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-
-
- C A N O N S T U D I O V 1.2
- ============================
-
-
-
- COPYRIGHT
- ---------
-
- COPYRIGHT © 1992 WOLF FAUST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ALL
- DISTRIBUTION- AND MARKETING RIGHTS TO THE SOFTWARE ARE VESTED IN
- WOLF FAUST.
-
- COPYRIGHT: THIS PRODUCT ("CANONSTUDIO") IS COPYRIGHTED AND
- OTHERWISE SUBJECT TO PROPRIETY RIGHTS. YOU MAY NOT COPY, OR
- TRANSFER THE PRODUCT OR ANY COPY OR PORTION THEREOF WITHOUT
- WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR WOLF FAUST.
-
- DISCLAIMER: THE PRODUCT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF
- ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE. THE
- ENTIRE RISK AS TO USE, RESULTS AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PRODUCT IS
- ASSUMED BY YOU.
-
- LIMITATION OF LIABILITY:
- IN NO EVENT SHALL CANON AND/OR FAUST OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE HELD
- LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY ACTION, FROM
- WHATEVER SOURCE, CONCERNING THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE
- PRODUCT.
-
-
-
- REGISTERING
- -----------
-
- Please register CanonStudio or this product will most likely not
- be supported in the future (programs do cost more than time to
- develop). Also, your sharefee is my motivation for enhancements.
-
- The price for registering is:
-
-
- INTERNATIONAL
-
- US$25 includes shiping
- + $ 5 if payed by cheque. No COD!
-
-
-
- GERMANY
-
- DM 35 includes shiping. No COD (Nachnahme)!
-
-
-
- ENGLAND
- £15 includes shiping
-
-
-
- Send the money to following address:
-
- Wolf Faust
- Am Dorfgarten 10
- W-6000 Frankfurt 50
- Germany
-
- Tel: ++49-69-5486556 (GMT)
- Fido: 2:249/3.5 (Wild Cat: ++49-6173-2544 HST,V.32bis)
- email: wfaust@aurea.hotb.sub.org
-
-
- Or in England you may register and get updates at/from:
-
- JAM
- Jeff Walker
- 75 Greatfields Drive
- Uxbridge, UB8 3QN
-
- Tel: 08952-74449 (GMT)
-
- What do you get in return:
-
- - CanonStudio registered version
- - .030 version (approx. 10-20% faster)
- - update service (I take that very serious!)
-
-
-
-
- TRADEMARKS
- ----------
-
- Amiga is a registered trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
- Kickstart is a registered trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
- Workbench is a registered trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
- Deluxe Paint is a registered trademark of Electronics Art.
-
- All other trademarked product and company names used herein are
- used for identification purposes only. No infringement of
- trademarks is intended. Trademarks remain property of the
- trademark holder.
-
-
-
- INTRODUCTION
- ------------
-
- CanonStudio is a new program which is intended for all Amiga Canon
- printer drivers. It does print IFF graphics with up to 24 bit
- color accuracy in any size (Want a 100*100m poster?) .
- CanonStudio is not limited to the max. 4096 colors of the Amiga
- printer device, though it does work with nearly all Amiga printer
- drivers. The pictures are printed FROM DISK ie. you don't need
- much memory for printing a 10MByte 24 Bit graphic in high quality.
-
- CanonStudio is specially written for the Amiga operation system
- and is not just a simple portation from an IBM or Apple computer.
- Because of this, CanonStudio makes heavy use of multitasking and
- Kickstart 2.04. CanonStudio includes a spooler which allows you
- to specify multiple print jobs while the program is already
- printing in background. The program does provide a nice
- "click-and-drag" user interface and an ARexx interface.
-
- From my experience, most Canon printer owners do print pictures
- using ADPro's PrefPrinter saver or TruePrint. CanonStudio does
- offer users an easy and inexpensive way for printing pictures in
- high quality. Using the ARexx-Interface, CanonStudio can be
- controlled by other programs like ADPro or Black Belts
- Imagemaster.
-
- Now, here are some of the CanonStudio features:
-
- - prints IFF ILBM pictures from disk
-
- - supports most of the known IFF ILBM formats, including HAM8,
- HAM, EHB and color palettes up to 256 colors.
-
- - does not require $&%$ MBytes memory!
-
- - Allows you to print poster size images spread over multiple
- pages.
-
- - number of copies can be defined
-
- - Using CanonStudio you can print 24 bit-planes of color accuracy
- on a color printer (for instance CanonBJC800). If you have a
- black and white only printer, then you can print with 8 bit-planes
- of grey scale accuracy.
-
-
- - multiple jobs can be defined and printed in background
- (estimated print time and more will be displayed)
-
- - ink compensation does correct ink impurities
-
- - color adjustment (gamma, contrast, brightnes, weights,...)
-
- - Free defineable ordered dither routines. Following ordered
- dither matrices are already included:
- Haltone-A, Halftone-B, Ordered-A, Ordered-B, Spiral, Horizontal,
- Vertical, Bck-Diagonal, Fwd-Diagonal
-
- - Three error diffusion dither routines:
- Floyd Steinberg, Jarvis, Stucki
-
- - Two serpentine blue noise dither routines are included:
- 30% random weight, 50% random weight
-
- - ARexx Interface
-
- - font independent user interface (KS 2.04 style)
-
-
-
- ABOUT THIS MANUAL
- -----------------
-
- Sorry for this limited manual. I'm sure most things can easily be
- understood by simply using the "try and error" method. I simply
- don't have the time yet to describe all those nice features hidden
- in the program in detail. This will hopefully be addressed in a
- future release. Nearly every function is covered by this manual,
- though, most things should be better explained.
