V1.3 Preferences by Eric Cotton and David Berezowski The Preferences program for the V1.3 Workbench has a number of additions to support new features of this release, including extended printer support. General There is now a Preferences drawer. Within the drawer are icons for Preferences, Pointer, Printer, and Serial. The Preferences icon is for the Preferences program itself. Double-clicking runs Preferences much as before. Pointer, Printer, and Serial are project icons; the DEFAULT TOOL of each is Preferences. The TOOL TYPES specify the preference screen with which Preferences is to begin. The format is "PREFS=" immediately followed by "pointer", "printer", or "serial". For instance the TOOL TYPES of the Serial icon is "PREFS=serial". Double-clicking on the icon opens Preferences with the serial preference screen. Preferences now accepts command line arguments. The format is as follows: Preferences [POINTER | PRINTER | SERIAL] The argument specifies the screen to display. Selecting Save automatically updates the battery backed-up clock, if present, with the new date and time. The CLI On/Off option has been eliminated. Henceforth, the icon for the Command Line Interface (CLI) will always appear in the System drawer (unless deleted by the user). Change Printer The Graphic Select gadget has been replaced by two new gadgets: Graphic 1 and Graphic 2. The new Graphic 1 gadget is equivalent to the V1.2 Graphic Select gadget and is used to request the first of two printer graphic Preferences screens. Graphic 1 The Graphic 1 screen is selected by clicking on the corresponding gadget in the Change Printer screen. There is a new Print Shade selection: Gray Scale2. This shade is for printing pictures designed using the A2024 Monitor (which supports a maximum of seven shades of gray). Graphic 2 Selected by clicking the Graphic 2 gadget in the Change Printer screen, this new Preferences screen supports extended printer graphics features. The various gadgets are as follows: Smoothing [ON/OFF] - attempts to smooth diagonal lines. This option is best suited for use with programs that do graphic dumps of text (like ProWrite, PageSetter, CityDesk, Publisher 1000, NotePad, etc.). This technique incurs an approximate 2:1 speed penalty on printing. Note: Floyd-Steinberg dithering cannot be used in conjunction with Smoothing. If F-S is enabled when turning on Smoothing the dithering mode will change to Ordered. Default is OFF. Left Offset - horizontally offsets the printed picture. This option effectively sets up a left margin. The offset can be entered in increments of tenths of an inch. The Center option (below) disables Left Offset. Default is 0.0 inches. Center [ON/OFF] - horizontally centers the printed picture. This option overrides the Left Offset value. Default is OFF. Density [1 through 7] - selects graphics print density. The lower the density the faster the print time (on those printers with multiple densities). Refer to specifications of the V1.3 Printer Drivers for a description of densities supported by each individual printer. Default is 1. Color Correct R/G/B - tries to better match screen colors to printer colors. This option selectively tries to match all shades of either red (R), green (G), or blue (B) from the screen to the printer. Without color correction, the printer device can print all the 4096 colors of the AMIGA on a printer. However, as color correction is applied the total number of printed colors is reduced to a low of 3172 (308 per RGB). To see the effect of this option, printout a picture with solid red, green, and blue shades twice; first with this option on, and then with it off. Now compare the two pictures with the screen display. The shades of the color corrected picture should more closely represent those displayed on your monitor. Default is no color correction (R, G, and B not selected). Dithering [Ordered/Halftone/F-S] - sets dithering mode. Note: when a Shade of 'Black and White' is selected (from the Graphic 1 screen), changing the dither method has no effect on the printout as B&W shading does no dithering. Default is ORDERED. Ordered - Color intensities on the printer are formed using an ordered dither method. Ordered dithering produces shades on the printer using an ordered pattern of dots. Halftone - Color intensities on the printer are formed using a halftone dither method. This technique is similar to the one used in newspapers and comic books. It works best on high density printers (greater than 150 dots per inch). F-S - Color intensities on the printer are formed using the Floyd-Steinberg error distribution method. This option incurs an approximate 2:1 speed penalty on printing. Note: Selecting this option automatically turns off Smoothing as they can