________________________________________________________________ | | | | | TIFFANY | | | | | | User Manual | | | | Version 1.0 | | | | | | Copyright (c) 1989, Alan Anderson | | | | | | |______________________________________________________________| 1. INTRODUCTION Tiffany records any part, or all, of the Windows display using the "Tag Image File Format" (TIFF). The image file can then be used in a variety of desktop publishing or image manipulation applications. TIFF, the Tag Image File Format, is a versatile file standard for recording and transferring raster images. Many image manipulation programs, desktop publication systems, and scanners support this popular image file format. As the Windows operating environment is utilized by more applications and people, the need to capture screen images for use in other programs becomes increasingly important. This is especially critical for software developers, who require screen images in their product documentation. There are utilities to copy screen bitmaps to the windows clipboard. Unfortunately due the large memory requirements for storing a sizeable bitmap image, these RAM hungry utilities are often unable to capture large portions of today's high resolution screen images. Also, these "bitmap clippers" are useless for transferring images to non-Windows environments. 2. PRODUCT REGISTRATION Tiffany is distributed as shareware. Feel free to look over the Tiffany software and determine if it is useful for you or your organization. If you do use Tiffany please send a $10 registration/license fee to help support its struggling author and his continuing quest to produce high-quality, low- cost software. Please include your name and address if you wish to be informed when future versions of Tiffany become available. Send your registration fee, suggestions, and comments to: Alan Anderson Suite #408 3511 Camino Del Rio South San Diego, CA 92108 For a 5.25" disk containing the Tiffany executable files, source code, and printed documemtation send $20 to the above address. 3. USING TIFFANY: A QUICK OVERVIEW 1. Copy TIFFANY.EXE and TIFFLIB.EXE to your working disk. 2. Start Windows and run TIFFANY.EXE. 3. Select the File Name command from the File menu. Type a name for the image file into the dialog box and press . 4. Using the Region menu, specify the area of the display you want to capture. 5. Note the activation (hot) key selected in the Activation menu. 6. Get the Tiffany window out of your way by shrinking it down to an icon with the Minimize command. 7. Bring the desired image on the screen. 8. Press the activation key to begin creating the TIFF file. The cursor changes to an hourglass, wait while the file is being created. 9. When all of the sand has flowed into the bottom chamber of the hourglass, a message box appears to indicate completion of the image capture. Press to close the dialog box and continue using windows. 4. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS An IBM PC, XT, AT, or PS2 compatible computer running Microsoft Windows (version 2.0 or later) is required to use Tiffany. A hard disk is strongly recommended. Images from any graphics card supported by a Windows screen driver can be captured by Tiffany. 5. USING TIFFANY: THE DETAILS 5.1 STARTING TIFFANY Two files are required to run Tiffany: TIFFANY.EXE and TIFFLIB.EXE. Copy these files to your windows drive and directory. TIFFANY.EXE is the main program file; TIFFLIB.EXE contains library routines used by Tiffany. Run Tiffany like most Windows applications. Start Microsoft Windows. Using the MS-DOS Executive window change to the drive and directory holding the files TIFFANY.EXE and TIFFLIB.EXE. Use the direction keys to highlight TIFFANY.EXE and press ; or, with the mouse double click on TIFFANY.EXE. 5.2 MENUS The Tiffany menu bar contains five drop-down menus: File, Activation, Region, GrayLevels, and Effects. 5.2.1 File Menu The File menu contains two commands: File Name and About. File Name displays a dialog box allowing you to specify the file name for storing the next image. The file extension .TIF indicates a TIFF raster image file. Specify a file name before capturing an image file. If an existing file name is specified the old file will be overwritten by the TIFF capture process. The About command displays a dialog box with program version, copyright, and registration information. 5.2.2 Activation Menu The Activation menu lets you choose one of six keys for initiating the TIFF screen capture (activation keys are also known as "hot" keys). Select a key that you will not need while using your other windows applications. The default key is . A checkmark is displayed next to the current setting. If you want to capture an image containing a drop- down menu do not select an Activation key that uses in conjunction with another key, because pressing will cause an open menu to close! Selecting Off from the Activation menu will disable TIFF screen capture without closing the Tiffany window. 5.2.3 Region Menu The Region menu contains four choices for specifying which area of the screen is to be captured when the activation key is pressed. A checkmark is displayed next to the current setting. Before creating an image file select the appropriate area. Since the length of time required to create an image file is proportional to the image area, avoid capturing any unneeded parts of the screen by choosing the correct setting from the Region menu. Active Window is the entire window of the application being used. Active Client Window is the part of the current application window below the menu bar. Entire Screen is the whole display. Box allows you to specify a rectangular screen area of the screen to be captured with the mouse. When you select the Box command the cursor changes into a crosshair (+). Move the center of the crosshair to one corner of the rectangle to be captured and depress the left mouse button. With the mouse button depressed, drag the crosshair cursor to the opposite corner of the rectangle to be captured. Release the mouse button; the cursor returns to its normal shape. As the mouse is being used to specify the capture box, this rectangular region is inverted. Tiffany remembers the box and will capture this rectangular section of the display when the activation key is pressed. 