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GRAFCAT (GRAPHIC CATALOG) 3.0 ████████████████████████████████████████ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ If you like this program, please: Send us $40.00, the normal user fee for this software. Registered users of this software are entitled to phone support, notification of upgrades and good karma. When you register GrafCat we'll send you a copy of the latest version. Please tell us the version number of your copy of GrafCat when you register. Our address can be found at the end of this file. Complete details of registration can be found later in this document in the section on registration. NOTE: Release three of GrafCat represents a complete re-write of the package. Numerous things have changed... if you're familiar with GrafCat from previous releases you're urged to read this file all the way through. NOTE: German users of GrafCat should contact our German distributor, PD-SERVICE-LAGE, Postfach 1743, D-4937 Lage, West Germany. A German language version of the package is available from them as well. NOTE: Australian users of GrafCat should contact our Australian distributor, Budgetware, P.O. Box 496 Newtown NSW 2042. Phone (02) 519-4233 FAX (02) 516-4236. NOTE: We now have a bulletin board system. See the section on contacting Alchemy Mindworks for more information. ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ CONTENTS ███████████████████ Introduction Hardware and software New features of the level three release File formats Macpaint GEM/IMG PC Paintbrush PCX CompuServe GIF TIFF WordPerfect Graphics WPG Deluxe Paint/Amiga IFF/LBM PC Paint Pictor PIC Truevision Targa Windows 3 BMP Microsoft Paint MSP Encapsulated PostScript EPS Halo CUT Using the main menu Control keys Printing Floppy mode printing Configuration Runtime editing Dot matrix and inkjet printers A word about memory A word about resources A word about dithering and halftoning If you encounter a problem Contacting Alchemy Mindworks Inc. Shareware registration Bundling GrafCat Source code and books Shareware distributors Legal dogma INTRODUCTION ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ GrafCat is a tool to help you keep track of a large collection of bitmapped image files. It will allow you to print up images fifteen or sixteen to a page on any PostScript or LaserJet Plus compatible laser printer. Note that this includes LaserJet II and LaserJet III series laser printers. GrafCat has numerous options to allow you to create the most useful catalog pages possible. It will print images in either portrait or landscape orientation. It can include simple or detailed descriptions of each file it catalogs. It will handle colour and grey scale files with up to 24 bits of colour, reproducing them as dithers or as PostScript halftones. GrafCat can catalog any mixture of the file types it recognizes. A complete list of these files and the details of using them can be found later in this document. GrafCat will handle image files of any size. It will use extended or expanded memory if you have some, and disk space if you don't. It has a fast and easily understood user interface. As it comes out of the box... or out of the ZIP... GrafCat is configured like as follows. If you want to change some of these parameters, see the installation section of this document. - It uses virtual memory. - It uses colour screen text. - It prints detailed descriptions below each picture. - It prints images in landscape orientation frames. - It drives a PostScript printer. - It uses error diffused dithering to handle colour source images. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ GrafCat will run on any PC compatible system with at least 384 kilobytes of memory. We strongly recommend that you have at least 640 kilobytes. A megabyte of extended or expanded memory will make GrafCat a lot faster if you like to run it while shelled out of another application. Run on its own, it can get by exclusively with DOS memory. GrafCat will run under DOS 2.0 or better. We recommend that you use at least DOS 3.3. You will need a suitable expanded or extended memory driver in your system for GrafCat to recognize your extra memory. You should have received the following files in the GrafCat package: - GCT.EXE - The GrafCat program itself. - GCT.RES - The GrafCat resource file. - GCT.DOC - Yes, you're reading it now. - GCTINSTL.EXE - The GrafCat configuration utility. - RMOVER.EXE - A general resource manager. - EXAMPLE1.IMG - A monochrome picture file. - EXAMPLE2.GIF - A sixteen-colour picture file. - EXAMPLE3.GIF - A 256-colour picture file. - ORDER.FRM - A registration order form There is no EXAMPLE4, a 24-bit picture file, as the smallest one we could find was over 400 kilobytes long. There are several 24- bit files on our bulletin board, should you want one to look at. NEW FEATURES OF THE LEVEL THREE RELEASE ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ The original release of GrafCat was fairly simple. It ran from the command line and printed all the files it could find. It had relatively few options. More people wanted to suggest ways to improve it than were actually interested in registering it. The release three incarnation of GrafCat embodies many of the suggestions which were lavished upon it... at least, it embodies those which we could figure out how to implement. When you run GrafCat, it will display a file selector screen. If you're familiar with our Graphic Workshop package, you'll recognize this... everything works the same. GrafCat can print in image frames which have either portrait or landscape orientation. If you're primarily interested in cataloging GIF files, you'll find that the latter is preferable. Landscape oriented frames work out such that there's enough room on the left side of the page to allow the pages to be bound. GrafCat will print colour and grey scale files as Bayer or Floyd- Steinberg error diffused dithers, or as PostScript halftones on a PostScript laser. The latter looks slick but it's pretty slow. Plan to leave the whole works running overnight if you'll be using PostScript halftones. GrafCat handles files using the same file format