not be used in conjunction with each other. It works best on high density printers (greater than 150 dots per inch). Scaling [Fraction/Integer] - selects scaling method. Default is FRACTION. Fraction - Normal scaling is performed. Integer - Every dot on the screen is guaranteed to appear as an even number of dots on the printer in both the x and y dimensions. For example, if the source picture is 320 x 200, the printed picture width will be either 320, 640, 960, etc. dots wide and 200, 400, 600, etc. dots high. This option should be selected when trying to print a picture that contains thin vertical and horizontal lines (like a grid). The actual size of the printed picture will be the requested size scaled up or down to the nearest multiple of the width and height of the picture. Integer scaling completely overrides the aspecting feature of the printer device. Thus it is possible to get a slightly distorted (non-aspect ratio correct) picture. This option is also useful for printing out bit-image text (as in Notepad) since the fonts will not be distorted due to fractional scaling. Width Limit - limit the width of the printed picture. Default is 0. The width can be limited in tenths / inch, pixels or a multiplication factor. See Limits below. Height Limit - limits the height of the printed picture. Default is 0. The height can be limited in tenths / inch, pixels or a multiplication factor. See Limits below. <- Limits - determines how the Width and Height limits are interpreted. Default is IGNORE. Ignore - The limits are to be ignored. The printed picture's size is bounded by: width = (right margin - left margin + 1) / characters per inch. height = lines per page / lines per inch. This option is the default and is included to remain compatible with pre V1.3 software. Bounded - The printed picture's size is bounded by Width Limit and Height Limit. For example, if the printed picture should be no bigger than 4.0 x 5.0 inches (but it could be smaller), set MaxWidth to 40, MaxHeight to 50, and select Bounded. This option is provided so that the text settings (margins, lines per page, etc.) need not be changed every time a graphic print is made. Absolute - Width Limit and Height Limit are interpreted as absolute values. The printed picture's size is no longer bounded. Rather, it is the absolute size specified. For example, if the printed picture should be exactly 4.0 x 5.0 inches, set MaxWidth to 40, Width Limit to 50, and select Absolute. This completely overrides the aspecting feature of the printer device. Thus it is possible to get a very distorted (non-aspect ratio correct) picture. Setting one (but not both) of the dimensions to zero aspect ratio corrects only that dimension. Hence if Width Limit is set to 40 and Height Limit to 0, then the printed picture will be 4.0 inches wide and as tall as necessary in order to be aspect ratio correct. If both of the dimensions are zero then the printed picture will be the printer's maximum dots wide and as tall as necessary in order to be aspect ratio correct. Pixels - Width Limit and Height Limit are interpreted as absolute values in printer pixels rather than tenths of an inch. Otherwise, the same rules for the Absolute selection (Width Limit = 0 and Height Limit = 0) apply. Multiply - Width Limit and Height Limit are used to multiply the source picture's width and height. For instance, if you specified a WidthLimit of 2 and a Height Limit of 4, the printed picture would be two times the source picture's width pixels wide and 4 times the source picture's height pixels high. Thus if the source picture were 320 x 200, the printed picture would be 640 (320 x 2) pixels wide and 800 (200 x 4) pixels high. The same rules for Absolute scaling (Width Limit = 0 and Height Limit = 0) apply. In addition, the benefits inherent to Integer scaling are valid here. Tips for Generating Better/Faster Graphic Dumps ----------------------------------------------- Faster ------ 1. If you are dumping a 1 bitplane image select the B&W mode in preferences. This is much faster than a grey-scale or color dump. 2. Horizontal dumps are much faster than vertical dumps as they use the blitter to read the pixel data. 3. Smoothing doubles the print time. Use it for final copy only. 4. F-S dithering doubles the print time. Ordered and halftone dithering incur no extra overhead. 5. The lower the density the faster the printout. Better ------ 1. Friction fed paper tends to be much more accurate than tractor fed paper in terms of vertical dot placement (ie. less horizontal strips or white lines). 2. Densities which use more than one pass tend to produce 'muddy' grey-scale or color printouts. It is recommended that you not chose these densities when doing a grey-scale or color dump.