------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BinEps - User guide ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- _____________________________________________________________________________ BinEps version 1.00 23-Jul-1994 Copyright © 1994 By Alessandro Sala Requires AmigaOS v2.04 ( Kickstart v37 ) or later Suggested AmigaOS v3.0 ( Kickstart v39 ) or later _____________________________________________________________________________ Contents · Legal info · The distribution archive · What is BinEps ? · Installation · 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. 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. -------------------- Distribution archive -------------------- ------------------------------------ Contents of the distribution archive ------------------------------------ BinEps : The main executable program (CLI only) BinEpsWB : Localized shell script for interactive use of BinEps BinEpsWB.info : Info file to allow Workbench execution Italiano BinEps.doc : Italian documentation in ASCII format BinEps.guide : Italian documentation in AmigaGuide format English BinEps.doc : English documentation in ASCII format BinEps.guide : English documentation in AmigaGuide format Various '.info' files -------------- What is BinEps -------------- BinEps is a simple utility: it converts a regular Encapsulated Postscript file ('.epsf') into the MS-DOS binary EPS format file with preview bitmap. This format consist of a binary header, followed by the original EPS file and by either a TIFF or a Windows Metafile picture which can be used as a preview image by programs that allow importing EPS files, but can only display and not edit them (typically word processors). Please note that BinEps cannot create the preview image: it only merges the original EPS file with an image file you provide. ------------ Installation ------------ Installation ? Simply copy BinEps and eventually BinEpsWB somewhere in your execution path. That's all! ----- Usage ----- BinEps is essentially a CLI tool, but if you have the 'requestfile' and 'requestchoice' commands that come with AmigaOS 3.0 or later you can run it from Workbench by double-clicking the supplied BinEpsWB icon or executing the BinEpsWB script. BinEps itself is such a simple tool that it isn't worth the work of localizing it (it only has three messages!), though the BinEpsWB script IS localized. It only supports english and italian languages for now; if you want you can add your own language by editing the BinEpsWB script. If you add a new language, please E-mail me the updated script file so I can distribute it in a future release of BinEps. Please note that the environment variable 'Language' must be defined if you want BinEpsWB to use your language, otherwise it will default to english. If 'Language' is not defined, simply add the following line to your s:user-startup file: SetEnv Language "" where "" is something like "english" "italiano" "deutsch" etc. · CLI usage · Workbench usage · The preview image --------- CLI usage --------- The usage from CLI is very simple; the template is: BinEps [] [TIFF | WMF ] or, with the AmigaDOS syntax: BinEps SOURCE/A,DEST,TIFF/K,WMF/K where: SOURCE is the source EPS file; it is mandatory. DEST is the name of the converted file. It can be omitted, in which case it will be the SOURCE name with a 'b' appended. TIFF is the name of the TIFF preview image. You must use the keyword TIFF to inform BinEps that the image is in TIFF format. WMF same as TIFF for Windows Metafile images. Note that only one of TIFF and WMF can be used; if you use both, WMF will be ignored. You can also omit the preview image, but some program may have problems when reading the converted file. Example: BinEps test.epsf test.eps TIFF preview.tiff will produce the file 'test.eps' using 'test.epsf' as the EPS component and 'preview.tiff' as the preview image in TIFF format. --------------- Workbench usage --------------- *** You need AmigaOs 3.0 or later to use the WB interface of BinEps *** You can use BinEps with a more friendly interface by double-clicking the BinEpsWB icon or executing the BinEpsWB script from a CLI. You will be presented with a file requester where you can select the EPS source file. A second file requester will allow you to choose the name of the converted file: if you cancel the requester the name will be the same as the source file, with a 'b' appended. Next you will choose if you want to add a preview image. If you choose not to add an image, be warned that some program may have problems when loading the converted file. If you want to add a preview image, choose which type (TIFF or Windows Metafile) and select the file name in the subsequent requester. In case of errors a window will open showing the appropriate message, otherwise a requester will notify you when the conversion has been completed. ----------------- The preview image ----------------- The preview image must be in TIFF format or in 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. --------------------- Contacting the author --------------------- Criticism and suggestions I hope you will find BinEps useful, and if you have any criticism, suggestions, bug report, ideas for enhancements in possible future versions, or if you have problems using BinEps 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 addresses (at least until the end of October, 1994): tser1500@cdc8g5.cdc.polimi.it sala@aix1.cdc.polimi.it ---------------- Revision history ---------------- ------------ Version 1.00 ------------ First release.