resources as does Graphic Workshop, and as such it will read all the same formats. This includes 24-bit formats, such as PCX and Targa. Please read the section later in this document concerning WordPerfect Graphics files. Note that in dealing with minor bugs in GrafCat, we'll be releasing versions with new revision letters. You can see the current revision letter in the closing beg notice. It will not appear anywhere else in the program. FILE FORMATS ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ GrafCat works exclusively with bitmapped image files. This is as opposed to vector or line art files. Vector files include DXF, GEM, CDR, Harvard Graphics, Lotus PIC and CGM files, among others. GrafCat does not support vector files, nor is it likely to in the immediate future. In most cases, the specifications for image files are pretty standardized, and GrafCat will reliably read and print image files in its supported formats without difficulty. There are a few exceptions to this, as will be discussed in detail throughout this section. MACPAINT FILES ───────────────────── These can come in two flavours. The most common one is straight ported MacPaint files, that is, files having the "MacBinary" header. The other is "headerless" files, these being the ones used with PFS:First Publisher. GrafCat reads both types. All MacPaint files have the dimensions 576 by 720 pixels. These are the dimensions of the GrafCat image frame in portrait orientation. GEM/IMG FILES ──────────────────── There are actually quite a few variations on IMG files... they handle monochrome and grey level images. The primary application for IMG files is as the bitmapped image file format of Ventura Publisher. GrafCat supports files with up to 256 levels of grey. PCX FILES ──────────────── These are the files used to hold images for Z-Soft's PC Paintbrush package. These can range from monochrome to 24-bit images. All the various formats are supported by GrafCat. GIF FILES ──────────────── These can range from monochrome to 256-colour images in any size you can find 'em. GrafCat supports both the 87a and 89a versions of the GIF standard. It will read the first image of GIF files having multiple images. TIFF FILES ───────────────── GrafCat supports monochrome, colour and grey scale TIFF files. Note that due to the wide variations among the programs which produce TIFF files, GrafCat would be lying rather badly if it claimed to be able to read all TIFF files. Specifically, it does not read Huffman or LZW compressed TIFF files as yet, as we haven't devised code to do this in a reasonable amount of space. Colour TIFF files are another area in which GrafCat only handles files from some sources. If you have Graphic Workshop, you'll find its F4 details function helpful in identifying problems which might crop up in reading TIFF files with GrafCat. WPG FILES ──────────────── These are the native import graphic files for WordPerfect. These files can contain both bitmaps and line art, or vector graphics. GrafCat can only deal with the bitmapped parts of them. If you attempt to print a WPG file containing both bitmapped and vector elements, the vector elements will be discarded. WPG files which refuse to read with GrafCat are usually those which contain only vector elements and no bitmaps. GrafCat will deal with WPG files having one, four or eight bits of colour information, that is, monochrome files, sixteen-colour files and 256-colour files. The WPG specification allows for 256-colour files. As of this writing, WordPerfect itself would not read them. MSP FILES ──────────────── These are the image files used by the paint program which came with Microsoft Windows version 2. Don't confuse these with PCX files... some versions of Windows 2 came with a Windows implementation of PC Paintbrush from ZSoft as well. The two programs... and the two file formats... are not compatible. MSP files are monochrome only. IFF/LBM FILES ──────────────────── These started out on the Amiga. The IFF file standard is extremely flexible, and allows all sorts of things besides images to be stored in IFF files. IFF files are found on the PC having been ported from Amiga systems. They are also created on the PC by several applications such as Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint package and Digital Vision's Computer Eyes video scanner board. In the first case they are given the extension LBM. In the second they are given the extension CE. The basic file structure is the same, however. Note that GrafCat only reads "pure" IFF files, and will not handle the countless variations on the format which have appeared on the Amiga. Specifically, it does not read hold and modify, or HAM, files. BMP FILES ──────────────── These are the files which are used as "wallpaper" under Windows 3. They can be created using the version of Paint supplied with Windows. PIC FILES ──────────────── These should not be confused with Lotus 1-2-3 PIC drawing files. PIC files are created by PC Paint (not PC Paintbrush) and are used by Grasp, among other things. They come in many flavours. GrafCat has been tested with the most common ones. In theory it should support them all, but that's only a theory. PIC files are structured exceedingly weirdly, especially in their sixteen-colour manifestations. For this reason, it's necessary for GrafCat to create a temporary scratch file while it's packing or unpacking a sixteen-colour PIC file. You will note that upon beginning to read or write one, the bar graph will appear to pause for a few seconds before it starts to move. By default, the temporary file will be written to the current directory. However, you can direct it to somewhere else by including the following line in your environment, for example: SET TEMP=H:\ This will cause the temporary file to be written to the root directory of drive H:. You can, of course, specify any path you like. If drive H: is a RAM drive, this will speed up the packing and unpacking of sixteen-colour PIC files considerably. TGA FILES ──────────────── The Truevision Targa format is used by several high end paint programs and things like ray tracing packages. It can handle images with up to sixteen