-
-
- HISTORY
- -------
-
- Following driver revisions have been made:
-
- 05.09.92 Version 1.0 First Version
- 08.09.92 Version 1.1 "Vertical Aspect" set in preferences
- caused wrong sized printing
- (a left bar) - fixed
- 09.09.92 Version 1.2 Remaining time not shown if
- print = page dimension - fixed
- a bug made it into V1.1 Blue-Noise color
- dump routine causing "cyan-spots" - fixed
-
-
-
- INSTALLATION
- ------------
-
- What does CanonStudio requires:
-
- - an Amiga with at least Kickstart/Workbench 2.04
- - ~300KB memory (so it even runs on a plain Amiga 500)
- - a Canon printer driver (at least CanonBJ130 V11.1, CanonBJ10 V4,
- CanonBJC V1, CanonLBP V3, CanonBJ300 V4.1)
-
- For installing CanonStudio simply drag the CanonStudio icon and
- Dither-Settings drawer into the wanted drawer. That's all...
- simple, isn't it?
-
- WARNING: IF STARTED FROM WORKBENCH, MAKE SURE STACK IS SET TO AT LEAST
- 10000 BYTES OR CANONSTUDIO WILL CRASH!!!
-
- In case you have the original icon as distributed, stack is set to
- 10000 allready. Stack can be set using the "Information"
- workbench menu. When started from Shell/CLI, CanonStudio
- automaticly allocates it's stack. Because of this, you don't need
- to set stack from Shell/CLI.
-
-
-
- LAUNCHING CANONSTUDIO
- ---------------------
-
- CanonStudio may be run from either Workbench or a Shell. When it
- starts, it looks for a file in its directory called
- "CanonStudio.prefs" that contains your last used and saved
- settings for printing. In case the setting file can not be found,
- CanonStudio uses it's default internal settings. You may also
- have your own settings file.
-
- CanonStudio can be launched from Workbench by double clicking on
- its icon. The CanonStudio icon has one tool type to specify its
- setting file.
-
- The tool type is
-
- SETTINGS=<settingsfile>
-
- where <settingsfile> is the name of a settings file for CanonStudio
- preferences. The default settings file is "CanonStudio.prefs" in
- the program directory containing the CanonStudio executable.
- Also, there are several tool type options which allow you to
- override the settings of the settings file. These options are
- named the same way as the Shell options are descibed below in
- detail.
-
- From a Shell, CanonStudio is invoked by typing "CanonStudio".
- CanonStudio has the following command template for it's arguments.
-
-
- CanonStudio PUBSCREEN/K,TOPAZ/S,REXX/S,NOFILEREQ/S,SCALE/S,
- NOSCALE/S,SETTINGS/K,PRI=PRIORITY/K/N,UNIT/K/N,FILES/M
-
- where SETTINGS is the name of a settings file for CanonStudio
- preferences.
-
- Beside the SETTINGS option, both, tool type and shell argument can
- be used to override special preference settings or cause a
- different behaviour of CanonStudio:
-
- PUBSCREEN <Name>
- allows opening CanonStudio on a public screen.
-
- TOPAZ
- disable independent font code. CanonStudio will only use Topaz 8
- for rendering it gadgets.
-
- REXX
- Will open ARexx port after FILES/M got processed. WARNING: if
- REXX is specified, you can only quit CanonStudio by using the QUIT
- or CONITNUE command (see the ARexx-Interface chapter).
-
- NOFILEREQ:
- If files are specified during startup, these will be processed.
- No filerequester appears after this and -- unless REXX has been
- specified -- CanonStudio is terminated.
-
- FILES <name1> <name2>... :
- You may specify files for processing and printing.
-
- SCALE|NOSCALE (default SCALE)
- In case SCALE is used, CanonStudio checks if the IFF CMAP
- (colormap) was shifted or scaled. Some application programs (for
- instance DPaint 4.1) do write their color values shifted (0xF0)
- instead of scaled (0xFF) causing to dark colors. As default you
- should start CanonStudio with the SCALE option and save the
- setting. Newer programs do write their color values scaled (for
- instance ADPro). Usually do not care about this setting, except
- you get light grey instead of a white area.
-
- PRI=PRIORITY <num> (Default -1)
- Defines the process priority of the main print process. As
- default a value of -1 is set. This results in a better
- multitasking behaviour as you may go further while CanonStudio is
- printing in background. Most Amiga processes have a higher
- priotity of 0. The priority must be in range from -50 to 50.
-
- NOTE: In case there is an other task with higher priority running
- in background, CanonStudio may seem to be disabled or crashed,
- though this is not the case simply because CanonStudio does not
- get any computing time because of it's lower priority compared to
- the other task. In this case quit or halt the other task while
- CanonStudio is running, or increase the CanonStudio priority using
- the PRIORITY option.
-
- UNIT <num> (Default 0)
- Future Workbench printer preferences may allow you top specify a
- printer port to print at. Also, most of the current multiport
- cards allow you to specify a port for printing at using a unit
- number (ie. 0 = internal port, 1 = external port A, 2 = external
- port B,...).
