PICTURETHIS "SHAREWARE" VERSION RELEASE 2.00 MAY 1, 1988 QUICK START GUIDE Copyright 1988, 1989 by Patricia Y. Williams and Gregory Williams, All Rights Reserved. HortIdeas Publishing, Route 1, Box 302, Black Lick Road, Gravel Switch, KY 40328 U.S.A. Trademarks/Owners: CaptureThis and PictureThis/Patricia Y. Williams and Gregory Williams; Hercules/Hercules Computer Technology, Inc.; IBM and PC-DOS, International Business Machines Corp.; MS-DOS, Microsoft Corp.; PostScript/Adobe Systems Inc.; The Newsroom Pro/Springboard Software, Inc. NOTE: Carefully read all of the terms and conditions of the License Agreement (near the beginning of the READTHIS.1ST file on distribution disk #1) PRIOR to using the PictureThis and/or CaptureThis programs. USE OF THE PROGRAM(S) INDICATES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THOSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS. INTRODUCTION This guide provides a very brief overview of PictureThis (and CaptureThis) -- just enough information to enable you to begin exploring the program on your own. For more details, see the user manual and/or the tutorial. In a nutshell, here's how you'll be using PictureThis: While viewing their on-screen representations, you prepare drawings consisting of curves, specifying each curve by the locations of its endpoints and by the locations of "control points" which determine its shape. You can fill (gray-shade) areas bounded by curves, and you can manipulate groups of curves ("objects") to generate complex drawings. PictureThis produces files written in the PostScript page description language; these files contain all of the information about your drawings needed by PostScript-compatible laser printers and imagesetters to generate high quality prints. While PostScript files are thus the "ultimate products" of PictureThis, three other kinds of files are involved in the production process: template files, drawing files, and clip art files. CGA (medium- or high-resolution) graphics screens can be captured in template files by using the CaptureThis (or Alternate CaptureThis) program provided with PictureThis; the template files can then be imported into PictureThis to provide background screens for tracing. Drawing files are used to store and retrieve information about your drawings in a format usable by PictureThis (which can't read PostScript); you can save a drawing-in-progress in a drawing file for 2 later recall. Clip art files are used to save parts of drawings for later use in other drawings. If your computer has a Hercules-compatible monochrome graphics board, you can run PictureThis and CaptureThis ONLY WITH SOFTWARE OR HARDWARE CGA GRAPHICS EMULATION. Several CGA graphics emulation programs are currently available (some marketed as "shareware"), and some monochrome graphics boards include built-in CGA graphics emulation. EGA and VGA boards emulate CGA graphics to various degrees; see the PictureThis user manual for more information if you have any problems with such boards when running PictureThis or CaptureThis. EIGHT STEPS TO EXPLORING PictureThis 1. Make backup copies of the distribution disks, if you haven't already! If you have two floppy disk drives, one way to do this is to format two new floppy disks using the DOS "FORMAT" command, then place one of the distribution disks in drive A and one of the newly formatted disks in drive B. Copy all of the files on the distribution disk to the new disk by keying in, at the DOS "A>" prompt: COPY *.* B: and then press: ENTER Repeat with the second distribution disk and the other newly formatted disk. If you don't have two floppy disk drives, or if you need to learn more about copying files, consult your operating system user manual. Store the original distribution disks in a secure place, and use the backup disks to run PictureThis. The files REQUIRED to run PictureThis are the following: PICTHIS2.EXE (the PictureThis program) PTS2T.OVR (a data file needed by PictureThis; must be in the current directory) PTS2D.OVR (another data file needed by PictureThis; must be in the current directory) and, OPTIONALLY, CAPTHIS.COM (the CaptureThis program; needed only if you want to capture CGA graphics mode screens for use as templates in PictureThis) or ACAPTHIS.COM (an alternate version of the CaptureThis program which requires no keyboard input to capture CGA graphics mode screens; useful for some computers with 3 compatibility problems and with some applications programs which "take over" the keyboard) You might also like to use some of the sample PictureThis files: *.DRW, *.TMP, and *.CLP. To create more room for your working files you should delete the text files from your program disk (#1) after you have printed them. To do this, at the DOS prompt corresponding to the drive with your program disk type: DEL *.TXT and then press: ENTER To use the DOS shell feature of PictureThis, you might want to copy COMMAND.COM to your program disk, also. 3. For reference, print out a copy of the file listing the special keys used in PictureThis (KEYS.TXT). 