million unique colours. There are a lot of variations on TGA files, and GrafCat does not handle them all as yet. Specifically, it only handles uncompressed and run length compressed files. It ignores all alpha channel information. EPS FILES ──────────────── The EPS format... encapsulated PostScript... isn't really a bitmapped format at all. However, it may contain bitmapped data. PostScript cannot be interpreted directly by most PC applications. As such, an EPS file which is to be imported into an application such as Ventura Publisher or PageMaker also includes a "preview". A preview is a small black and white TIFF image which will show you a rough idea of what the EPS file will look like. If you import an EPS file into Ventura, for example, the screen image you see will be the preview but the data printed to your printer will be the PostScript data itself. If you attempt to catalog an EPS file with GrafCat, you will see the preview image, not the actual PostScript data. This will look the same as the source data if you have translated a monochrome file to EPS, and it will look like a very coarse Bayer dither of the source otherwise. Note also that if you attempt to read an EPS file without a preview, GrafCat will tell you that it has encountered a file read error. The EPS file itself may be fine... GrafCat, however, can only read previews. HALO CUT FILES ───────────────────── The CUT format is exceedingly awkward, and GrafCat makes a few assumptions about how CUT files will be used in order to make it workable. To begin with, CUT files don't know how many colours they have in them. They rely on a second file, called a PAL file, to define their colours. GrafCat looks for a PAL file to decide whether a CUT file has two bits or eight bits of colour. If it doesn't find a PAL file with the same name as your CUT file, it assumes that the CUT file in question only has two bits of colour. Otherwise, it assumes that there are 256 colours in the file. If you're using CUT files and have any suggestions to improve GrafCat's handling of them, or if you encounter problems with its CUT files, please get in touch with us. The CUT format, while occasionally requested, turned out to be very weird. A WORD ABOUT MEMORY ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ GrafCat will use whatever memory you have going. For the most part, if you run it on a machine with 640 kilobytes of conventional memory and nothing much typing up part of this... not too many TSRs and no DOS shell... it will get along fine without any recourse to extra memory. There are three sorts of "extra" memory which GrafCat can use, to wit, extended, expanded and virtual. Extended memory is also called XMS memory, and is only available on AT and 386 systems. Expanded memory, also called EMS or LIM memory, is available if you have a LIM board and driver in your machine. Virtual memory means using a big disk file and making believe it's memory. Virtual memory is very slow compared to real memory. You must tell GrafCat what to do about extra memory when you install it. See the section on installation. In addition to the three foregoing types of extra memory, GrafCat can be configured to use "extended or virtual" or "expanded or virtual" memory. If one of these options is chosen, GrafCat will attempt to allocate a buffer from extended or expanded memory if it can't do so with DOS memory. If it's unable to allocate a buffer in extra memory, it will switch to virtual memory and see if its luck improves. If there's no room for a virtual memory buffer, it will give up and return an error saying that it can't allocate memory. This shouldn't be necessary... in the unlikely event that it needs extra memory at all, it won't need all that much. By default, GrafCat configured to use virtual memory will use the current drive and directory to write its temporary files. You can change this by adding a line to your environment with the SET command such as: TEMP=H:\ In this case, any virtual memory temporary files which GrafCat wants to create will be written to the root of drive H:. If you have a RAM disk, you should use the TEMP environment variable to tell GrafCat to use it for virtual memory operations, as this will speed things up considerably. Note that if you will be using the floppy disk cataloging mode of GrafCat and your memory situation will cause GrafCat to use virtual memory, you should make sure you have a TEMP variable set up. Otherwise, GrafCat will attempt to write its virtual memory files to your floppies. As is discussed elsewhere in this document in the section on resources, GrafCat frequently swaps blocks of code and data in and out of memory. In addition to the memory required for your pictures, GrafCat must have memory to manage its resources and to allocate small scratch buffers. This is called memory "overhead". It's possible for GrafCat to allocate a lot of DOS memory for a picture file and subsequently be unable to allocate enough memory for the resource which will manipulate the picture. To avoid this situation, GrafCat reserves a fixed amount of memory for its own use before it attempts to allocate an image buffer. The amount of this fixed memory is adjustable through the GCTINSTL program, as is discussed in the section on installation. As it's set in the distribution version of the software, it should be adequate for all the operations the package can perform. There are a few hypothetical cases in which this might not prove true, for example, in unpacking enormously wide GIF files. If you run into problems with allocating scratch buffers or resource buffers, try increasing the memory overhead. Finally, note that in order to access the extended or expanded memory in your system, GrafCat must be able to locate a suitable extended or expanded memory driver. Simply having several megabytes of chips on your motherboard will not make that memory accessible unless you have the appropriate driver in place and working. A WORD ABOUT RESOURCES ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ The GCT.RES file is a list of resources. Resources are unrelated bits of data and code which GrafCat might need. These could have been kept