- Using the UNIT tool type or CLI keyword, you can define a unit
- (ie. port) to print at. As default, unit 0 is used.
- Once specified you can save the unit in the CanonStudio settings
- file.
-
-
- NOTE: in case the settings file could not be read, CanonStudio
- automaticly sets the dither method to custom with the
- Ordered-A-256 dither method installed. So the first time you
- start, Ordered is installed as "Custom Dither".
-
-
- GETTING STARTED
- ---------------
-
- After starting CanonStudio a filerequester appears and ask you for
- selecting IFF files for printing. You can avoid the filerequester
- by specifying files as arguments on shell startup, and/or by using
- the NOFILEREQ option.
-
- Also, in case you start CanonStudio from Workbench, the
- filerequester can be avoided by multiselecting the picture icons
- (see your system manual for more information).
-
- In either case, Shell or Workbench, a filerequester does not
- appear in case you already have specified a picture file on
- startup. In case no file is given, the filerequester appears and
- you can multiselect (again, see your system manual for
- multiselection) files for printing.
-
- In case you are not sure about printing a special file, don't
- hesitate. Unless you have specified the NOFILEREQ option on
- startup, the filerequester will appear again after processing the
- other given files.
-
-
- THE MAIN PROCESS WINDOW
- -----------------------
-
- After successfully selecting the file(s), the two main process
- windows open. One window is sized as far as your monitor allows.
- This window gives you an overview of the size of the printing page
- and the picture size and position for printing. You can use the
- mouse to position and size the picture on page.
-
- While you use the mouse for positioning the picture on the page,
- the gadgets in the second window are updated accordingly. These
- gadgets show the extact numeric values of the selections made by
- mouse in the other window.
-
- Also, this smaller window contains all the gadgets you need to
- control color, dither method and more. Most of the gadgets don't
- need a huge explanation, so let's have an overview over these
- gadgets:
-
-
-
-
- Paper Dimension:
- These are two gadgets. One is showing you the width of the
- maximum printable area of your printer as yelled by the printer
- driver. This gadget is read-only. The other gadget defines the
- height of the maximum printable area of your printer. This
- setting is often defined as physical print page. For instance, in
- case you have a DIN A4 paper with a size of 21.0*29.7cm and your
- printer always leaves a top and bottom border of 1 cm, you should
- enter 27.7cm here.
-
-
-
-
- Page Dimension:
- Now that you have defined the maximum print area of your printer
- for a given paper size, you may define a wanted subpage. For
- instance, you may want to decrease the printable size if you have
- a DIN A4 sized paper with sign at the top which should never be
- overprinted (or a formular paper). Let's say the sign is at the
- top border and 2 cm height. Now you should decrease the print
- height from Paper Dimension by two (ie. 25.7cm) and define a
- border of 2 cm at the top (Page Dimension Y = 2cm).
-
-
-
-
- Print Dimension:
- And finaly we have the actual print size of the picture. The is
- nearly no limit to the size specified here. Just be sure the
- upper left corner of the picture will be printed on the first page
- (if not, you'll get an error requester anyway...). The Print
- Dimensions X will be applied to all of the left-most pages in a
- poster print. All of the top most pages of a poster print will be
- affected by the Print Dimensions Y setting.
-
-
-
- Density:
- This cycle gadget in the upper right of the window shows you the
- densities supported by the printer driver. Select a wanted
- density by simply clicking with the mouse on the gadget.
-
-
-
- Col / b/w
- Below the Density gadget, you find the color and b/w cycle gadget.
- This gadget allows you to select the output of a color picture:
- greyscale or color. In case you select color and your printer
- driver does not support color, greyscale is used automaticly.
-
-
-
-
- Single/Fanfold
- This gadget does the same as the Workbench preferences
- Single/Fanfold gadget. In case Single is selected, a Formfeed is
- send after each page. Fanfold should be used for endless or
- rolled paper.
- If you have a single sheet ONLY printer like a laser printer, you
- can use FanFold to print multiple pictures on one page. Just be
- sure to set the page and paper dimension accordingly. If you are
- printing a multicolumn poster on continuous paper (fanfold or
- roll) then you would set "Fanfold" and define some top margin
- (Print Dimensions Y) so that the columns of your print will be
- separated. Also, when printing posters on continuous paper, you
- should set the Page Definitions Top margin to 0 so that there is
- no gap between individual pages of a column.
-
-
-
-
- Custom/Floyd/Stucki/Jarvis/Blue Noise 30%/Blue Noise 50%
-
- This cycle gadget allows you to select a wanted dither method.
- The dither method themselves are discussed later in detail.
- However, the print time increases with the dither method listed
- below. For instance Blue Noise usually requires twice the print
- time of the any Custom dither.
-
- o Custom allows you to define any wanted ordered dither matrix
- using the "Define Dither" gadget below. Many preset ordered
- dither matrixes are provided and explained later in detail
-
- o Floyd Steinberg is a very popular error diffusion dither method.
- This dither method does provide a good compromiss of speed and
- quality.
-
- o Stucki is also an error diffusion dither method. Different to
- Floyd Steinberg, this dither does require more computing time as a
- result of taking more pixels into the account.
-
- o Jarvis is also an error diffusion algorithem with nearly the
- same output as the Stucki dither. The added computation time of
- the Jarvis and Stucki dithers results from incorporating a greater
- number of pixels into each dithering computation.
