1.3 Preferences =============== by Eric Cotton The new Preferences program has a number of additions to support new features of the V1.3 release, including extended printer support. Changes from V1.2 Preferences are as follows: Main Screen o Selecting Save or Use automatically updates the battery backed up clock with the new date and time. o 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). Printer Screen 1 o The Graphic Select gadget has been replaced by two new gadgets: Graphic 1 and Graphic 2. o The new Graphic 1 gadget is equivalent the the V1.2 Graphic Select gadget and is used to request the first of two printer graphic Preferences screens. Printer Screen 2 (Graphic 1) o The Printer Screen 2 is selected by clicking on the Graphic 1 gadget in Printer Screen 1. o There is a new Print Shade selection: Gray Scale2. This shade is for printing pictures designed using the *Hedley Monitor* (when only seven shades of gray are available). Printer Screen 3 (Graphic 2) This is a totally new Preferences screen to allow for extended printer graphics support. The various gadgets are as follows: o Antialiasing ON/OFF - Antialiasing (when ON) 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.). Note that this option automatically turns off Floyd-Steinberg dithering (and selects Ordered dithering) as they can not be used in conjunction with each other. o Left Offset - The printed picture is offset horizontally in increments of tenths of an inch. The 'Center Image' option (below) disables this option. o Center ON/OFF - This turns on/off horizontal centering of the picture on the paper. This option overrides the Left Offset value. o Density 1 through 7 - This is used to override any density an application program has selected and thus ensure a certain density. The lower the density the faster the print time (on those printers with multiple densities). o Color Correction R/G/B - This option selectively tries to match all shades of either red (R), green (G), or blue (B) from the screen to the printer. Initially 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. To see the effect of this option, print out 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 results should be obvious. o Dithering Ordered/Halftone/F-S Ordered - Color intensities on the printer are formed using an 'ordered' dither method. This is the default. 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 and works best on high density printers (greater than 150 dots/inch). F/S - Color intensities on the printer are formed using the 'Floyd-Steinberg' error distribution method. Note that selecting this option automatically turns off Antialiasing as they can not be used in conjunction with each other. o Scaling Fraction/Integer Fraction - Performs normal scaling. This is the default. Integer - every dot on the screen is guaranteed to appear as an even number of dots on the printer both in the x and y dimension. Ie. 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. SELECT THIS OPTION 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 size asked for scaled up/down to the nearest multiple of the width and height of the picture. Integer scaling will completely override the aspecting feature of the printer device. Ie. it is possible to get a slightly distorted (non-aspect ratio correct) picture. This option is also usefull if you are printing out bit-image text (like in notepad) as the fonts will not be distorted due to fractional scaling. o Width Limit - This selection limits the width of the printed picture in tenths / inch. o Height Limit - This limits the height of the printed picture in tenths / inch. o <- Limits - This gadget determines how the above Width and Height limits are to be interpreted as follows: 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 included to remain compatible with pre V1.3 software and is the default. Bounded - The printed picture's size is bounded by Width Limit and Height Limit. Ie. if you want the printed picture to be no bigger than 4 x 5 (but it could be smaller), set MaxWidth to 40, MaxHeight to 50, and select Bounded. This option is here so that the text settings (margins, lines per page, etc.) need not be changed everytime a graphic print is made. ABSOLUTE - Width Limit and Height Limit are taken to be absolute values. The printed picture's size is no longer bounded. Rather, it will be the absolute size specified. For example, if you want the printed picture to be exactly 4.0 x 5.0 inches, set MaxWidth to 40, Width Limit to 50, and select Absolute. This will completely override 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 that dimension. Ie. 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 it needs to be 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 it needs to be in order to be aspect ratio correct. Pixels - Width Limit and Height Limit are taken to be absolute values in printer pixels and not tenths of an inch. Otherwise, the same rules for the Absolute selection (Width Limit = 0 and Height Limit = 0) apply here. Multiply - Width Limit and Height Limit are used to multiply the source picture's width and height. Ie., if you specified a Width Limit of 2 and a Height Limit of 4, the printed picture would be two times the source picture's width pixels wide and 4x 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 the Absolute scaling (Width Limit = 0 and Height Limit = 0) apply. Also, the benefits that apply to Integer scaling are valid here.