as separate files, but keeping them all in GCT.RES makes them easier to manage, requires less space on your hard drive and allows GrafCat to get at them more rapidly. Among the things in GCT.RES are all the code to handle specific file formats and numerous small code and data objects which GrafCat uses. You have no cause to meddle with the resources in GCT.RES. You should, however, keep RMOVER on hand, as it may be called for if you attempt to apply a bug fix or patch supplied by Alchemy Mindworks to your copy of GrafCat. A detailed description of RMOVER can be found in the documentation for Graphic Workshop, should you be exceedingly curious about these things. The complete source code for working with resources... and that of RMOVER itself... can be found in the book PC Graphical User Interfaces, as discussed in the section on books later in this document. A WORD ABOUT DITHERING AND HALFTONES ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Laser printers can only print black and white... not grey. When confronted with a colour or grey scale image to catalog, GrafCat must sneak around this. It does so by reducing such images to standard grey scale pictures and then printing them as some form of halftones. The most readily accomplished halftoning is called "dithering". It uses alternating black and white dots to create the illusion of grey. There are two sorts of dithering available under GrafCat. Bayer dithering is very fast, but produces very coarse results. Error diffused dithering... in fact, Floyd Steinberg dithering in this case... produces somewhat better results with a modest speed penalty. Having been dithered, a picture can be downloaded to your laser pretty quickly. True halftones are available on PostScript printers only. They look like the halftones you'll find in newspaper photographs. However, they take eight times as long to download as dithered images do. Printing a full catalog page of halftoned images with GrafCat can take a long, long time. Note that in all cases, dithering or haltoning an image will not actually affect the source file it came from. Laser printers exhibit an annoying aberration at 300 dots per inch called "dot gain". This causes the black dots to be slightly bigger than the white ones, with the result that a dithered images will usually look a bit darker than you'd expect. To overcome this, GrafCat lightens them up a bit before it dithers them. This, in turn, causes images which are very light to begin with to have some of their details washed out. It's a bit of a balancing act... bear in mind that GrafCat is designed to create reference catalog pages, not reproduction quality art. IF YOU ENCOUNTER A PROBLEM ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ While we have tested GrafCat thoroughly, it's possible that you may encounter a situation we hadn't anticipated, and perhaps a file which will not read. If this happens, we would be interested in knowing about it so we can deal with it in the next release of GrafCat. Here's how to report a problem to us. Problems should be reported using a 5 1/4 inch disk. We can't accept 3 1/2 inch microfloppies for problem reports. Alternately, upload the relevant files to our bulletin board. The bulletin board is discussed in the section on contacting Alchemy Mindworks. Copy your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files onto a floppy. Include a screen dump of the screen of GCTINSTL as it was set up when the problem occurred. Alternately, write down the settings. Copy the image files which resulted in the problem and provide a description of what you did and what happened. If we can't recreate it, we probably won't be able to fix it. Before you contact us with a problem in GrafCat, please make sure you've read this document thoroughly and that you understand how the software should work. Many problem reports which receive aren't problems with the software at all. USING THE MAIN MENU ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ GrafCat always shows you all the names of the image files it knows how to deal with in the current directory, along with all the visible subdirectory names, if any are present. If you are in a subdirectory, you will also see a subdirectory entry which is two periods. The cursor mover keys will move the file selector bar around. If you move it to a directory entry... shown in dim text... and hit Enter, you will move into that directory. If you select the two period entry, you will move back up your directory tree by one step. If there are too many files in your current directory to see all at once, GrafCat will organize them into pages. The PgUp and PgDn keys will step you through the pages. Here are the keys which GrafCat recognizes for basic file handling and session functions: Hitting the question mark will cause GrafCat to display a menu of the keys which control the main file screen of GrafCat. This box also tells you how much free DOS memory is available, the printer you have GrafCat configured to use and the type of extra memory it's set up for. The Esc key will allow you to quit GrafCat and return to DOS. If you hit "T" the currently selected file name will be "tagged". The "U" key will untag it. The batch operations described below will work with multiple files if you have some of them tagged. If you hit "C", all the tags will be cleared. If you hit "A", all the tags will be set. When you go to print files with GrafCat, only the tagged ones will be cataloged. Note that all the tagged files will be printed, even if they reside on pages other than the one which is currently visible. If you hit "L" GrafCat will allow you to log in a new disk drive. A box will appear prompting you for the drive letter you want to log into. If you hit "D" you will be prompted to delete the current file. Note that this is not a batch command... it only works on one file at a time. If you hit "R" you can rename the current file. Note that it the renamed file will have the same extension as the old one, no matter what extension you give it. If you hit "S", GrafCat will attempt to shell out to the DOS prompt. If you do this, GrafCat will still be in memory. Type EXIT at the DOS