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Text File | 1995-03-19 | 21.8 KB | 603 lines

Snap 1.4 ======== (c) Mikael Karlsson 1989 Keymap inverting courtesy of Jim Mackraz Is it Public Domain? Snap is NOT Public Domain. Snap is 'Freely distributable copyrighted software with a shareware option'. "Permission is hereby granted to copy Snap provided that the copyright notice and this document is left intact. Copies may not be made for profit." I don't know if the above should hold in court but what I mean is: Copy Snap if you want to but don't make a business of it. It is of course free to include it on public domain disks or putting it on a BBS. If you find Snap useful, please feel free to send a donation ($10 is a nice round number) or a nice program (PD). Or you can buy me a beer or two when we meet. If you wish to include Snap with a commercial product, please contact me first. I just want to make sure that my ego can stand for it. Of course it would also be nice with a registred copy of the product. (How about including it with a '030 card? ;-) Also read this message that Jim Mackraz sent to me regarding some code used in Snap: "You may use ikm.c in your product Snap. You may not distribute the source to ikm.c for profit, and any distribution of ikm.c must retain the original copyright message. You should also be warned that IKM() has not been substantially verified in either design or implementation, and that it will be made obsolete in version V1.4 by a new OS function call. There is no explicit or implied guarantee that ikm.c contains only supported algorithms. It may have problems in a future release of the system. jimm Jim Mackraz Aug 18, 1989" What is it? Snap is the perfect tool for the lazy typer. Isn't it irritating when you look at something on the screen and think: "That is what I'm going to type."? What if you could just point at it and get the computer to type it for you? That's where Snap comes to the rescue. Another thing that irritates me is that I'm sitting in front of THE computer and still I must have pen and paper available to scribble down something from the screen that I know I will need later. Snap provides a solution to that problem also. Just frame it and Snap creates a window with a copy of the screen contents. Perfect for snapping text from later on. This is another idea borrowed from the computer scientists at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (you know, the ones who invented the mouse, windows, icons and stuff like that). Why use Snap instead? a. Snap finds out the character coordinates automatically. b. Snap uses the RastPort's current font, not just Topaz 8. c. Snap was written by me. d. Snap supports all fixed width fonts with width and height<16. e. Snap supports accented characters (128-255). f. Snap supports keymaps, thanks to Jim Mackraz. g. Snap does both column and text oriented snapping. h. Snap snaps graphics. i. Snap uses the clipboard, making it compatible with TxED (and NotePad). j. Snap understands inverted characters. k. Snap understands bold characters. l. Snap understands underlined characters m. Snap does word oriented snapping. n. Snap has ants. o. Snap has a key combination to do insert. p. Snap supports Xerox style snapping with immediate insert. q. Snap prepends and appends characters. r. Snap saves graphics. s. Snap caches the character offsets between windows. t. Snap joins long lines. u. Snap supports ARexx to read and set prepend and append strings. v. Snap handles an extra pixel line between character rows. Starting and Stopping Start Snap with 'snap'. That's it. Snap detaches itself from the CLI, making it possible to close the CLI. Make sure that you have 'clipboard.device' in devs:. To get rid of Snap, execute 'snap -Q' (or snap QUIT). Note that you can't remove Snap if you have any 'snapped' windows left. Command line arguments Snap accepts a couple of command line arguments. You can use either unix or Amiga style arguments. XX is hex. NN is decimal. str is a string. Usage: snap -pNN -tXX -gXX -iXX -wXX -Pstr -Astr -cNN -lNN -aXXXX -x -X -e -E -r -R -j -J -uN -bXX -oNN -CNN -BNN -Q or snap PRIORITY/k TEXTQUAL/k GFXQUAL/k INSERTKEY/k CWKEY/k PREPEND/k APPEND/k CHARDELAY/k LINEDELAY/k CRAWLPTRN/k XEROX/s NOXEROX/s EARLYPATCH/s NOEARLYPATCH/s STARTUNIT/k TRUEUNDERSCORE/k FAKEUNDERSCORE/s JOINLONG/s NOJOINLONG/s PLANEMASK/k GADOFFSET/k CACHESIZE/k BADCHAR/s QUIT/s -pNN PRIORITY NN where NN is the priority to use when installing the input handler. Default is 51. Note that it's not possible to change the priority of the input handler while Snap is running. -tXX TEXTQUAL XX where XX is the text qualifier to use in text operations. Default is the left Amiga key. -gXX GFXQUAL XX where XX is the graphics qualifier to use in graphics operations. Default is the right Amiga key. -iXX INSERTKEY XX where XX is the raw key code for the key to be