-
- o Blue Noise 30%
- This is an error diffusion algorithem with perturbation and a
- serpentine raster using the Floyd Steinberg filter with 30% random
- weights.
-
- o Blue Noise 50%
- This is an error diffusion algorithem with perturbation and a
- serpentine raster using the Floyd Steinberg filter with 50% random
- weights.
-
- If you want to read more about dither routines and digital
- halftoning, here is a very good book to go for:
-
- Robert Ulichney
- "Digital Halftoning"
- MIT Press
- ISBN 0-262-21009-6
-
- The book is easy to understand and does come with lot's of
- samples. Most of the dither routines described below are handled
- in detail in this book. Surely one of the best books when it
- comes to digital halftoning.
-
-
-
-
- Color Adjust...
- A window will appear when you click on this gadget. The window
- contains many sliders giving you a possibility of to control the
- color, brightness and more of your picture. While most functions
- should be known, some note should be made:
-
- - the gamma sliders allows you to bright up a picture without
- loosing to much colors. Specially owners of printers with dot
- gain problems (most "cheap" printers <$3000 do have dot gain
- problems!) should use this slider to increase the brightness.
- Usually, you should select a value from 20-30 for best printing on
- the CanonBJC800, BJ10, BJ300.
-
-
- - the weights sliders are importend for printing color pictures on
- greyscale printers. The color components of the color picture are
- weighted accord to the slider settings. What are weights good
- for? A red and green pixel, both with the same color value of 50,
- do not have the same luminance when they are displayed on a color
- monitor. Most likely the green will look brighter because of the
- way monitor tubes are build. Because of this, when converting a
- color picture previously displayed on a monitor to a greyscale
- picture, you have to consider the different weights (ie.
- luminance) of the tube colors. As default, CanonStudio uses the
- weights as defined by the NTSC and PAL standard. In case you have
- scanned a picture with a RGB scanner, the colors are not weighted
- to these standards and are most likely weighted equaly. In this
- all sliders should be set to 3333 (ie. 33.33%) resulting in a
- total weight of 100%. The total weighting may exceed 100 percent.
-
- - CanonStudio also offers the user complete control over its ink
- compensation function. Printer's inks are not completely pure
- materials. For example, there is some amount of yellow mixed into
- the magenta ink. And, there is some amount of magenta which
- unavoidably is found in the cyan ink. The ink compensation values
- will correct for these impurities. With Magenta Compensation you
- define the amount of magenta in the cyan ink in percent. With
- Yellow Compensation you define the amount of yellow in the magenta
- ink in percent. In general, set the ink compensation value of
- magenta 31% and yellow to 40% for best results with Inkum Inks.
- PS: on my experience 15% gives better violet shades with the
- original Canon BJC800 inks, but again... it's best you ask the
- manufacturor of the ink for the right values.
-
- NOTE: The ink compensation function can be completely disabled by
- defining 0%. You will notice that without the ink compensation
- function, a blue sky will print as purple. With the ink
- compensation function set at 31%, blue skies are blue again.
-
-
-
- Set Aspect
- When you click on this gadget, CanonStudio automatically sets the
- print height of your picture to a value so that your printed
- picture does have the right aspect ratio. This requires a correct
- aspect ratio or DPI chunk saved in your picture. After setting
- the correct aspect ratio, a circle is printed as circle and a
- square would be printed as square no matter what the physical
- aspect of the printer's dots are.
-
-
-
- cm/inch
- Every value shown in the windows can defined as centimeters or
- inches. This gadget shows the current selection and when you
- click on it, all values are changed to the other measurement.
-
-
- Copies
- Allows you to define the number of copies you wish to print of the
- picture.
-
-
- Startin page
- In case you print a poster, you may define a page to start
- printing with. This is specialy usefull for printing posters. In
- case you had some trouble with the printer in the middle of the
- printing (out of paper?), you may restart the printing with the
- page aborted.
-
-
- PRINTING THE PICTURES
- ---------------------
-
- After all settings have been done in the main process window, you
- can click on the "Print" button. A small status window will
- appear telling you the number of pages, copies and after some
- seconds the estimated printing time.
-
- CanonStudio includes a printer spooler of it's own (called
- MultiTasking hihi). Because of this, you can go further with
- selecting pictures for printing while the printer is still
- printing. The main window will appear with the next picture file
- in case you selected multiple pictures on startup. After defining
- the print size of all given pictures, the filerequester appears
- again.
-
- There is nearly no limit in predefining multiple print jobs!
- Also, you can define the priority of the printing process on
- startup of CanonStudio and save this setting by clicking on the
- "Save Setting" gadget. If you set this priority to a less than 0
- (default -1), printing is done in background without disturbing
- you while defining the print dimension of the next picture or do
- whatever you like to do with your Amiga (except power off ;-).
-
-
- QUIT CANONSTUDIO
- ----------------
-
- You can terminate CanonStudio by clicking on the filerequesters
- close gadget or the Quit gadget.
-
-
-
- THE STATUS WINDOW
- -----------------
-
- The status window appears on startup of CanonStudio and remains
- open until you quit CanonStudio. While printing the window is
- sized to its maximum size and shrinked to a small title bar while
- not printing. The status window displays the current print job in
- progress and estimated printing time.