5.2.4 GrayLevels Menu The GrayLevels menu lists four options for specifying the number of bits to be used for each pixel in the TIFF. The appropriate setting for capturing all possible shades that can be produced by you video system is automatically set when Tiffany is started. However you may change this setting to meet your own needs. Many PC systems have color video cards and displays; yet, the vast majority of printers utilized by PC systems cannot create colored printouts. This poses a problem for screen capture programs: should the captured image be colored or gray-scale? Since most TIFF images are ultimately to be printed out on non-color printers, Tiffany was designed to convert all screen images to TIFF gray-scales. The number of possible levels of gray can be chosen from the GrayLevels menu. One bit per pixel can create an image with only two levels, black and white. Two bits per pixel can create an image with four levels: black, dark gray, light gray, and white. Four bits per pixel can create an image with up to 16 gray levels. Eight bits per pixel can create an image with up to 256 gray levels. There is no reason to select a gray level setting higher than the default set by Tiffany. If you display system is only capable of producing 16 different colors/shades, you will not get a better image by specifying a 8 bit gray scale. Selecting a gray level setting lower than the default set by Tiffany may result in the lose of some screen information, but it will decrease the size of the image file. 5.2.5 Effects Menu The Effects menu contains commands for adding special effects to the image file. In the current version of Tiffany the Effect menu contains only one item: Invert. Selecting Invert causes a negative TIFF image being saved. The invert command is a toggle; a checkmark is displayed beside this menu items when image inversion is turned on. To change back to a normal (positive) image choose the command once again. 5.3 CAPTURING AN IMAGE After setting the desired options from the menus, get the Tiffany window out of your way by shrinking it down to an icon with the Minimize command. If you are capturing the entire screen and do not want the Tiffany icon to appear in your image, hide Tiffany underneath another window. After setting up the desired screen image press the activation key. The cursor changes to an hourglass, and Tiffany begins creating the image file. You can estimate the progress of the TIFF save by watching the amount of sand in the two chambers of the hourglass cursor. Wait while the file is being created. When all of the sand has flowed into the bottom chamber of the hourglass, a beep sounds and a message box appears to indicate completion of the image capture. Press to close the message box and continue using windows. If you want to recapture to the same file name, press the activation key again; the old file contents will be overwritten. To create another TIFF file, use the File Name command to specify a new file name before pressing the activation key. 5.4 QUITTING TIFFANY Select Close from the control menu to deactivate Tiffany and close the Tiffany window. 6. IMAGE FILE SIZE Image files created by Tiffany can be very large. Fortunately the TIFF data in can be compressed to much smaller sizes with most file archive utilities. Most TIFF files can be compressed 90 to 95 percent using PKPAK program by PKWARE. 7. ARCHIVES The archive file TIFFANY.ARC contains the executable files (TIFFANY.EXE and TIFFLIB.EXE) and the documentation for Tiffany (README.TXT). The archive file TIFFANYS.ARC contains the source code for Tiffany in addition to the executable files and the documentation. 8. TIFFANY SOURCE CODE The Tiffany program is documented with detailed comments in the source code. An brief overview of the program is given below. Tiffany is a small model Windows application written in Microsoft C, version 5.1. The Windows software development kit version 2.1 and a Microsoft Macro Assembler version 5 are also required to create Tiffany. The Tiffany application requires two executable modules: TIFFANY.EXE and TIFFLIB.EXE. TIFFANY.EXE is the main program file. It contains all of the program functions other than the activation (hot) key detection routines. Two files TIFFMAIN.C and TIFFCAP.C contain the C source code for this module. TIFFLIB.EXE is the dyna-link library used by Tiffany. The library contains activation key detection functions. Tiffany uses a keyboard hook to watch for the activation key. In order for hook functions to work properly on EMS systems they need to be contained in a dyna-link library module. TIFFLIB exports one function to be used by the main module: SetHotKey(WORD vkNewHotKey, BOOL bAltPressRqd, HWND hWnd); The window specified during the SetHotKey call is sent a message when the specified Hot key is pressed. The library code is very generic; it is an excellent foundation for any Windows program requiring a hot key. In a "normal" Windows development environment the following commands will create the TIFFANY executable files: MAKE TIFFANY MAKE TIFFLIB The following four files are used to create the library module (TIFFLIB.EXE): TIFFLIB. Library MAKE file. TIFFLIB.DEF Module definition file. TIFFLIB.C C source code for the library. TIFFINIT.ASM Assembly code that starts the library. The following seven program files and 14 cursor files are used to create the main program module (TIFFANY.EXE): TIFFANY. Main program MAKE file. TIFFMAIN.C C source code for initialization and message polling & processing functions. TIFFCAP.C C source code for TIFF capture routines. TIFFANY.DEF Module definition file. TIFFANY.H Header file with global definitions. TIFFANY.RC Resource definition file. TIFFANY.ICO The icon resource. XHAIR.CUR The crosshair cursor resource. HG0.CUR to HG12.CUR Cursors for the dynamic hourglass display. For more information about the Tiffany program see the source code comments. 9. BUREAUCRATIC NONSENSE 9.1 LICENSE AGREEMENT AND DISCLAIMERS Take a moment to read the following software license agreement and disclaimer. This software is protected by United States copyright law and international treaties. A limited license is granted to all users of Tiffany to make copies of and distribute the archive files, TIFFANY.ARC or TIFFANYS.ARC, if the following conditions are meet: 1. The files/documentation/programs may not be distributed in modified form. The license agreements, disclaimers, shareware information, and copyright notices must be distributed with Tiffany in unaltered form. 2. No fee, or other consideration, can be charged for copying or distributing any or all or Tiffany, without the express written consent of Alan Anderson. 3. All software files and documentation may be may be copied for archival purposes only. The author of Tiffany provide no warranties, expressed or implied, about the functionality, usability, or suitability of this software for any purpose. Furthermore, the author of Tiffany is not liable for any damages that may result from its use, or for problems resulting from the use of software that utilizes all or part of the Tiffany source code. No part of this publication or the Tiffany software, may be reproduced or transmitted, except as outlined above, by any means without the prior written consent of and Alan Anderson. 9.2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. IBM and IBM AT are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation.