Cross Stitch Master V3.7 for the Amiga. (c) 1992/3 Ursa Software This text last amended March 1993. Demo Version. Hello there. This file contains cut down instructions for the version of Cross Stitch Master released in January 1993. By the time you buy, there wil be a few more features available - we anticipate some form of screendump option to help you obtain threads by comparing them to a colour printout - something people with colour printers have been asking for for some time. The program is being 'tweaked' all the time! Note that the program on this disc is designed for Epson style printers. A new version which caters for the increasingly popular Hewlett Packard 500 printer is in preparation for April 1993. The instructions which follow are for the full program. The demo you have here has LOAD and SAVE removed, and has the most annoying habit of erasing anything you draw yourself. We know it's frustrating,but if it did not, it would not be a demo version. Sorry. You can order the full program from PD Soft, who are authorised to act as our agents for this program. The price is 16.99 pounds inclusive of p&p. This buys you, (like registering a shareware title): The fully working program, and 12 or so screens of designs. A second disc of designs, (PD pictures) A printed manual. Access to our telephone helpline if you need it. We hope you like it! more... Cross Stitch Master : (c) Jeff & Deb Tullin (Ursa Software) 1993 Background: Cross Stitching remains one of the most popular and rewarding craft pursuits enjoyed by thousands of people all over the country. In a short time, even the novice stitcher can produce a thing of beauty to enjoy for years to come. Computers are invasive, noisy, difficult things that only geniuses and children can use. Rubbish. Debs and I knew that there had to be a better use for computers than just 'blasting aliens', and we decided that a good way to get husband and wife involved with their '£300 ornament', was to write something which was useful to either of them. Cross Stitch Master was born, and we hope you enjoy the results you can achieve from it. The main aim of this program is to allow you to use pictures saved on disc as .IFF files - standard Amiga pictures - as the basis for counted cross stitch charts. In addition, there are some basic editing tools available to allow you to 'touch up' existing pictures. or draw small designs from scratch. (In all honesty, the editing tools are not meant to be a complete 'art program', as we feel that there are many much better qualified 'art packages' available already in P.D. , however, the facility to edit at 'stitch level' will be useful, and we are adding more new tools on an on-going basis.) Your pictures, once drawn, or loaded from a disc, can then have a portion of the screen chosen for use as a cross stitch pattern. Colours can be named, symbols allocated, and then the pattern can be printed out on your own printer, as a familiar grid and symbol chart. Have fun! Jeff & Debs. INSTRUCTIONS: Put the Cross Stitch Master disc in your disc drive, and switch on the power. After a short time, the familiar Workbench screen will appear. Double click on the Panda icon, and a window will appear on screen showing the 'Cross Stitch' program, and the 'Config' program, together with a number of icons which represent the IFF pictures supplied on the disc. (You will only need the CONFIG program if certain things are not set correctly for your printer. The default settings will accomodate 80% of all common printer types.) If you wish to see the pictures, double-click on each icon in turn,and they will be displayed on screen without having to load the main program first. (Right mouse button pressed in the top left corner of the picture will clear the screen.) Double-click on the X-Stitch-Master icon,and it will load and run. X-Stitch-Master 3.7, unlike previous versions, is entirely menu- operated. The menus are normal Amiga ones, acessed by pressing and holding the RIGHT mouse button down, while moving the mouse cursor over the menu bars, and releasing when the option you want to take is highlighted. EDIT MENU. Choose an area. You probably don't want to stitch the whole picture, since you would end up with a very large pattern - 320 x 200 stitches! (Big enough for a jumper, though...) , so we need to choose a specific area to stitch. From the EDIT menu, select the CHOOSE AREA option. The menus vanish, and the whole screen is shown. Move the mouse to the TOP LEFT of the area you want. Press and hold the left mouse button down, and drag the mouse to the BOTTOM RIGHT of the area. A flashing box will follow your actions. Let go at the required spot. That's it. After selecting the area, an 'alert box' will pop up, showing what size you chose, and what size it would be if stitched on 14pt AIDA. Name the colours. The program does not know the DMC or similar thread numbers for every possible screen colour (but we're working on it!), so you need to name the colours you see, to provide a 'key' for the printout. This has advantages since you can use thread numbers relating to threads or wools you already have, rather than be forced to go and buy some more 'just because the computer said so'. Select the NAME COLOURS option, and answer OKAY to the information box which tells you what to do next, which is