- Two gadgets are in this window and enabled in case a picture is
- printed:
-
- "Aborts" the printing of all pictures.
- "Skip" skips the current picture and printing will start with the
- next picture. Also, a requester appears to make sure your printer
- is ready for the next picture in case of an previous problem.
-
-
-
- PRINTER DRIVERS
- ---------------
-
- CanonStudio was designed to work with most Amiga printer drivers.
- Though, as result of the major efforts from Canon in supporting
- the Amiga, currently only Canon users get the program for free.
- Because of this, CanonStudio was limited to work with Canon
- drivers. In case the printer driver support it's own kind of color
- adjustment or dither routines: turn them off! Usually this can be
- easily done by printing using density 1 or 2. See your printer
- driver manual for more details.
-
-
- DITHER ROUTINES
- ---------------
-
- Many dithering methods are supplied with the CanonStudio. These
- are described below. In each case a larger dither mask size
- produces a print which can represent a wider range of colors but
- will produce less spatial information per unit area of paper.
- Conversely, a smaller dither mask size can reproduce fewer colors
- (or shades) but more closely approximates the true resolution of
- your printer.
-
- Another way of expressing this is the following: There is a
- tradeoff between printing ``lots'' of colors and printing in high
- resolution. Given a specific printer with a specific DPI
- capability, asking for ``lots'' of colors means using a larger
- dither mask size. A larger dither mask size cuts down on your
- effective resolution. For instance, using a dither mask of 16*16
- on your 360dpi printer will result in 360/16 = 22.5 dpi with full
- color information.
-
- Note that this can work to your advantage when blowing a picture
- up in size. Blowing up a picture means that there are more dots
- to work with which offsets the loss in resolution caused by a
- larger dither mask size. This added to the benefits to be had by
- being able to reproduce more colors (or shades) means that your
- enlarged posters will look quite good.
-
- Also note that many printers including most laser printers and dot
- matrix printers have considerable dot gain. For example, a 360
- DPI laser printer does not actually print dots which are 1/360 of
- an inch in size. Rather, its dots will be much larger. This
- causes some dithers, such as the Floyd-Steinberg and Ordered
- dithers, to produce intensely over-saturated or muddy prints.
- Other dithers such as the two halftone dithers overcome this
- problem with low-end printers.
-
- Also, if you want to read more about dither routines and digital
- halftoning, here is a very good book to go for:
-
- Robert Ulichney
- "Digital Halftoning"
- MIT Press
- ISBN 0-262-21009-6
-
- The book is easy to understand and does come with lot's of
- samples. Most of the dither routines described below are handled
- in detail in this book. Surely one of the best books when it
- comes to digital halftoning.
-
- Now let's take a look at the supplied dither routines.
-
-
-
- Custom
- ------
-
- If the Custom dither method is selected, you can define or load
- any ordered dither matrix by click on the "Define Dither" method
- below the gadget. Several popular ordered dither method are
- provided with CanonStudio and saved in a file. These file can be
- loaded and enabled with the "Load" gadget.
-
- The amount of printable colors is usually directly related to the
- size of the dither matrix. The ordered dither routines described
- below usually exists in several sizes. You can distinguish the
- custom ordered dither routines by their filenames. For instance a
- filename of "Halftone-A-4" means: Halftone A dither routine, 4
- shades. While "Halftone-A-256" means: Halftone A dither routine,
- 256 shades.
-
-
- Halftone-A - <number of colors>
- Halftone-B - <number of colors>
-
-
- The halftone dithers (Halftone-A and Halftone-B) differ in how
- they place a halftone matrix.
-
- This is the classical clustered halftone method used by most book
- publishers. To improve the dither output, the halftone matrix is
- rotated by 45 degree. Halftone-A causes the halftone matrix for
- each of the primary colors to be centered about the same point.
- This means that the primary colors will overlap completely,
- leaving a lot of white paper showing through. This may be
- appropriate for some better dye sublimation type printers or other
- color printers with good registration where the inks mix well.
-
- Halftone-B, on the other hand, staggers the halftone matrix of
- each primary color so that they do not overlap. This is similar
- in concept to traditional color offset printing. Halftone-B may
- produce better results on printers whose inks do not mix well, and
- on printers with less than perfect registration.
-
- The halftone dithers can produce some extremelly good results and
- compensate for the dot gain problems outlined above. Try both
- halftone dithers to see which one is better for your particular
- intention.
-
- Also, in case you xerox your printing, using Halftone results in a
- much better copy.
-
- To use Halftone-B is somehow different to the other dither
- matrices. You have a special dither matrix for each color.
- Because of this, each dither filename includes the abbreviation of
- the color (C = cyan, Y = yellow, M = magenta, K = black or
- greyscale). In case you use Halftone-B you also have to increase
- the brightness of the black color component by 50%. Use the
- bright+ gadget in the CanonPref program for increasing brightness.
-
- Halftone-B is a nice example for the relationship between color
- adjustment and dither routines. You have to consider both setting
- up your driver.
-
-
-
-
- PrtDevice-Halftone-16
- PrtDevice-Ordered-16
-
-
-
- This dither matrix is the one used by the printer devices
- "Halftone" or "Ordered" dither.
-
-
-
- Ordered-A - <number of colors>
-
-
-
- The ordered dither produces a regular repeating pattern which is
- often used for printing computer graphics. The ordered dither is
- particularly susceptible to over-saturation due to dot gain in
- high resolutions. Though, you surely get nice outputs in 180DPI.
