BUMPER STICKER MAKER CONTENTS Introduction...............................................3 What is Bumper Sticker Maker?......................3 Getting More Bumper Stickers...............................4 Getting Started/Amiga......................................5 Loading Bumper Sticker Maker.......................5 The Side Menu..............................................6 The Pull Down Menus........................................9 INTRODUCTION WHAT IS BUMPER STICKER MAKER? BUMPER STICKER MAKER is an entertainment and productivity program designed to allow you to easily and efficiently print bumper stickers. The program allows you to design and create the icon (graphic symbol) that you will be placing on the sticker, or to use one of the many prestored icons. The program then allows you to pick styles for your type, and place text onto the sticker. Finally, you can move this text around until you have the sticker composition you desire and then print the sticker on your printer. The bumper stickers that you will create with Bumper Sticker Maker are intended for recreational and entertainment uses. They are not meant to replace professional bumper stickers that you can obtain from a printer. The Publisher realizes that the program is limited by the quality of your printer. Unless you have a very fine printer, BUMPER STICKER MAKER stickers will not equal professional stickers. Nevertheless, BUMPER STICKER MAKER is the first program to give you the opportunity to create, design, and print fun and usable stickers from your computer. We are sure you are going to have hours of fun with BUMPER STICKER MAKER and find hundreds of uses for the stickers you will create! Read through this manual carefully before beginning the program. GETTING MORE BUMPER STICKERS The BUMPER STICKER MAKER paper is a custom paper stock that was created specifically for use with the Bumper Sticker Maker program. Paper is included with this program. However, you may find you need more paper. The paper is sold in separate paper packs. Paper Packs contain enough paper to create 100 bumper stickers. Please ask your computer dealer for more information on buying the Bumper Sticker Maker paper packs. If you dealer does not have the paper in stock you may purchase it directly from IntraCorp, Inc. Please call us at 1-800-INTRACO (468-7226) and have your credit card handy. (Sorry, no CODs). We will be happy to ship you the additional paper directly. Since paper prices change occasionally, you will have to ask our order desk for the price of the paper pack when you call. GETTING STARTED/AMIGA LOADING BUMPER STICKER MAKER Turn on the computer. If your machine requires a KickStart disk then insert it now. After Kickstart has finished loading the computer will ask for a WorkBench 1.2 disk. Insert the BUMPER STICKER MAKER program disk now. The drive will know the disk has been inserted automatically. Soon the program's title screen will appear. Press any key or the mouse button to continue. The screen will clear and the message "One moment please...." will be displayed. Soon it will desappear as well, and the main program will begin initializing. When the Bumper Sticker WorkScreen appears you are ready to begin. If you fail to get the work screen to appear after a while check the peripheral connections and make sure you have 512K or memory on your machine! NOTE: If you intend on restarting the program any time other than at bootup please note thet IT MUST BE RUN FROM CLI! To make sure youdo not forget, no icon exists for the program itself. To re-run it go to CLI and type: LOGO.RUN (or) BSM.RUN (if you don't want to go through the startup title). The Bumper Sticker Maker work screen consists of three separate areas: the drawing area, the side menu and the pull-down menus. The drawing area is where the actual bumper stickers are created. If you have ever used a paint program before you will notice that BSM functions similarly to one. The left mouse button is used to draw in the drawing area and is also used to select the drawing function from the side menu. The right mouse button is used to select an option from the pull-down menus. USING THE SIDE MENUS: On the side menu you will notice several drawing functions. They are as follows: DRAW (freehand drawing) - Click on this with the left mouse button and you can do freehand drawing with the mouse in the work area. The line you draw will be rendered in the current color. (See Selecting a color to draw with). LINE - When in this mode click and hold on the mouse button and move the mouse around. Notice that a straight line connects the position you clicked at and the position the mouse pointer is currently at. Release the button and a line will be drawn in the current color. BOX - Works similar to the line function except a box is created between two ponts. Release the button to draw the box. A note about box (and circle): You can select filler or unfilled boxes (or circles) by clicking on one of the two images to the right of their text in the menu. The frame image gives an unfilled box or circle and the solid image gives a filled one. CIRCLE - Just like box except the circle will expand and contract as you move the pointer away from and towards the center of the circle. The center is where you first pressed (and held) the left mouse button. Try not to move the mouse pointer when you release the left button to draw the circle. Note that filled circles may not fill properly if a lin of the same color as the circle