4. (OPTIONAL; if you DON'T want to capture CGA graphics mode screens for use as templates in PictureThis, skip this step and go to step 5.) To install the memory-resident CaptureThis program, at the operating system prompt (i.e., "A>") corresponding to the drive containing the disk with CAPTHIS.COM, key in: CAPTHIS and then press: ENTER A message noting that CaptureThis has been installed should appear, and the DOS prompt should return. Any time after CaptureThis has been installed, the current graphics mode screen (medium- or high-resolution CGA) from most applications programs can be saved to a file by pressing (simultaneously): SHIFT and PrtSc After these keys are pressed, CaptureThis checks your computer's BIOS to determine the current video mode; if, according to the BIOS, the mode is CGA text, NOT CGA graphics, then a warning message will appear at the top of the screen: NOT CGA GRAPHICS! Try Capture? (Y/N) ESC to exit 4 NO message will appear and a normal screen dump to a printer will be attempted if the video mode is NOT CGA text or CGA graphics. Caution: if a printer is not connected, or if it is turned off, your computer might hang up. For a graphics mode screen dump, you must have installed a memory- resident graphics printer driver program appropriate for the graphics mode (such as GRAPHICS.COM, supplied with PC-DOS for dumps of CGA graphics screens to IBM-compatible dot matrix printers) PRIOR to installing CAPTHIS.COM. Occasionally, an applications program will program the video controller chip directly for CGA graphics, but fail to update the BIOS; if the screen looks like CGA graphics even though CaptureThis has determined (from the BIOS) that it SEEMS to be CGA text (so that the warning message appears), you can still try to capture the screen in a template file for importing into PictureThis by pressing: Y Then respond to the prompts which follow. We recommend that you use the extension ".TMP" for template files. If the captured screen isn't CGA graphics, its file will produce "garbage" when imported into PictureThis. Or, if you want a screen dump to a printer, press: N Caution: If a printer is not connected, or if it is turned off, your computer might hang up. For a graphics mode screen dump, you must have installed an appropriate memory-resident graphics printer driver program PRIOR to installing CaptureThis. Alternatively, to proceed without capturing or dumping the screen, press: Esc If, according to the BIOS, the current video mode IS CGA graphics, a different message will appear: Perform Screen Capture? (Y/N) ESC to exit To capture the screen in a template file for importing into PictureThis, press: Y Then respond to the prompts which follow. Directory specifications can be used for files. Again, we recommend that you use the extension ".TMP" for template files. Or, if you want a normal screen dump to a printer, press: N 5 Caution: If your printer is not connected, or if it is turned off, the computer may hang up. For a CGA graphics screen dump, you must have installed a memory-resident graphics printer driver program appropriate for the graphics mode PRIOR to installing CaptureThis. Alternatively, to proceed without capturing or dumping the screen, press: Esc Directory specifications can be used when keying in file names. Each template file takes about 16 KB. If CaptureThis doesn't work correctly with your computer (an example is the Zenith Z-100 running ZPC) or with particular programs (examples are those which "take over" the keyboard), you should try the Alternate CaptureThis program instead. Once installed, this program doesn't require any keyboard input other than "SHIFT" and "PrtSc" (pressed simultaneously) to capture CGA graphics mode screens, and thus will work even with programs that "take over" the keyboard (unless they take over the Print Screen interrupt; to date, we've found only one program that does this: The Newsroom Pro). To install Alternate CaptureThis, at the DOS prompt corresponding to the drive containing the disk with ACAPTHIS.COM, key in: ACAPTHIS and then press: ENTER A message noting that Alternate CaptureThis has been installed should appear, and the DOS prompt should return. Any time after Alternate CaptureThis has been installed, you can capture a medium- or high-resolution CGA graphics screen by pressing (simultaneously): SHIFT and PrtSc If Alternate CaptureThis determines (from your computer's BIOS) that the current video mode is NOT CGA graphics, it will perform a normal screen dump to a printer. Caution: If a printer is not connected, or if it is turned off, your computer might hang up. For a graphics screen dump, you must have installed a memory-resident graphics printer driver program appropriate for the non-CGA graphics mode PRIOR to installing Alternate CaptureThis. 6 If, according to the BIOS, the current video mode IS CGA graphics, Alternate CaptureThis will capture the screen in a file named "A0.TMP" (in the current directory). Subsequently captured screens will be saved in files having the following sequence of names: A1.TMP, ..., A9.TMP, B0.TMP, ..., B9.TMP, ..., C0.TMP, ... Caution: Each time ACAPTHIS is installed it will save screens in files (beginning with A0.TMP) WRITING OVER ANY EXISTING FILES IN THE CURRENT DIRECTORY WITH THE SAME NAMES WITHOUT WARNING -- so after saving a series of files with ACAPTHIS, you should rename them before installing ACAPTHIS again, to guard against overwriting, and to provide more descriptive names. 