prompt to return to it right where you left off. If you change drives or subdirectories while you have the DOS prompt active, GrafCat will restore the previous drive and subdirectory when you return to it. The alphabetic control keys can be upper or lower case. Other keys will be ignored. PRINTING - F1 ──────────────────── If one or more files are tagged when you hit F1, GrafCat will begin to print them to your laser printer. It will download some fonts first if you're using a LaserJet Plus compatible printer. The current status can be seen in the message area at the bottom of the screen. You can abort printing by hitting Esc. If you abort printing to a LaserJet during a print phase, whatever has been downloaded will be printed and the printer will be reset. If you abort printing to as PostScript printer during a print phase, the printer may be left in a confused state. To avoid this, if you must abort a PostScript page, do so during a read, dithering or remapping phase. FLOPPY MODE - F2 ─────────────────────── Floppy mode works pretty much like the F1 mode, save that it will allow you to catalog the contents of as many floppy disks as you like, with all the files run together as if they all existed in a single subdirectory. If you have kept your floppies with unique volume names on each, the volume names in the catalog listing will serve as an index to the floppies. To use the floppy mode, put a floppy disk in the drive you want to catalog from. Log into this drive by hitting L followed by the drive letter. Hit F2 to start cataloging. When the first disk is finished, GrafCat will beep and prompt you to replace it with another disk. Hit Enter to proceed or Esc to quit. CONFIGURATION ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ Making permanent changes to the modifiable features of GrafCat involves using the installer, GCTINSTL.EXE. The configuration of GrafCat is handled by a separate program in order to keep GCT.EXE as small as possible, leaving lots of memory for putting graphics in. The GCTINSTL program actually modifies GCT.EXE. In order for it to work, GCT.EXE and GCTINSTL.EXE must be in the same directory and must be so named. Both programs must be of the same version. Be aware that as it directly modifies GCT.EXE, there is the outside chance that a bug in the installer might crop up and kill GCT.EXE beyond repair. Make sure you have a virgin copy of GCT.EXE somewhere before you use the installer. Place GCTINSTL.EXE and GCT.EXE in the same directory and type GCTINSTL. A screen will appear which will let you edit the runtime settings. You can use the up and down arrow keys and the Home and End keys to move through the items of this screen. Hitting Enter when the cursor is over an item which toggles will change its state. Hitting Enter when the cursor is over an editable field will allow you to type in a new data. Note that you can run GCTINSTL and select this screen as often as you want to adjust the settings of its various parameters. When you're done changing things, hit F10 to save your changes or F9 to abandon them. Note that these items can be overridden by using command line switches when you run GCT.EXE, should you need them set differently from time to time. Screen colours -------------------- This item allows you to set the screen colours. By default, there are two sets of screen colours, to wit, a colour set which is predominantly blue and a monochrome set. If you don't like either of these, hit F1 when the cursor is on this item to create a custom set. Memory type ----------------- Hit Enter when the cursor is on this item to move through the available extra memory options. See the section dealing with memory elsewhere in this document for more information about selecting the correct memory type. Printer port ------------------ This item selects which parallel printer port to print images to. Note that you can only select LP1, LPT2 or LPT3. Printer type ------------------ This can be either PostScript or LaserJet Plus. If you have a printer which can be set up to emulate both protocols, note that all other things being equal, it takes GrafCat about twice as long to print to a PostScript printer. However, PostScript printers allow you to have true halftones, which as LaserJet will not. Having said this, note that it takes eight times longer to print a halftone than it does a dithered image. Memory overhead (Kbytes) ------------------------------ This is an editable item. It selects the number of kilobytes of memory overhead which GrafCat will reserve. See the section on memory elsewhere in this document for more information. Image orientation ----------------------- This item selects the default orientation for printing graphics. As a rule, select portrait if you'll be cataloging monochrome clip art and landscape if you'll be cataloging GIF files. Print colour images as ---------------------------- This item tells GrafCat how to handle colour and grey scale images. There are three options, to wit, Bayer dithering, error diffused dithering and halftoning. The latter is available only if you'll be printing to a PostScript printer. Bayer dithering is fast but ugly. Error diffused dithering is slower but pretty respectable looking. See the section earlier in the document on dithering and halftoning. Scale to fit in frame --------------------------- If this item is set to YES, all the graphics being cataloged will be scaled up or down until they occupy the maximum area within each frame. Note that the aspect ratio will not be changed. If this item is set to NO, graphics smaller than the frame will be inset into the upper left corner. Graphics larger than the frame will be printed cropped. Print detailed file names ------------------------------- If this item is set to YES, file names will be printed in six point type, and will include the file name, source directory volume and path names and the image dimensions. If it's set to NO, only the file names will be printed, in twelve point type. Page eject delay: ----------------------- Some laser printers dislike having a lot of data blasted at them while they're spitting out a page. This field sets a delay in seconds during