intersects it. If the circle does not fill all the way select the FILL function (see below) and fill it manually. FILL - Whenever you click the left button you will get a flood fill in the currently selected color. AIRBRUSH - Press and hold the left mouse button to get a "spray" of dots in the work area. The longer you stay over one portion the denser the dots will be, just like a spray can. MIRROR - Unlike the other functions the mirror function is a toggle function which is selected by clicking on the arrows to the right of the "Mirror" text. The horizontal arrows give you a horizontal mirror while the vertical arrows give you a vertical mirror. If both are activated you get a four-way mirror! All side menu functions except Airbrush get mirrored if any mirror mode is activated. SELECTING A COLOR TO DRAW WITH: A one-color bumper sticker can be pretty boring. To select a different color simply move to the color bar you want and click on it with the left button. If you have more than 512K in your Amiga you will be able to draw with 16 colors instead of the standard 8 color display. Also note that this manual makes several references to a "background color." The background color is selected by using the "select background color" option under the Colors pull-down menu. (See below). The default background color is white (the color of the workscreen). To use the shadow text function you must set it to another color, or shadow text will not work well. NOTE: When booting the program it is possible to force the program to 8-color mode. When the "One moment please" text comes on after the title screen is done press the "8" key once. You may want an 8-color display since it uses half as much memory as a 16 color display and thus saves lots of disk space when saving bumper stickers! THE PULL-DOWN MENUS: To get the pull-down menu options to display click the right mouse button and HOLD IT DOWN. At the top line of the screen you will see the menu titles. Move the mouse over each option and a menu will appear under each menu title. Move the mouse down and each menu item in that menu will be highlighted. To select an item place the mouse pointer over the item and release the right mouse button. (Please note that the left mouse button is NOT used when selecting the pull-down menus with this program.) Here is a list of the pull down menu options and an explanation of each: PROJECT: NEW - Clears the current bumper sticker with the selected background color. This is when you want to "start from scratch so to speak..." OPEN - Loads a bumper sticker in IFF format. This function loads a bumper sticker that was previously saved with this program or any IFF picture that will fit into a 480x400 pixel area. The following instructions show how to use the file requesters with this program. USING THE FILE REQUESTER: When a file requester is coming up the pointer turns into a coffee cup and the disk drive will access. When the file requester appears it will have several finenames in it. If more than 10 files exist you can scroll up or down by clicking on the up and down arrow images in the requester. Double click on the file name using the left mouse button and it will be selected. You will notice that you can also type the filename at the bottom of the requester. Hit RETURN after yu are done typing it. To abort a file requester click on the close box of the file requester or click outside of it. The function keys (F1-F4) have a special purpose in the file requester: F1 reloads the directory from drive DF0: F2 reloads the directory from drive DF1: F3 reloads the directory from hard drive DH0: F4 reloads the directory from hard drive DH1: These are for if you have a separate data disk or are planning on using the program with a hard drive. Once a filename is selected or entered the requester will disappear and the function associated with this requester will receive the filename and begin to execute. NOTES ON LOADING BUMPER STICKERS: Since this program uses IFF picture formats to store the bumper stickers you can read in some of your favorite digitized or drawing pictures and use them as bumper stickers. There are a few limitations however.... 1. They must be 8 or 16 colors depending upon what color mode you are in. You can load a picture with more colors but it will not display correctly. 2. They must be no larger than 480 pixels across. This rule MUST be followed or the pictures will overwrite into the menu area. They can be any vertical size however. SAVE - Saves a bumpber sticker in IFF format. A file requester will appear. Follow the file requester instructions above if you are not familiar with it. Note: BSM saves a workbench icon with its stickers so you can use the workbench screen on the Amiga to copy stickers to other disks. KILL - Deletes a bumper sticker that was saved on disk. Select the file with the file requester. PRINT - Displays the bumper sticker on screen. A requester will appear asking how many you want printed. Enter the # of stickers to print. Entering nothing will return you to the main program. While printing the ESC key will abort printing as soon as the currently printing bumper sticker is finished. The program disk comes with all of the Commodore-Amiga supplied printer drivers. The default setting is for an Epson JX-80 color printer. To change the default, save the bumper sticker you are working on (if any) and Quit the program. (See below). The workbench screen will come up so you can get into Preferences and select the