL BE LIMITED EXCLUSIVELY TO PRODUCT REPLACEMENT OR REFUND OF PURCHASE PRICE.