which GrafCat will do nothing after issuing a form feed. Set it to zero to disable the delay. Show page numbers ----------------------- If this item is set to YES, GrafCat will print page numbers in the lower right corner of each page it prints. Beep for floppy changes ----------------------------- If this item is set to YES, GrafCat will beep when it prompts you for new floppy disk in the F2 floppy disk mode. GrafCat path ------------------ This should be a complete path to the subdirectory and drive where GCT.EXE and GCT.RES live. For example: C:\GRAPHICS\ When this item is set correctly, you will be able to run GrafCat from anywhere on your hard drive if its location is in your DOS path. COMMAND LINE SWITCHES ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ When you run GrafCat by typing GCT at the command line, it will run using the default settings, as configured by GCTINSTL. There may be times when you'll want to override these settings temporarily, and rather than running the installer, you can use the command line switches. These only change the configuration of GrafCat when they're used. The next time you run GrafCat, it will return to its default configuration. As a rule, command line switches should only be required in special circumstances. You can always see a complete list of the command line switches by running GrafCat as GCT ? In using the command line switches, make sure that each one is separated on the command line by a space. Note that they are not case-sensitive. For example, this is a legal invocation of GrafCat with some command line switches. GCT /DIF /lan /DtY This has told GrafCat to print colour files using error diffused dithering, landscape orientation and detailed file names. The following are the command line switches which GrafCat recognizes. Most of these options correspond to installation options in GCTINSTL. /LPn - set printer port (n=1,2 or 3) /PSC - use PostScript printer /HLJ - use LaserJet Plus printer /POR - use portrait orientation /LAN - use landscape orientation /FIT - fit in frame /DTY - print detailed file names /DTN - print simple file names /VIR - use virtual memory /EMS - use expanded memory /XMS - use extended memory /XMV - use extended or virtual memory /EMV - use expanded or virtual memory /BYR - use Bayer dither /DIF - use error diffused dither /HFT - use PostScript halftones /PGY - show page numbers /PGN - don't show page numbers /BWD - beep when done in floppy mode /BPN - don't beep when done DOT MATRIX AND INKJET PRINTERS ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ GrafCat doesn't support dot matrix or inkjet printers... it's not likely to in the immediate future, either. While we'd like to have it otherwise, we haven't been able to find a way to do so which isn't incredibly memory hungry. We have elected to have GrafCat do what it does reasonably well, and not try to make it into something it really can't be. For similar reasons, we have decided not to have GrafCat print to a file. While it's probably capable of doing so, the average file would occupy about a megabyte of disk space. While a nice idea in theory, it's not really practical. CONTACTING ALCHEMY MINDWORKS INC. ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ We hope you'll contact us to register GrafCat... see the section about registering GrafCat elsewhere in this document. You can contact us by mail by writing to us at: Alchemy Mindworks Inc. P.O. Box 500 Beeton, Ontario L0G 1A0 Canada We will attempt to answer questions from unregistered users who write to us to the extent that their answers are needed for you to fully determine whether GrafCat will suit your requirements. We can also be reached through the Alchemy Mindworks bulletin board. It's available twenty-four hours a day at (416) 729-4609. As of this writing, the protocol was 300, 1200 or 2400 baud, or 9600 baud v.32bis, eight data bits, no parity and one stop bit. The bulletin board always has the most recent versions of all our shareware on it, plus bug fixes, drivers and other relevant information. It only exists to support Alchemy Mindworks' shareware... it does not have a general file area. If you encounter problems with a file, you're welcome to upload the errant file to our bulletin board. Actually, you can upload any picture files you like to the board... we enjoy getting pictures. If you have a question about GrafCat, feel free to leave it on the bulletin board. We try to answer all questions within twenty- four hours. Note that you must call back to retrieve your answer... please don't ask us to phone you or to leave the answer on another bulletin board. Registered users of GrafCat will receive our voice and FAX numbers for immediate technical support. The voice number is only available for use from 10:00am to 5:00pm EST. If you call and get our answering machine... it does happen... please leave us a message or call back later. We are only able to return long distance calls if we can call you collect. In this regard, please note that as of this writing Canada has a very peculiar electronic voice mail collect call system... if the phone company's computer starts talking when you pick up the phone, it's probably us returning your call. We ask that in contacting us you appreciate that we are a small company with limited resources. If you have not registered GrafCat we will not tell you to go to hell, but please don't ask us for half an hour of free technical support. REGISTRATION ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ If you like this program and find it useful, you are requested to support it by sending us $40.00. This will entitle you to telephone support, notification of updates, a free copy of the latest version of GrafCat and other worthwhile things. More to the point, though, it'll make you feel good. We've not infested the program with excessive beg notices, crippled it or had it verbally insult you after ten days. We trust you to support GrafCat if you like it. If you want to see additional features in GrafCat, register your software. If we had an Arcturian mega-dollar for everyone who has said they'd most certainly register their copy if we'd add just one more thing