to click on each colour in turn, then type in your name for it, followed by the RETURN key. When you have named all the colours, click on OKAY, and the screen is restored. Select cloth colour. Select this option, and you get a row of coloured panels, from which you can choose which colour should be the cloth, just by clicking on the colour box. You can use any of the 32 available colours as the cloth colour. By default, the cloth is assumed to be colour 0, which will be white or black usually. The cloth colour will be represented by a blank space on the final printout, and will also appear as the backdrop for the 'edit as stitches' option, later on. Preview output. Select this option from the menu, and the first 40 x 25 or so symbols of your chosen area will be displayed on screen, exactly as it would print on paper. Some combinations of symbols may be confusing if they appear next to each other, or you may find difficulty recognising shapes from the chosen symbols. For instance if a dark colour has a light symbol, this may confuse the eye. If you find this to be the case, you can use... Assign symbols .. to correct this. If you select this, you get a similar series of colour boxes as you saw in the 'select cloth' section, but this time with symbols within them, which represent the symbols to be printed for each colour. To change the symbol : click on a colour. (A small arrow will then point to the chosen colour.) Click on a symbol from the selection below, and the new symbol will appear inside the colour box chosen. You may continue to replace the symbol by clicking other symbols, or change to another colour by clicking a new colour box, until you are happy with the symbol set. Now click on EXIT. Note: the program will not stop you from setting two colours to have the same symbol. Be careful!. Print. Make sure the printer is switched on, and ready to print. Select PRINT from the menus. (If you have not chosen an area, or named the colours, the program will check what you want to do about that before it begins.) Large patterns are printed in sections, across several sheets of paper, and between each , the program will pause, to suggest you change sheets. These sheets may then be assembled later using sticky tape or similar. At this stage, if this is your first printout, it is possible that the page width, length, and line spacings may not be as well suited to your printer as they could be. If this is the case, please see the section called Configuration for ways to tweak this. Drawing tools instructions. Editing Tools. There are several editing tools available for you to use to touch up the picture you have loaded into the Cross Stitch Master program. Current Drawing Colour From the edit menu, for all the drawing options, you can choose a drawing colour by selecting CHOOSE DRAW COLOUR. This gives you a selection of colour boxes. Click on one to choose a new colour, or on EXIT to leave the current colour unchanged. Alter Colours You may not be happy with the range of colours available, needing another shade or two of red, or green, for instance. You can use ALTER COLOURS to change the hues allocated to the available 32 colours. A small window will appear over the picture, containing 32 coloured boxes, a large coloured box to show the currently selected colour, and 3 'sliders'. By clicking on the 'sliding bars' for RED, GREEN, and BLUE, you can create just about any set of colours you need. The colour bars always affect the currently indicated colour. To alter some other colour, click on it's box. The larger coloured box will change to reflect the new current colour. The whole palette window may be moved around the screen at will by clicking in it's top bar and dragging with the mouse. Pressing the Right mouse button gets back to the menus. Draw / Line / Box / Circle All the drawing tools except EDIT as STITCHES work in the same manner, which is: 1/ Select the drawing method you want. ( Draw, line, box etc.) 2/ If filled shapes are an option (eg box & circle), choose whether to draw filled shapes or outline shapes in the 'alert box' which appears next. 3/ Move the mouse to the top left of the shape you wish to create. Press the left mouse button, hold it down, and move the mouse to the bottom right of the shape before you let go. (Freehand Draw is simply drawing while the left button is held. FILL fills an area, from the point where you press the button.) 4/ If you are happy about the change you just made, you can now repeat the operation, and draw again. 5/ If at any time you make a mistake, or wish to stop,press the RIGHT mouse button, which is also the EXIT button. 