-
-
- Ordered-B - <number of colors>
-
- This dither is a mixture of a dispersed dither like Order and a
- clustered dither like Halftone. The dither is specialy addressed
- to the high resolution printers with dot gain problems. For
- instance, if you print a picture with 360*360 dpi using
- Ordered-Rect-B-64, you get a picture that seems to be printed with
- 180*180 dpi. Now while graphics are printed emulating 180*180
- dpi, all black parts of the picture are printed using 360*360.
- Don't be confused, the printed picture is still better than
- a picture in real 180*180dpi resolution. The
- Ordered-Rectangular-B is specialy usefull for color DTP. You get
- nice color pictures with fine high quality text.
-
-
-
- Spiral-Dot-Screen - <number of colors>
-
-
- A wide range of special effects clustered dither matrices are
- available in the graphic arts industry and all are easily
- simulated digitally. Spiral-Dot is such a dither.
-
- The spirol-dot dither is essentially half of the classical screen,
- with dark squares growing to fill the plane without the
- laternating light squares. Spiral-Dot looks quiet similar to the
- Halftone-A matrix 0 degree rotated.
-
-
-
- Horizontal - <number of colors>
- Vertical - <number of colors>
- FwdDiagonal - <number of colors>
- BckDiagonal - <number of colors>
-
-
- A wide range of special effects clustered dither matrices are
- available in the graphic arts industry and all are easily
- simulated digitally. The Line dithers are such dithers.
-
- The horizontal (as well as the vertical, forward diagonal and
- backward diagonal) dither overcome much of the dot gain problems
- that the Floyd and Ordered dithers have with inexpensive printers.
- These dithers (especially the diagonal dithers) are especially
- good for large printings.
-
-
- Floyd Steinberg
- ---------------
-
- This is a very popular error diffusion dither method suggested by
- Floyd and Steinberg. They argued that a filter with four elements
- was the smallest number that could produce "good" results. The
- values were choosen to particulary assure the checkerboard pattern
- at the middle grey or shade of color. This dither method does
- provide a good compromiss of speed and quality. The reason for the
- popularity of this algorithem is clear, several color shade levels
- are represented by pleasingly isotropic, structureless
- distributions of dots. However, some shortcomings are also
- apparent:
-
- 1. Correlated artifacts in many of the color shade level patterns.
- This can be easily seen by printing a grey scale ramp.
-
- 2. Directional hysteresis due to the raster order of processing.
- This artifact is most apparent in very light and very dark
- patterns.
-
- 3. Transient behavior near edges or boundaries.
-
- Jarvis, Judice and Ninke
- ------------------------
-
- In 1976 Jarvis, judice and Ninke reported an error filter with 12
- elements. The large filter size does reduce some of the artifacts
- seen with the 4 element filter of Floyd and Steinberg, but
- directional hysteresis in the very dark and light regions are
- increased, and pixels are clustered together more in the middle of
- color shade regions. It also sharpen the pictures more.
-
- Stucki
- ------
-
- The Stucki filter uses does provide nearly the same output as the
- Jarvis filter, though you may may notice differences in sharpness.
-
-
- Blue Noise 30%-50%
- ------------------
-
- In trying several combinations of deterministic values in a four
- element error filter, non proved better than the famed filter of
- Floyd and Steinberg. Two variations of this basic filter are the
- Blue Noise dither included with CanonStudio. Both are processed
- with serpentine rasters. The serpentine raster used in processing
- is responsible for much of the directional artifact elemination.
- The noisy treshold (30% or 50% white noise) breaks up most of the
- remaining stable texture patterns yielding good radial symmetry at
- the expense of adding some low frequency energy.
-
- Blue noise is specialy usefull when printing light shades and
- fading colors.
-
- All error diffusion dither including Blue Noise can produce very
- good results on color printers with little dot gain and very good
- registration. If it produces a washed out print or particularly
- bad patterns, then try another dither (see the custom Ordered-B or
- Halftone for instance).
-
-
- ARexx Interface
- ===============
-
-
- By using the powerful scripting language, ARexx, CanonStudio can
- be controlled for automatic print jobs. Nearly every aspect of
- CanonStudio can be controlled from ARexx using simple English-like
- commands. This chapter describes the usage of CanonStudio from
- ARexx.
-
- Note that you must have ARexx in order to use the facilities
- described in this chapter. Specifically, if the program cannot
- locate the library "rexxsyslib.library", then it will not respond
- to any ARexx style requests. Also, CanonStudio must be startet
- with the REXX option (CLI or TOOLTYPE) to enable the ARexx port.
-
-
- In order to access CanonStudio from ARexx, you must tell ARexx how
- to make contact with CanonStudio. Specifically, you must tell
- ARexx the name of the message port which CanonStudio creates for
- the purpose of ARexx interaction.
-
- The port name of the program is called "PRTSTUDIO.n" where "n" is
- an extension starting with "1" making the port unique.
-
- Note: the name "PRTSTUDIO" is not an ARexx port unique to
- CanonStudio. This port will also be used by similar programs for
- other printer manufacturers. They all use the same ARexx port and
- do have a common ARexx comand set so you can share ARexx scripts
- with those users.