to it, we could buy ourselves a universe and retire. Oh yes, should you fail to support this program and continue to use it, a leather winged demon of the night will tear itself, shrieking blood and fury, from the endless caverns of the nether world, hurl itself into the darkness with a thirst for blood on its slavering fangs and search the very threads of time for the throbbing of your heartbeat. Just thought you'd want to know that. Our address is: Alchemy Mindworks Inc. P.O. Box 500 Beeton, Ontario L0G 1A0 Canada If you have previously registered GrafCat, you can update your copy to revision three for $20. If you have a FAX number, please include it in your registration. We're hoping to be able to handle notification of future updates of GrafCat by FAX where we can. This is both considerably faster and a lot cheaper than mail. CANADIAN USERS ───────────────────── The registration fee for GrafCat is $40.00 (CDN) plus seven percent GST, or $42.80. If you live in Ontario, please add eight percent PST to this, for a total of $45.80. We sincerely regret collecting this tax on behalf of several levels of government which will only squander it. If you sincerely regret having to pay it, we urge you to express your regret by voting in the next federal and provincial elections. AMERICAN USERS ───────────────────── The registration fee for GrafCat is $40.00 (US). The exchange on US funds pretty well covers the extra postage to the States. OTHER USERS ────────────────── The registration fee for GrafCat is $40.00 (US). If you pay us by cheque, please make sure that it's a cheque drawn on an international bank, and that it will be negotiable in Canada. If there's no bank clearance number along the bottom of the cheque, it will not clear. Please don't send us Eurocheques... they are not accepted outside Europe. PAYING BY CREDIT CARD ──────────────────────────── We can accept payment by Visa only. We need your Visa card number and expiry date and the name which appears on your card. We also need written authorization to debit your Visa account for the specific amount you're sending us. We cannot accept MasterCard, American Express or other credit cards. SOURCE CODE AVAILABILITY AND BOOKS ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ It isn't. After considerable meditation and several bad experiences, we have decided not to release the source code for GrafCat. We do license parts of it for specific applications... if you want more information about using some of the functions of GrafCat in your software, please contact us. If you're interested in writing programs which use graphics, you'll find everything you need to know in "Bitmapped Graphics", by Steven William Rimmer. It's published by TAB Books, (TAB book 3558). It features code to pack and unpack MacPaint, IMG, PCX, GIF and TIFF files, as well as chapters on screen drivers, dithering and printing. There is a very rudimentary version of the source code for GrafCat available in the book Bitmapped Graphics. An additional book on this subject, "Extended Bitmapped Graphics", (TAB Book 4102), will be available in mid-1992. It discusses the GIF 89a, WordPerfect, BMP, IFF/LBM, TGA, MSP, 24- bit PCX and colour TIFF file formats, as well as such subjects as colour dithering and colour printing. If you'd like to write applications which use menus, icons, windows and all the other paraphernalia of a graphical user interface, you might find the book "PC Graphical User Interfaces" handy. It's published by TAB Books (TAB Book 3875). It includes the C source for a complete graphical user interface library, related code to manage fonts and bitmaps and a tiny paint program. If your local bookstore doesn't have these books, they can be mail or phone ordered from Christies of Cookstown, P.O. Box 392, Cookstown, Ontario L0L 1L0, Canada. Their phone number is (705) 458-1562. It has a FAX machine on it after hours. As of this writing, they're open seven days a week. BUNDLING GRAFCAT ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ If you'd like to include GrafCat with your product, please get in touch with us. We have several ways to help you do this so your users get the most out of GrafCat and we don't have to set our leather winged demon of the night on 'em. SHAREWARE DISTRIBUTORS ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ We receive numerous requests for copies of GrafCat from shareware distributors and we don't have the facilities to send out disks in response to all of them. If you're a fairly large shareware distributor, we can provide you with a quad density, 5 1/4 inch floppy disk having most of our popular shareware applications on it. This will include the current versions of such packages as Graphic Workshop, GrafCat, Desktop Paint, Desktop Paint 256 and several others. We will also include a copy of our current newsletter, which will outline the functions of these packages. Note that this is the only format in which we are able to provide this disk. If you'd like to request a copy of this disk, please send us a copy of your current catalog. Your catalog must satisfy the following requirements: - It must be commercially printed. We are unable to accept catalogs on disk, catalogs which have been duplicated with a photocopier or mimeograph machine or catalogs which have been created using a dot matrix printer. - It must be comprised of descriptive listings for the shareware it offers. Such a listing should be at least four or five lines describing the software in question. We don't feel that a single line of six point type which says something like ``Graphc Wrkshop 6.0 (Img fle cnvrtr)...........