used together with the left Amiga key as insert key. Use together with Shift to get modidified inserts. Use 0 to disable. Default is hex 17 ("I"). -wXX CWKEY XX where XX is the raw key code for the key to be used together with the left Amiga key to open the Snap control window. Default is hex 11 ("W"). -Pstr PREPEND str where str is the string that will be inserted in front of every line in a modified insert. Max length of the string is 16. Default is "> ". -Astr APPEND str where str is the string that will be inserted after every line in a modified insert. Max length of the string is 16. Default is "". -cNN CHARDELAY NN where NN is the amount of time that Snap should wait after each character inserted into the input stream. Default is 0. -lNN LINEDELAY NN where NN is the amount of time that Snap should wait after each carriage return inserted into the input stream. Default is 0. -aXXXX CRAWLPTRN XXXX where XXXX is a 16 bit number that specifies the pattern for the crawling ants. Use FFFF to turn the crawling off. If you specify 0 as the crawl pattern, Snap will use different patterns for each snapping mode (box/char/word/line). Default is 7777. -x XEROX tells Snap to use Xerox style snapping instead. The snapped text is inserted immediately it has been snapped. -X NOXEROX turns off Xerox style snapping. -e EARLYPATCH tells Snap to patch dangerous functions as soon as the text qualifier goes down. This is done automatically when you use Xerox style snapping. -E NOEARLYPATCH turns off early patching. This is default. -j JOINLONG tells Snap to join long lines. This means that Snap joins (removes the line feed between) two lines if the first line has a non-blank in the last position. This is not done in rectangular snapping. -J NOJOINLONG disables the join-long-lines behavior. This is default. -uN STARTUNIT N tells Snap which unit to use when you start snapping. 0 is rectangular snapping (FRAME). 1 is character snapping (CHAR). Default is 0. -r TRUEUNDERSCORE tells Snap to do true checking of underscores when snapping characters. -R FAKEUNDERSCORE turns off true checking of underscores. Instead Snap just skips the underscore line and hopes that the rest of the character will provide correct matching. This option is provided since there is a bug in the rendering of underscored characters. -bXX PLANEMASK XX where XX is the bit plane mask used when drawing the selection frame for character snapping. This does not affect graphics snapping. Default is 1. -oNN GADOFFSET NN where NN is the offset for the save gadget. This may be necessary to use if you use some kind of iconifier program that puts a gadget where Snap usually puts the save gadget. Default is 52. -CNN CACHESIZE NN where NN is the number of windows that Snap will cache character offsets for. Specifying a new value while Snap is running means that you increase the cache size by N. Default size is 10, default increase is 0. -BNN BADCHAR NN where NN is the ascii value of the character that will be used when Snap doesn't recognize a character. Default is 63, a '?'. -Q QUIT removes Snap. QUALIFIERS (always entered in HEX) (This list borrowed from Matt Dillon) 0001 Left Shift 0002 Right Shift 0004 Caps Lock 0008 Control 0010 Left Alt 0020 Right Alt 0040 Left Amiga Key 0080 Right Amiga Key 0100 Numeric Key Pad Key (not useful) 0200 Repeat (not useful) 0400 Interrupt (not useful) 0800 Multibroadcast (not useful) 1000 Middle Mouse Button (not normally implemented by intuition) 2000 Right Mouse Button 4000 Left Mouse Button Note: Combinations are allowed, in which case any one of the elected qualifiers along with the left, right mouse button will cause the appropriate action to occur. Some useful raw key codes: 17 I seems to become the Amiga standard 34 V for you Macintosh freaks 15 Y good ol' Emacs Modified inserts Modified insert means that extra characters are added in front of and after each line as it is inserted. The characters in front are set via the -P/PREPEND command line argument, the characters after via the -A/APPEND command line argument. These strings can also be set from ARexx using the commands 'PREPEND newstring' and 'APPEND newstring'. These commands should be addressed to Snap using the ARexx command 'ADDRESS SNAP'. The old string is returned in the RESULT variable, provided that 'OPTIONS RESULTS' is given. If no newstring is given then no change is made. A small example: /* Change PREPEND and APPEND strings for my mail answering program */ PARSE ARG ReplyTo OPTIONS RESULTS ADDRESS SNAP 'prepend' ReplyTo'>' oldprepend = RESULT ADDRESS SNAP 'append' "" oldappend = RESULT Delays The character and line delay may be necessary with some programs that can't handle the amount of characters the Snap insert into the input stream. CygnusEd is known to have problems with this. TxED and UEdit handles inserted characters very nicely. The delay is specified in milliseconds, eg