5. To run PictureThis, make sure that PTS2T.OVR and PTS2D.OVR are both in the current directory. At the DOS prompt corresponding to the drive containing the disk with PICTHIS2.EXE, key in: PICTHIS2 and then press: ENTER The title screen should appear for a few seconds, allowing you to get a preview of PictureThis in action. Then a copyright/ordering information screen should appear. After fifteen seconds you may press any key to continue. After you press a key, a blank screen with a border and an X-shaped cursor at its center should appear. Contextual help screens showing currently valid keys can be accessed by pressing: ? If you hear a BEEP, it means that you just pressed an invalid key. You might find it helpful at first to toggle on special error messages and prompts; do this by TWICE pressing: H Now the fun begins! To draw a curve, you define its (two) endpoint locations, and then you define the locations of its "control points" (again, two of them, one associated with each endpoint) to shape the curve as you wish. The basic drawing sequence is given below: Move cursor to desired location for curve's first endpoint, using the Numeric Keypad keys "1" through "4" and "6" through "9" ("NumLock" must be toggled off). The cursor movement increment (its "speed") can be toggled between 1 7 and 10 pixels with the "0" key on the Numeric Keypad. Press "F1" to define location of curve's first endpoint. Move cursor to desired location of curve's second endpoint. Press "F1" to define location of curve's second endpoint. Move cursor to move control point associated with second endpoint (which is initially at second endpoint's location), thus altering shape of curve. Press "F2" to switch cursor to control point associated with first endpoint (which is initially at first endpoint's location position). Move cursor to move control point associated with first endpoint, thus altering shape of curve. Press "F2" to switch cursor to other control point. Repeat steps for switching between and moving control points until curve's shape is as desired. Press "F3" to define curve. Note that the cursor moves to the curve's second endpoint, to facilitate drawing of successive connected curves. To define a straight line simply move to one of its endpoints, press "F1," then move to the other endpoint and press "F3." As you can see from the list of special keys used in PictureThis (KEYS.TXT), you can draw boxes and ovals, alter previously drawn curves, work at different scales, move the cursor directly to a previously defined endpoint, draw connecting curves "smoothly" (tangent at their shared endpoint), etc., etc. You can even "cut" a previously drawn curve into two curves, thus obtaining a new "middle" endpoint which can be used as an endpoint for subsequently drawn curves. You can also fill groups of curves, combine groups of curves into "objects" and manipulate these objects in various ways (scaling, moving, copying, rotating, etc.), change the line thickness and gray shading of curves, work in different units or on a grid, view an on-screen representation of the PostScript output, etc. The possibilities are described in detail in the user manual, but we invite you to EXPERIMENT now by pressing various keys to see what they do. You can't hurt anything by pressing an invalid key -- usually, you'll just hear a BEEP and nothing else will happen. If you toggled on special error messages, sometimes one of these messages will appear along with a BEEP. And you can usually access a help screen showing currently valid keys (by pressing "?"). Learning via trial and error can be very effective, but if you aren't that adventurous, the tutorial (TUTORIAL.TXT) offers a more structured approach to PictureThis. 8 6. To import a template file into PictureThis for tracing, press: F10 In response to the menu box which then appears, press: R And in response to the prompt for a file name, press: ENTER A directory listing with all the *.TMP files in the current directory will appear. Highlight the one you want by using the cursor keys, and then press "ENTER." You can use a template file you created previously with CaptureThis or Alternate CaptureThis, or you can use a sample template file from a distribution disk. Importing a template file automatically replaces any previously imported template. Similarly, you can access the same menu with "F10" to save and recall PictureThis-format drawing files ("S" and "G," respectively, on the menu), to save and recall clip art files ("E" and "I," respectively on the menu), and to save "encapsulated" PostScript files ("W" on the menu) for delivery to laser printers and imagesetters. We suggest that you use ".DRW," ".CLP," and ".EPS" as extensions for drawing files, clip art files, and encapsulated PostScript drawing files, respectively. Samples of all of these kinds of files (with the suggested extensions) are provided on one of the distribution disks. 7. You'll need to work out your own specifics for delivering encapsulated PostScript files produced by PictureThis to "desktop publishing" page layout programs and laser printers or imagesetters -- parallel and serial direct connections, indirect modem uploading, sending disks -- the number of possibilities is enormous! Consult software and laser printer user manuals and dealers, typesetting service bureau staff, and media reports for the latest, least expensive techniques. 8. Use the "Esc" key to "back out of" an operation. Press the "Esc" key enough times, no matter where you are in the program, and you'll see the prompt to exit from PictureThis. If you have questions or problems, you should consult the user manual. We hope that you find working with PictureThis both productive and enjoyable. Your comments -- and artwork samples -- are always welcome!