$2.00'' really does anything meaningful toward distributing our shareware. - It must explain in a clear and prominent way that the software being offered in the catalog is user supported software, that paying your company for it does not constitute registering it and that users who buy your disks and use the programs on them are expected to register their software if they continue to use it. If you don't have a catalog which meets the above description, you can obtain a copy of our shareware disk for $10.00 (US). Alternately, you can download the current versions of our shareware applications from CompuServe in the GRAPHSUPPORT forum or from our bulletin board at (416) 729-4609. You can also order them from one of the larger distributors we use, such as Public Brand Software, 3750 Kentucky Avenue, Indianapolis, IN 46241. They always have the current versions of our programs. If you obtain current copies of our shareware, you have our permission to distribute it under the following terms. - That nothing be added to, deleted from or changed in the archive files which contain our packages. This includes adding ZIP file comments to them. - That our shareware is not included in or bundled with other hardware or software without our written permission. - That no printed documentation regarding our shareware is included with the package without our written permission. - That hard copy explaining that our packages are shareware is included with the disks. You do have our permission to copy the ZIP files from our quad density disk to multiple lower density disks for distribution. Please note that we will send you one disk. We'll send you updates of our software if you're able to provide us with an account of how many copies of our packages you have distributed. We regret that we've imposed this additional paperwork on you. We realize that most of the shareware distributors who contact us have good intentions and that many will actually distribute our disks and get us registered users. We hope you will appreciate that supplying our disks to everyone who asked for them in the past has frequently meant that things like updates to our users, software support, software enhancement and other things which represent the paying part of our involvement with shareware have been delayed. This isn't a situation we feel can continue. OTHER ALCHEMY MINDWORKS SHAREWARE ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ The following are the other shareware packages we have available as of this writing. Our newsletter, available for the asking, will list all the current ones. GRAPHIC WORKSHOP ─────────────────────── This is the last word in image programs. It converts, prints, views, dithers, transforms, flips, rotates, scales, crops, colour adjusts, scans, quantizes and wreaks special effects on MacPaint, GEM/Ventura IMG, PCX, GIF, TIFF, WPG, MSP, IFF/LBM, BMP, Halo CUT, Targa and EPS files. It drives CGA, Hercules, EGA, VGA and pretty well all super VGA cards. It will drive PostScript and LaserJet Plus laser printers, colour PostScript printers, colour inkjets and most dot matrix printers. It features batch processing, extended and expanded memory support, an intuitive user interface and easy to follow menus. It allows you to convert colour image files into superb black and white clip art for desktop publishing, among other things. DESKTOP PAINT 256 ──────────────────────── Desktop Paint 256 is a powerful super-VGA paint program. Desktop Paint 256 will let you create and edit pictures stored as PCX, GIF, TIFF and IFF/LBM files. It features a rich selection of drawing and image manipulation tools, XMS and EMS support to work on large images and a user friendly interface. Looking very much like monochrome Desktop Paint in colour, it's a powerful application which will be equally useful for picture collectors, artists and desktop publishing users... it makes a quick and easy to use editor for grey scale TIFF files, too. It supports Paradise (and compatibles), Headland Video 7, Tseng Labs 4000 series cards, Trident cards which use 8900 series chips and ATI VGA Wonder cards. Note that you must have one of these super-VGA cards to use Desktop Paint 256... it does not run in the standard 320 by 200 pixel "standard" VGA mode. Desktop Paint 256 requires a Microsoft-compatible mouse. DESKTOP PAINT ───────────────────── Desktop Paint is a powerful monochrome paint package fine tuned for use with desktop publishing applications. It will read and write MacPaint, Ventura IMG, PCX, WordPerfect WPG and TIFF image files. It has EMS and XMS support to handle images of virtually any size, an intuitive user interface and a wide selection of image creation and manipulation tools. Desktop Paint can utilize fonts from many other sources, including Ventura Publisher, Macintosh FONT and NFNT resources and Windows FNT files. Desktop Paint 256 requires a Microsoft-compatible mouse. CINEMA ───────────── Cinema display a continuous "slide show" of image files. You can set up the images to be displayed using a simple script language. Cinema works with most super VGA cards, using the same drivers as Graphic Workshop, and with CGA, EGA and Hercules cards. It works with any mixture of GIF, PCX, MacPaint, TIFF, WPG, MSP, IFF/LBM, EPS and IMG files. GIFINFO ────────────── GifInfo creates catalog files from your GIF collection, allowing you to store fifty or more miniature full colour representations of GIF files on a single quad floppy. STORYTELLER ────────────────── Storyteller is a hypertext program with a mouse driven graphical user interface which will allow you to create reports, manuals and interactive fiction, among other things, which has a tree structure. Each page of a Storyteller document can lead to related sub-pages, which can in turn have their own sub-sub pages, and so on. It looks slick and is exceedingly user friendly. Storyteller requires a Microsoft-compatible mouse. If you can't obtain them from the usual sources of shareware, they're available from us for $40.00 each preregisterd. They're also all available for downloading from our bulletin board at (416) 729-4609. LEGAL DOGMA ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ The author assumes no responsibility for any damage or loss caused by the use of these programs, however it comes down. If you can think of a way a picture program can cause you damage or loss you've a sneakier mind than mine. All the registered trademarks used herein are registered to whoever it is that owns them. This notification is given in lieu of any specific list of trademarks and their owners, which would not be as inclusive and would probably take a lot longer to type. GrafCat is a trademark of Alchemy Mindworks Inc. That's it...