a value of 1000 gives a delay of 1 second. Watch out for The Early Patch behavior may cause problems if you use the Left Amiga key as the text qualifier together with MachII. What happens is that MachII can't activate a new window when you do a Left Amiga-M. Underscored characters can give problems. Apart from the bug mentioned above there's another problem. In some fonts the underscore character (_) and an underscored space looks the same. Snap tries to be smart and usually gets it right. The algorithm used is the following: An underscore/underscored space is interpreted as an underscored space if the previous character was underscored, otherwise it's interpreted as a true underscore character. Snapping Snapping comes in two flavors; characters and graphics. Snapping graphics simply means that you can frame an area on screen and that area is copied into a window. Character snapping can be made in four different ways: * rectangular snapping * character oriented snapping * word oriented snapping * line oriented snapping Rectangular snapping makes it possible to snap a column of text. A carriage return is inserted after each row, except the last one. Line oriented snapping is much the same as rectangular snapping, except that the width of the rectangle is the width of the window. Character oriented snapping is much harder to explain than to use. Character oriented snapping starts at one character, extends to the right edge of the window, goes on with complete lines, and ends at another character. The select box can look like this: ________________________ __________________| | | | | __________________________| |________________| or like this: _________ _____ |_________| |_____| and of course like this: ________________ |________________| Word oriented snapping works the same way as character oriented, except that you can only extend the selection word by word. A word is defined as non-blanks surrounded by blanks. Let's define some actions used when controlling snap. CLICK 1. Press the mouse button. 2. Release the mouse button. MOVE 1. Move the mouse. PREPARE_TEXT 1. If you are using Xerox style snapping, make sure that your intended destination window is active. 2. Press and hold the text qualifier (Default: Left Amiga key). 3. MOVE to the first character you want to copy. PREPARE_GFX 1. Press and hold the graphics qualifier (Default: Right Amiga key). 2. MOVE to the upper left corner of the area you want to copy EXTEND 1. MOVE 5. (Press and) Release the mouse button. END 1. Release the mouse button. 2. Release the qualifier. CANCEL 1. Release the qualifier. 2. Release the mouse button. Ways to use these actions: This is with starting unit FRAME. Selecting starting unit CHAR will skip rectangular snapping and take you directly to character oriented snapping. To do rectangular snapping you have to click through char, word and line oriented back to rectangular snapping. To do rectangular snapping: 1. PREPARE_TEXT. 2. Press the left mouse button. 3. MOVE. 4. EXTEND until satisfied. 5. END or CANCEL. To do character oriented snapping 1. PREPARE_TEXT. 2. CLICK the left mouse button. 3. EXTEND until satisfied. 4. END or CANCEL. To do word oriented snapping 1. PREPARE_TEXT. 2. Double-CLICK left mouse button. 3. EXTEND until satisfied. 4. END or CANCEL. To do line oriented snapping 1. PREPARE_TEXT. 2. Triple-CLICK left mouse button. 3. EXTEND until satisfied. 4. END or CANCEL. To insert snapped characters (BKSYSBUF "You know ;-)") 1. PREPARE_TEXT. 2. CLICK the right mouse button. or 1. Press and hold the left amiga key. 2. Type the insert key as specified with -i (Default "I"). To insert snapped characters including prepend and append strings 1. Press and hold the left amiga key and either shift key. 2. Type the insert key as specified with -i (Default "I"). To abort insertion 1. CLICK the left mouse button. To snap graphics 1. PREPARE_GFX. 2. Press the left mouse button. 3. MOVE. 4. EXTEND until satisfied. 5. END or CANCEL. To open the Snap Control Window 1. Press and hold the left amiga key. 2. Type the control window key as specified with -w (Default "W"). When snapping text you can go directly from snapping to inserting by replacing "END or CANCEL" above with "Release left mouse button - CLICK right mouse button". If you are using Xerox style snapping, the snapped text will be inserted as soon as you END. When selecting snapping unit a fourth click takes you back to character oriented snapping. Each click steps one unit. Note that rectangular snapping only is available if you MOVE before you release the mouse button. Snapping characters, character coordinates and caching You must always start snapping at a character, otherwise Snap won't get the coordinates right. This applies to all kinds of snapping including line snapping. Snap caches the character coordinates for the N last used windows, where N is specified by the -C/CACHESIZE