------------------- EpsLab - User guide ------------------- ____________________________________________________________________________ EpsLab version 1.02 23-Oct-1994 Copyright © 1994 By Alessandro Sala Requires AmigaOS v2.04 ( Kickstart v37 ) or later ____________________________________________________________________________ Contents ·  Legal info                ·  Acknowledgements                 ·  The distribution archive   ·  What is EpsLab ?              ·  Installation              ·  Localization                  ·  Usage                         ·  Contacting the author         ·  Revision history          _____________________________________________________________________________ ---------- Legal Info ---------- ------------ Disclaimer ------------ This program is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose. Though every care has been taken to make this program system-friendly and bugs-free, the entire risk as to the results, reliability and performance of this program is assumed by you. ------------------ Copyright notice ------------------ This program is "FreeWare": it can be freely copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided that no file is added to or removed from the distribution archive and no charge, beside a nominal fee, is requested. Fred Fish is, of course, explicitly allowed to put this program on his great disk library and/or on his CD-ROMs. Aminet administrators are also explicitly allowed to put this program on Aminet CD-ROMs. Nevertheless the program remains COPYRIGHT of the Author: you cannot patch, reverse engineer or otherwise modify the program, the documentation and every other file found in the distribution archive except where explicitly allowed. Compressing in executable form is allowed for personal use but not for distribution. The only two allowed forms of distribution are the original lharc'ed archive or a uncompresssed form of it. Furthermore you cannot embed the program in any other software without the written permission of the author. -------------- Acknoledgement -------------- Very big thanks to Manuel Lemos: almost all the features of EpsLab came from his suggestions after I released BinEps. In particular, Manuel suggested the use of the 'post.library' to render the preview image; he suggested where to find the TIFF documents, and suggested to add the EPSI format support. He also did a great beta-testing job, and helped making the GUI closer to Commodore's (or should now I say Amiga International's ?) style-guide. Thanks Manuel! ----- And now for the legal stuff: PostScript® is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. TIFF (tm) is a trademark of Aldus Corporation. Post and post.library are Copyright by Adrian Aylward. -------------------- Distribution archive -------------------- ------------------------------------ Contents of the distribution archive ------------------------------------ EpsLab : The main executable program Italiano Leggimi : General information (italian language) Installa : Installer program (italian language) Documentazione EpsLab.doc : Italian documentation in plain ASCII format EpsLab.guide : Italian documentation in AmigaGuide format English ReadMe : General information (english language) Install : Installer program (english language) Documentation EpsLab.doc : English documentation in plain ASCII format EpsLab.guide : English documentation in AmigaGuide format Catalogs EpsLab.ct : Empty translation catalog. Italiano EpsLab.catalog : Catalog file for italian language support Libs post.library : PostScript library (by Adrian Aylward). PS init.ps : PostScript preamble (also by Adrian Aylward). FunkyFont : Default PostScript font (by Radical Eye Software) afms FunkyFont.afm : Default PostScript font metrics Various '.info' files -------------- What is EpsLab -------------- EpsLab is the successor of BinEps: its main purpose is to add a preview image to a regular Encapsulated PostScript file ('.epsf'); it can also convert some single-page PostScript files to EPS files (with a preview image). The preview image can be created by EpsLab in one of three formats: - TIFF image (MS-DOS binary EPS format) - TIFF compressed image (also MS-DOS binary EPS format) - ASCII image (EPSI file format) As an alternative the user can provide a file containing the preview image in either TIFF format o Windows MetaFile format. Its resolution doesn't matter: it can be of any size and aspect ratio; the application displaying the preview should scale the picture to fit within the %%BoundingBox comment specified in the EPS file. ------------ Installation ------------ Simply run the provided installer script, found in the 'English' drawer. You need the 'installer' program from Commodore: please have a look at the ReadMe file for details on obtaining 'installer' if you don't already have it. If you want to install EpsLab by hand: - make a drawer somewhere to store EpsLab - copy EpsLab, the 'catalogs' drawer and PS/init.ps into that drawer If you want EpsLab to create full preview images and you don't already have post.library installed, do the following: - copy Libs/post.library to LIBS: - choose a drawer to store the PostScript fonts, and add the following line to your user-startup: assign PSFONTS: '' - copy PS/FunkyFont to PSFONTS: - make a drawer named 'afms' inside PSFONTS: - copy PS/afms/FunkyFont.afm to PSFONTS:afms - reboot your computer ! IMPORTANT NOTE ! Please note that, to keep the archive small, I have only included one simple and freely distributable PostScript font (FunkyFont by Radical Eye Software). It's rather simple, but it works. If you want more PostScript fonts, get 'Post', a freely distributable PostScript interpreter by Adrian Aylward, based on the post.library (also by Adrian Aylward). If you have a math coprocessor (FPU), with 'Post' you can also find an optimized version of the post.library which runs about twice as fast. ------------ Localization ------------ EpsLab is fully localized, if you have AmigaOS v2.1 or later. At the moment the only supported languages are Italian and English. If you want to localize EpsLab for your own language, you can find an empty catalog translation file in the 'Catalogs' drawer. Edit it and send it to me, so I can make the catalog and distribute your translation. If you want to translate the documentation, please work only on the Amigaguide version of it. I will extract the plain ASCII version. ----- Usage ----- EpsLab can be run both from CLI and from Workbench. The CLI template is EpsLab SOURCE,DEST,TIFF/K,WMF/K,POST/S,OUTFMT/N/K, INIT/K,XDPI/N/K,YDPI/N/K,GUI/S,RECBB/S, PSIZE/N/K,CUSTW/K,CUSTH/K,UNIT/N/K All the CLI arguments can also be used as tooltypes when EpsLab is run from Workbench: in this case they will set the default values. Here is the meaning of the various arguments/tooltypes (type 'EpsLab ?' at the CLI prompt to get a little on-line help): SOURCE The name of the PostScript or EPS file to be processed. It is mandatory when you run EpsLab from CLI. DEST The name of the processed EPS file. If you don't provide a destination name, it will be created from the source filename: - if the resulting file is in binary format (TIFF or WMF preview) the name of the source file will be prepended with 'b_'. - if the resulting file is an EPSI file, the source file extension will be changed to '.epsi'. The following three arguments are mutually exclusive; if you use none of them, the preview image will be a crossbox: TIFF= The name of a TIFF file to be used as a preview image. WMF= The name of a WMF file to be used as a preview image. POST Use post.library to create the preview image. The remaining arguments: OUTFMT= This sets the output format of the destination file when the POST option is in use. Accepted values are: 0 = Binary EPSF with TIFF preview 1 = Binary EPSF with compressed TIFF preview 2 = EPSI format (ASCII preview) Default is 0 (binary EPSF with TIFF uncompressed preview). INIT= When using the POST option, this is the name of the PostScript preamble to read before interpreting the source file. Default is 'init.ps'. XDPI= YDPI= When using the POST option, these set the horizontal and vertical density of the preview image in dots per inch. Default for XDPI is 80. Default for YDPI is XDPI. GUI This forces EpsLab to open its graphical user interface even if run from CLI. RECBB Forces EpsLab to (re)calculate the bounding box of the image. This is useful when converting single-page PostScript files to the EPS format. Use the RECBB option if the converted file, when imported into a document, shows a blank border around your graphics. PSIZE= When converting PostScript to EPS, this is the size of the page when not set inside the PostScript file. Accepted values are: 0 = DIN A5 1 = DIN A4 2 = DIN A3 3 = US Legal 4 = US Letter 5 = Custom (see CUSTW and CUSTH). Default is 1 (DIN A4). CUSTW= CUSTH= When PSIZE=5, these represent the width and the heigth of the page to be used to render the PostScript document. See UNIT to know how to express the page size. UNIT= This is the unit of measurement used to specify the page size. Accepted values are: 0 = Centimeters 1 = Inches 2 = Points (1/72") Default is 0 (Centimeters). When you run EpsLab from Workbench or from CLI with the GUI argument, it will open a graphical user interface. Gadgets and menus are self-explanatory. The 'Settings/Save settings' item saves the current settings as tooltypes. --------------------- Contacting the author --------------------- Criticism and suggestions I hope you will find EpsLab useful, and if you have any criticism, suggestions, bug report, ideas for enhancements in possible future versions, or if you have problems using EpsLab and need help, you can write ( in Italian or English ) to the following address: Alessandro Sala Via A. Grandi, 16 20014 Nerviano (MI) Italy If you have E-Mail capability you can also contact me at the following Internet address (until the end of October, 1994): tser1500@cdc8g5.cdc.polimi.it Only if it doesn't work, you can try: sala@aix1.cdc.polimi.it       As a last chance, try to find a new version of EpsLab or some other program by me, to see if there are new addresses available. ---------------- Revision history ---------------- ------------ Version 1.02 ------------ First release. Being EpsLab the successor of BinEps, here you can find what's new from BinEps. - Full font-sensitive gui. - Full localization. - Ability to create a crossbox preview. - Ability to render a full preview using 'post.library'. - Ability to create a compressed or uncompressed TIFF preview. - Ability to create an ASCII preview (EPSI file format). - Automatic conversion of some single-page PostScript to EPSF, with bounding box recalculation. - Selectable density for the preview image. - Selectable page size for PostScript to EPSF conversion.