SCANSAVE.PRG Distributed by: CAMERON Elektronische Produkte GmbH Pfaffenweg 1 D-7024 Filderstadt 4 West Germany Copyright (c) 1987-90 by: Imperial SOFTware Systems Gerdes KG Lessenicher Straže 9 D-5300 Bonn 1 West Germany Program, documentation and adaption are protected by law. Duplications for other than private purposes are prohibited and will be prosecuted. - Another new program is SCANSAVE. This one is a utility only for mass-scan- ning. You can use it for scanning pictures and saving them on disc. At the beginning of each pass you get a requester with three lines of text-input. The first line contains the name of the file in which the picture will be saved including the pathname. We suggest the format "path\name-nr.PIC". If you use this format nr will be incremented with every new picture you scan (you should place a haifn in fornt of the number !). You can input any name you like, of course, but the suggested name for the next picture may be funny if you do not use the format we suggest. The second line contains the scan-length. It will be sensible to scan at least a few lines but you can chose any length that is at least 1 line long. If you do not store your picture in the Handy-Painter-format (see below) this lien will be ignored and you must scan 400 lines. The third and last line specifies the file- format. If this line starts with a "D" pictures will be saved with a DEGAS- header (Maybe you have to rename them to ".PI3"); if it starts with "S" the SCREEN- (or DOODLE-) format will be use (screendump without header). Everything else will select the Handy-Painter-picturetype. If you have finished your input press or select "Ok". Then one pic- ture will be scanned and stored on disc. Afterwards you return to the re- quester that we have just described. You can leave the program by selecting "Cancel". In case you specified parameters (maybe you call SCANSAVE from a program that can pass parameters) the first parameter will be taken as name (the first line of input) and the second one as length (the second line). (II) - SCANSAVE has been expanded by 3 new file formats: IFF, Image and STAD. You select the IFF format by entering an "I" as the first character in the last line. If you use a "B" your picture will be save in bit image format. A "P" (Peter Melzer, the author of STAD) will cause SCANSAVE to save the picture in STAD compatible format. The IFF as well as the bit image format support pictures of any size. Therefore you can scan as many lines as you want if you select this format. Just for your information: The IFF format is the real compressed IFF format like it is usual on the Commodore AMIGA. If you are not able to load them in DEGAS elite this is caused by a size differing from 640*400. (III) - Handy-Painter is now able to load and save pictures in file formats compa- tible with STAD, DEGAS, IFF, bit-image and screen/doodle. During the load process the file type is autmatically recognized. When saving Handy-Painter reacts to special extensions. The meaning of the extensions is as follows: .PIC HANDY-PAINTER (or any unknown extension) .IMG Bit-image .IFF IFF-format .PAC STAD .PI3 DEGAS .SCR Screen/doodle SCANSAVE automatically produces the same extensions. (III) - Unfortunately we had to note that our Bit-Image-format is not read by some programs. This is due to the fact that these program do not support the full specifications for the Bit-Image-format: They decode only files with pattern-runs of 2 Bytes length while we write files with pattern-runs of 1 Byte length. Although this is not a good sign for those programs we have decided to solve the problem. Thus Handy-Painter as well as SCANSAVE are now able to write Image-files with pattern-runs of 2 Bytes length on demand. Since the compression is better when using pattern-runs of 1 Byte length this option should only used when really needed. Using the extension "GEM" in Handy-Painter selects this special image-format while in SCANSAVE you have to enter a "C" in the line for the file-format. (VII) - Handy-Painter SCANSAVE, SCANPAGE and DEMO now also support the color monitor (medium resolution !). Using colors is not possible. Especially Handy-Pain- ter only emulates the black and white mode. Therefore Handy-Painter is a little slower when using a color monitor compared to a b/w monitor and the aspect ratio of the diplay may be wrong by a factor of 2. (III) Frequent problems: - Zoomig pictures using a fixed scale. Here you can use the grid for the mouse. It works as follows: + Switch grid on + Define source-rectangle (for magnifications) or destination-rectangle + Zoom works as usual + Switch grid off (I) Although special edit-functions have been added for this, this hint is still important for making magnifications. (II) - Having started work on a picture with Handy-Painter you often lose parts of your work of art if you continue with a different program. This is due to the fact that Handy-Painter can work with pictures of any size but all other paint-programs for the ATARI ST that are known to us can only work with screen-size pictures and they are at best 640 * 400 pixels large. This fact has also been the cause for the new file-format of Handy-Painter. We suggest that you do not work with pictures larger than 640 * 400 pixels if you think of continuing with a different program. This size is the de- fault size of the recent version of Handy-Painter. (II) - It is possible to install Handy-Painter on a harddisc. You simply have to copy an installed version of Handy-Painter to harddisc. We advise to change the default-paths. They are defined in the file TEXT.TXT and can easily be changed with an ASCII-editor. Attention: This does not say that we guarantee for any harddisc. In case you have problems with your harddisc you should address yourself to the manufacturer and not to us. (II) A T T E N T I O N : If you are not using your scanner for more than a few hours you should re- move the power supply. Failing to do so might cause thermal damage to the transformator and thus your scanner possibly does not always turn on. We hope you will enjoy working with your HANDY-SCANNER. CAMERON GmbH, Filderstadt, West Germany Gerdes KG, Bonn, West Germany