parameter. When you start snapping in a window Snap checks it's cache to see whether you have snapped in this window before. If the window is in the cache then Snap first tries to find a character at the previous coordinates. If no character is found at the cached coordinates then Snap goes through the complete lookup process. Of course this is transparent to the user, so you don't have to worry about it. The size of the cache can be specified by the user and is managed on a Least Recently Used basis. The caching makes it possible for Snap to get the correct character coordinates even if you start snapping on a space, provided that you've snapped in that window before. Trailing blanks are removed on each line when you're snapping characters, words or lines, but not when doing rectangular snapping. Trailing blanks are only removed in line mode if you're snapping a single line. Snapping and Saving Graphics Windows with graphic snaps are always opened on the Workbench screen. If you've snapped graphics from a screen with different colors then you can switch to the graphic snap's original colors by holding down the left mouse button inside the snap window. Saving of graphics is done via the Snap Control Window (SCW). To the left of a Snap window's window-to-front and window-to-back gadgets is a small gadget that looks like a disk. Clicking this disk gadget has different effects according to a two conditions. SCW Graphics Window not open not selected Opens the SCW, selects the Graphics Window open not selected Selects the Graphics Window. open selected Saves the contents of the Graphics Window The Snap Control Window looks something like this: _______________________________ |x|Snap_Control_Window________||| | ____ __________________ | ||Save| as |Name gadget | | | ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | | Transparent color |0~~| | | ~~~ | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Save gadget will be ghosted if no window is selected. Clicking the Save gadget will save the contents of the selected Graphics Window as an IFF file. The Transparent color gadget is used to specify which color will be transparent in the saved IFF file. The Name gadget is used to specify the name of the IFF file to save. The Name gadget is a string gadget if arp.library isn't available. If arp.library is available it will be a click-gadget that brings up an Arp File Requester. Compiling A 'makefile' is provided. Depending on which compiler you use, remove and insert '#'s. I seem to have some problem with the detaching when using Lattice. Everything works ok, except that you can't close the CLI-window. If anybody solves it, I'd be very grateful to know about it. Some things to remember a. The text is sent to the active window. Make sure that the correct window is active. b. Don't interfere when the text is being inserted. Any key pressed by you will be inserted in the middle of the text being inserted. c. Snap begins with an attempt to find the character coordinates. Therefore if you begin snapping on a space, Snap will almost certainly get the wrong coordinates, unless Snap has cached the character coordinates from a previous snap. d. To be able to do Xerox style snapping, Snap disables ActivateWindow when the text qualifier is held down. By doing this Snap makes sure that the destination window remains active when you move out of it, even if you are using DMouse or another Sun mouse utility. Bugs Of course, what did you think. Well, as far as I know there are no explicit bugs. Oh yes, there is one that I don't know how to solve. The problem is that some font editors optimize the character image data. The result is that two characters with the same image (e.g. I and l in some fonts) uses the same image data, thereby making it impossible for Snap to determine which character was printed in the first place. This can be solved by editing the font so that each character is unique. Acknowledgements Thanks to: o Amiga-Lorraine for the machine. o Jim Mackraz for the keymap inverting code. o Radical Eye Software for "minrexx". o William Hawes for ARexx, WShell, ConMan, etc. o Bjorn Knutsson, Dominic Giampal, Marc Boucher, Eddy Carroll and Jonas Petersson for testing. o All of you who has sent or will send comments, contributions or questions. Improvements I've been thinking about adding a way for programs to "register" their windows with Snap so that Snap can let the program handle the snapping by itself. As an example: Snapping an icon as text doesn't make much sense, so the program displaying the icon could take over and put the name of the file in the clipboard. A character-mapped window could also benefit from this. s-mail: Mikael Karlsson Lovsattersvagen 10 S-585 98 LINKOPING SWEDEN e-mail: micke@slaka.sirius.se micke@slaka.UUCP {mcvax|munnari|seismo}!sunic!liuida!slaka!micke Phone: +46-13 50479 +46-431 50623 (in the summer)