-
- You can make the connection from ARexx to CanonStudio using the
- following ARexx command:
-
- address "PRTSTUDIO.1"
-
- ARexx will generate an error condition should CanonStudio not be
- found.
-
- Note that the ARexx port name is case specific. It must be
- specified exactly as shown above.
-
- Results:
- --------
-
- After every command directed at CanonStudio from ARexx is
- executed, CanonStudio will fill in the standard ARexx result
- variable, "RC", with a return value. If this value is 0, then the
- previous command executed without error. If the value of "RC" is
- not zero, then it contains an error severity indicator.
-
- In order to receive additional error indications or to receive
- non-error status information back from CanonStudio, you must
- request additional status information from ARexx using the
- following command:
-
- OPTIONS RESULTS
-
- This command must be one of the first executable instructions in
- your ARexx program.
-
- If an "options results" command has been issued, then CanonStudio
- will load additional information into the ARexx variable
- "PRTSTUDIO_RESULT". "PRTSTUDIO_RESULT" can be consulted whenever
- {\tt RC} is non-zero to gain additional information about the
- nature of an error.
-
- When RC is returned with a zero value (indicating no error
- occurred), "PRTSTUDIO_RESULT" will be set to command specific
- information. Note that this means you must check "RC" before
- depending on the data in "PRTSTUDIO_RESULT" since
- "PRTSTUDIO_RESULT" may contain either additional error information
- or the status information you requested.
-
- The "PRTSTUDIO_RESULT" variable is available only to true ARexx
- programs. If you are sending ARexx style commands to CanonStudio
- from a non-ARexx program, then results which normally would be
- passed back in "PRTSTUDIO_RESULT" will instead be passed back in
- the "rm_Result2" field in the ARexx message structure.
-
- When CanonStudio is started with the REXX option, it will setup a
- database of your default values for printing. The values of the
- database can than be altered by using ARexx commands. Once you
- have setup the values, you may call the PRINT command from ARexx
- and CanonStudio will print the selected picture with the settings
- of the database. You can go on with your ARexx script, while
- CanonStudio prints the picture in background. You even may
- specify an unlimited number of pictures for printing, while a
- CanonStudio is still printing the first picture. CanonStudio does
- contain a printer spooler for keeping control of what has been
- printed (well, I would rather call this feature "Multitasking" ;-)
-
- The database you have read and/or write access to from ARexx
- contains informations like:
-
- PRINTDX - print dimension x position in inch.
- PRINTDY - print dimension Y position in inch.
- PRINTDW - print dimension width in inch.
- PRINTDH - print dimension height in inch
-
- PAGEDX - page dimension x position in inch.
- PAGEDY - page dimension Y position in inch.
- PAGEDW - page dimension width in inch.
- PAGEDH - page dimension height in inch
-
- PAPERDW - printer page dimension width in inch - this value is read only!
- PAPERDH - printer page dimension height in inch.
-
- RULERDW - ruler dimension width in inch.
- RULERDH - ruler dimension height in inch.
-
- COPIES - numer of copies.
- STARTPAGE - starting page.
-
- DENSITY - printer device density setting for printing
- DENSITY may range from 1 to 7.
-
- DITHERMETHOD - dither method to use for printing
-
- COLOR CONTROLS - control over the color adjustments.
-
- and more...
-
-
- Commands:
- ---------
-
- GETFILE
- GETFILE "DEFAULTFILE"
-
- Pops up the filerequester and returns the selected file in
- "PRTSTUDIO_RESULT". In case user aborted the requester without
- selecting a file, RC will be set to 10 and "PRTSTUDIO_RESULT" does
- contains the currently selected file.
-
- SETFILE
- SETFILE "PRINTFILE"
-
- The first syntax returns the file set in the database. The second
- syntax allows you to define a new picture for printing. The old
- selection will be returned in "PRTSTUDIO_RESULT". In both cases
- no error is returned.
-
- QUIT
-
- Quits CanonStudio.
-
- SCREENTOFRONT
-
- Pops the CanonStudio screen to front. This command does not
- return an error.
-
- SCREENTOFRONT
-
- Pushes the CanonStudio screen to the back. This command does not
- return an error.
-
- PANEL
-
- Opens the main processing window and allows the user to setup the
- parameters for a picture. CanonStudio returns 10 in RC and
- "Aborted" in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT if the user aborted the panel window
- with cancel. In case an error appears or the selected file was
- not a valid IFF file, RC contains 20 and PRTSTUDIO_RESULT "Illegal
- file".
-
-
- PRINTDW
- PRINTDW SIZE
- PRINTDH
- PRINTDH SIZE
- PRINTDX
- PRINTDX SIZE
- PRINTDY
- PRINTDY SIZE
- PAGEDW
- PAGEDW SIZE
- PAGEDH
- PAGEDH SIZE
- PAGEDX
- PAGEDX SIZE
- PAGEDY
- PAGEDY SIZE
- PAPERDW
- PAPERDH
- PAPERDH SIZE
- RULERDW
- RULERDH
-
- Using these commands you can ask or set a size parameter for
- printing. SIZE must be defined in the actual measurement CM or
- INCH. Make sure you set the measurement previously. In case SIZE
- is illegal, PRTSTUDIO_RESULT returns "Illegal value" with RC set
- to 10. In case of an error, the size parameters in the database
- are altered to a legal value. While you may alter a setting with
- these commands, it's not recommended to set all parameters. Use
- the SETSIZE command instead.
-
-
-
-
- SETSIZE PRINTDW PRINTDH PRINTDX PRINTDY PAGEDW PAGEDH PAGEDX PAGEDY PAPERDH
-
- With this command you can set multiple print parameters with one
- command. You may specify as many arguments as you need as long as
- you conform the order above. This command avoids possible errors
- that might appear with the single size set commands (PRINTDW...)
- because of temporary invalid parameters. As result, this command
- returns the previous settings of:
-
- PRINTDW PRINTDH PRINTDX PRINTDY PAGEDW PAGEDH PAGEDX PAGEDY PAPERDW PAPERDH
-
- Note that you also get PAPERDW as result. You may use the ARexx
- parse command for assigning each value to a wanted var in ARexx
- scripts.
-
- In case of an error, RC returns 10 and PRTSTUDIO_RESULT "Illegal
- value".
-
-
- CM
-
- Sets the measurement to centimeters. Automatically transforms the
- values in the database to centimeters. As result the previous
- setting "INCH" or "CM" is returned in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT. No error
- is reported.
- NCH
-
- Sets the measurement to inch. Automaticly transforms the values
- in the database to inch. As result the previous setting "INCH" or
- "CM" is returned in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT. No error is reported.
-
-
- FANFOLD
-
- Sets paper type to fanfold. As result the previous setting
- "FANFOLD" or "SINGLE" is returned in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT. No error
- is reported.
-
- SINGLE
-
- Sets paper type to single. As result the previous setting
- "FANFOLD" or "SINGLE" is returned in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT. No error
- is reported.
-
- DITHER
- DITHER CUSTOM|FLOYD|JARVIS|STUCKI|BNOISE30|BNOISE50
-
- Sets the requested dither method. As result the previous setting
- is returned in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT. In case of an error, RC is set
- to 10 and PRTSTUDIO_RESULT to "Illegal value".
-
- VERSION
-
- Returns the current version of CanonStudio (ie. "1").
-
-
- COPIES
- COPIES NUMBER
-
- Sets the amount of copies to print. As result the previous
- setting is returned in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT. In case of an error, RC
- is set to 10 and PRTSTUDIO_RESULT to "Illegal value".
-
- STARTPAGE
- STARTPAGE NUMBER
-
- Sets the page to start printing with. As result the previous
- setting is returned in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT. In case of an error, RC
- is set to 10 and PRTSTUDIO_RESULT to "Illegal value".
-
- DENSITY
- DENSITY 1-7
-
- Set the print density. As result the previous setting is returned
- in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT. In case of an error, RC is set to 10 and
- PRTSTUDIO_RESULT to "Illegal value".
-
- MAGENTA
- MAGENTA 0 - 100
- YELLOW
- YELLOW 0 - 100
-
- Sets the ink compensation. As result the previous setting is
- returned in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT. In case of an error, RC is set to
- 10 and PRTSTUDIO_RESULT to "Illegal value".
-
- RED
- RED -50 - 50
- GREEN
- GREEN -50 - 50
- BLUE
- BLUE -50 - 50
- GAMMA
- GAMMA -50 - 50
- CONTRAST
- CONTRAST -50 - 50
- BRIGHT
- BRIGHT -50 - 50
-
- Sets the color adjustment values. As result the previous setting
- is returned in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT. In case of an error, RC is set
- to 10 and PRTSTUDIO_RESULT to "Illegal value".
-
- REDWEIGHT
- REDWEIGHT 0 - 20000
- GREENWEIGHT
- GREENWEIGHT 0 - 20000
- BLUEWEIGHT
- BLUEWEIGHT 0 - 20000
-
- Sets the color weights for the color->greyscale transformation in
- 1/100 percent. As result the previous setting is returned in
- PRTSTUDIO_RESULT. In case of an error, RC is set to 10 and
- PRTSTUDIO_RESULT to "Illegal value".
-
- CONTINUE
-
- After this sending this command, the CanonStudio ARexx port is
- removed and the program will pop up the file requester as if it
- was started from CLI/Workbench without the REXX parameter. If
- the user quits the filerequester, he also quits CanonStudio.
-
- WARNING: do not send further messages after sending this command!
-
- PRINT
- PRINT WAIT
-
- With PRINT the currently selected file will be placed in the
- printing queue with the parameters set in the database. The
- control is returned to ARexx directly after specifying this
- command. This means, the ARexx program may go further while
- CanonStudio prints in background. Because of this, you'll never
- receive a error message, wether the file was succesfully printed
- or not. Though, you may get an error in RC and a proper
- explanation in PRTSTUDIO_RESULT because of illegal settings in the
- database.
- Different to PRINT, PRINT WAIT does halt your ARexx program until
- the picture you specified has been printed. In case the printing
- was aborted by some reason, RC is set to 10 and PRTSTUDIO_RESULT
- to "Aborted". Note: skiping the picture does not set RC to 10!
-
- SETASPECT
-
- Sets the print dimension height (PRINTDH) according to the aspect
- of the selected picture.
- Note: to find out the aspect of a picture, CanonStudio has to scan
- the picture file. Because of this, expect floppy users may have to
- wait some seconds until your ARexx program is further executed.
- Also, a valid picture file must be given
- SETASPECT returns the previously selected PRINTDH in
- PRTSTUDIO_RESULT.
-