6/ Pressing the RIGHT mouse button will give you a request box, which lets you undo the last change you made, (if you wish), before returning you to the main menu screen. EDIT as STITCHES. First, choose whether you wish to edit using X's to represent each stitch, or small filled boxes. (Most people find the boxes option easier to follow.) This will give you a new screen, showing an enlarged portion of the main screen. The area shown is only about 35 x 25 stitches, but you may 'move around' the main screen by means of the small 'arrow buttons' on the right, which move your 'view' of the main picture left,right,up or down by 10 or 20 dots a time. If you have chosen an area to stitch, this will be displayed for editing, otherwise the top left of the main picture will be used. The largest grid shows the dots from the main screen as X's, whilst the other two grids show as normal size, and double size, respectively. You may draw (using the left mouse button) in any of these grid windows, and your actions are mirrored to the other two. To change the drawing colour, simply click on the colour of your choice at the bottom of the page. When you have drawn enough, click on EXIT to go back to the main menus, and carry on from there. Get Brush / Edit New to version 3.7, this option allows you to pick up a section of the screen ( no larger than 100 x 100 stitches), and manipulate it in a variety of ways. First, choose an area in the same way as you did earlier to select the final stitching area, by clicking the left mouse button down at the top left hand side of the 'brush' area, then while holding it, drag the mouse to the bottom right hand side, and let go. While you do this, a flashing box will show the area chosen, and a line down the middle acts as a guide to the 'centre' position for 'mirroring' (see later). Once chosen, a window opens up on the screen showing a number of brush options. Your chosen brush appears on the left, whilst on the right are : VFLIP / HFLIP / MIRROR / ROTATE / Okay. Click on OKAY when you have finished with, or are happy with, you brush. VFLIP will turn the brush on it's head. HFLIP will reverse the brush horizontaly. MIRROR takes the left hand side of the brush, and mirrors it to the right hand side. (If you wanted to copy the right hand side to the left, simply HFLIP the image before you MIRROR. Similarly, Mirroring from top to bottom, or bottom to top can be achieved by rotating the image before mirroring, then rotating again back to the original orientation.) ROTATE turns the whole image around by 90% about it's centre. OKAY exits. Once you click on okay, the program puts you straight into.... Put Brush. Here, the brush you chose in Get Brush is displayed on screen, and is moved around by the mouse, (which is invisible at this point). Whereever you wish to 'stamp' the brush down, press the left mouse button. This will only stamp a single image at a time, then wait for you to release the button, to avoid 'smudging'. You can keep stamping as much as you want. After the last one, or after you make a mistake, press the Right mouse button, and you are given the option to UNDO the last action if you wish. Choose, and you are back to the main menu. Configuration Program It is possible that the printouts you get first time, may not be the best you can achieve. Printers are complicated beasts, and even though many claim to be 'Epson compatible', there are many things about printers which vary. The configuration program will help you to get the best results possible. To run the program, double click on it's icon in the same manner as we did before. The program will load, and the current settings are loaded in from disc. (They live in a file called S:XS.CFG.) We'll go through the things you can change one at a time. Page width. If you can get more than the default 56 symbols across your page - you might have a wide printer - then you can change the width from the SIZES menu. There are two settings - 56 & 120 - preset. Alternatively, you can choose CUSTOM WIDTH from the menu, and type in the exact size yourself. This needs you to type in 3 numbers, even if the width is less than 100. E.g: 048 for 48, or 075 for 75. Page Length Exactly the same process applies here. Choose from the list of page lengths (in symbols), or choose CUSTOM, and enter a number yourself. Linefeed. Some printers need what is known as a 'carriage return and a linefeed' to get the paper to move up a space. Some need only the carriage return, some only the linefeed. In general: If your printout is all on one line, set this to CR & LF. If you get double spacings, try CR only, or LF intead. Pins. Simply set this to 9 or 24, depending upon your printer type. BJ10 owners set this to 24. Linefeed data. This is tricky. The exact amount by which the printer feeds the paper between every line is set using an 'escape sequence'. The escape sequence we need is the one which says 'feed the paper exactly 1/8 of an inch'. This varies a lot between printers. If you get little gaps between each row of symbols, this is what needs changing. Several common variations are shown in the menu, for selection. (Where Ec is shorthand for , or decimal 27, or hex 1B) Try each of the normal ones, but if they don't work, you will need to read the printer manual to find out what is required, then type the codes into the CUSTOM setup menu option yourself. Printer manuals are as easy to digest as a phone book, so if you have trouble, give us a ring. We'll sort out anyone in difficulty. (Those who have a Canon BJ10 printer, for instance, need the sequence 027,051,024 decimal. To save them the trouble, there is a .CFG file already prepared and in the S directory. Just rename it to XS.CFG.) Finally, you can save the configuration back to disc. If you save the file as XS.CFG,in the 'S' directory, it will be used as default by the cross stitch program every time you run it. You save the file by selecting either SAVE a configuration, or SAVE AS XS.CFG from the menus. Jeff & Debs Tullin March 1993.