printer you want. If you are not familiar with WorkBench Preferences consult your owner's manual. QUIT - Quits the program and transfers you to WorkBench. EDIT: UNDO - Undoes last side menu function. Also undoes the last text entered. Very useful if you find that you made a "mistake." GRAB - Lets you copy or move the image to another part of the screen. Click the left moust button and a box will appear, and resize itself as you move the mouse around. Click again and that area will be "grabbed". The image you have grabbed is represented by a box that moves with the mouse. To place it down again click on the lift mouse button. If you want to save the grabbed image press the "S" key. A file requester with a list of files will appear. Enter the filename on the keyboard. (If you want to save over an existing file double-click the left mouse button on that displayed filename. See Using the file requester for more info on it's use. When placing an image down onto the screen it will be placed according to the mode selected in the Grab/Cut options menu. (Again folks see below under the Grab/Cut options...). CUT- Same as grab except the area you grab is cleared with the current background color. LOAD- Loads an image that was grabbed and saved. Please note that these cut-and-paste images are NOT IFF format. A file requester appears for the filename. KILL- Deletes an image saved on disk. Select with the file requester. FONTS: ENTER TEXT- A line appears and moves with the mouse, this is the cursor. Click the left mouse button to set where you want the text to start. The letters you type will appear on the screen in the currently selected size and color. If Shadow mode is on a shadow of each letter is generated in the current background color. The BACKSPACE key erases the whole line not just a single letter. RESIZE- A requester appears asking for the horizontal and vertical sizes of the text. Any real number between 1 and 3 inclusive can be used. To change a value press the BACKSPACE key and enter the new value. Press RETURN and that value will be entered. When finished click on the OK box with the left mouse button. SHADOW- This is a toggle selection. When "on" a check mark will appear to the left of it. When you enter text the current background color will be used as a "shadow" for the text being entered. GRAB/CUT OPTIONS: These options deal directly with the way a grabbed image will appear when pasted on the work screen. The one that is currently selected will have a check mark beside it in the pull-down menu box. Here is a brief explanation of each: AND performs a logical AND with the grabbed image and screen before it is pasted. OR performs a logical OR with the grabbed image and screen before it is pasted. PUT places the image down on the screen and erases whatever was on the screen inside the image rectangle. This is the only function where whatever is on the screen has no effect as to how the pasted image will look. XOR does a logical XOR with the grabbed image and screen before it is pasted. NOTE: There are a few pre-saved images on the BSM disk. To sve space these mages were all saved in 8-color mode. When these images are loaded under the Edit-load function in 16-color mode the colors may not be right. To allow them to work properly select PUT under the Grab/Cut options menu load the image and paste it where you want it. Remember that PUT mode is the only mode where the screen data has no effect on how the images are displayed when pasted. This is why PUT must be selected when loading 8-color images on a 16-color screen. COLORS: EDIT PALETTE- With the Amiga you can choose from 4096 colors to place in each of the color registers of the color palette. When selected a requester appears on the right. Click inside the slider bars to change the red, green, and blue intensity levels of the currently selecte color. Click on OK when done. SELECT BKRND- The currently selected color becomes the new background color. Just click on the color bar you want to use as a background color and select this function. The next time you NEW or CUT this new color will be used instead of the white default. The text shadows (if turned on) will be rendered in this color. DEFAULT PALETTE- If you want the program's default palette back on select this function. ADDITIONAL NOTES NOTE: We assume that the printer drivers supplied by Commodore-Amiga work properly. We can take no responsibility if the supplied driver does not work. HARD DISK INSTALLATION If you are planning on using this program from a hard disk drive the following files and directories are needed: (These get copied to a BSM subdirectory you would create on the hard drive). Filename type of file -------- ------------ Logo.run program BSM.run program BSM.pfont data file Menu.pic data file BMAPS subdirectory BOBS subdirectory Stickers subdirectory Images subdirectory Stickers.info icon file Images.info icon file Also you must copy the BAS.RL file out of the L: directory on the BSM disk to the L: directory located on the root directory of the hard drive. You should also make sure you have the RAM-HANDLER in this directory. This program uses a RamDisk for scratchpad use. Then make sure the LIST command in the C: directory of the BSM disk is in the C: directory of the hard drive. You must have the LIST command in the hard drive C: directory or else the file requesters will not work! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bumper Sticker Maker docs brought to you by The Southern Star.