ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 1989 ^^^^^^^ XHi update, and HARDCOPY tutorial ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^by Charles Good ^^^^^^^^^^^^^Lima Ohio User Group I now have, direct from the author Alexander Hulpke XHi v3.41, released in late August 1989. Version 3.2 was reviewed by me in the Sept 89 issue of BB&&P. Any interested user group or paid member of the Lima UG can obtain a copy of v3.41 by sending a disk and paid return mailer to P.O. Box 647, Venedocia OH 45894. User groups and Lima UG members can also obtain from me at cost a video tape showing the step-by-step operation of XHi's HARDCOPY. This video is available by sending a VHS tape and $1 postage, or by sending $5 to the address above. CHANGES TO XHi NEW TO v3.41: All of the "complaints" about XHi's LOAD and COLDEF utilities mentioned in my review of XHi v3.2 have been corrected to my satisfaction. Those using XHi on a 99/4A system will no longer have to hunt for the unusual key codes that correspond to keys on the geneve keyboard. However, some of the changes in LOAD and COLDEF that are new to v3.41 are not mentioned in the v3.41 doc. The XHi code has now been attached to LOAD with SysTex, so XHi now loads very rapidly. A new command, CALL LINK("COLRES") is available that resets all colors to their original values. HARDCOPY The main changes to v3.41 are to HARDCOPY. This has been improved in several ways and prints MYART pictures in black and white to a printer with different dot densities assigned to each of the 16 or 256 colors. The result is better than MYART's own printer dump. The new HARDCOPY is still very confusing to set up and use, and the revised HARDCOPY doc is difficult to understand although most of the information is there. I printed a 4 foot tall MYART picture with HARDCOPY by printing 30 pixel wide vertical strips of the picture on fanfold paper and taping the strips together. This required 24 hours of printer time!! XHi's author suggests that you might want to use HARDCOPY to make wall paper for your room. A $15 commercial program for the 99/4A allows you to print gigantic posters from TI Artist instances. This should give you some indication of the monitary value of HARDCOPY. SETTING UP HARDCOPY PRINTER DEFAULTS--^^There are now two preconfigured printer defaults available in the v3.41 HCSETUP program. The Epson FX85 defaults should work with STAR NX printers, and possible all STAR N series printers (NL etc). The SG10 defaults work with the STAR SG10 (in STAR mode) and with the Gemini 10X. The following comments apply to those who must set up their own printer defaults using HCSETUP. For those of you using the original HARDCOPY that came with XHi v3.2, I will list here the FX85 and SG10 printer defaults. -The prompt requesting high res graphic mode works best with with the code for quadruple density graphics followed by an upper case L, a space, and an upper case H. The correct responses to this prompt are 27^122^L^H for the SG10 and 27^42^3^L^H for the Epson FX85. -The prompts for a carraige return followed by 23/216 or 1/216 inch line feed require the code for a "one time only" n/216 line feed. If the printer's minimum line feed is greater than 1/216 inch, than an approximation of 23/216 needs to be made. On the SG10, this would be the code for 15/144 inch line feed. For the 23/216 line feed prompt the response for the SG10 is 13^27^74^15 and for the FX85 it is 13^27^74^23. For the 1/216 line feed prompt input for both the SG10 and FX85 is 13^27^74^1. -For the "backspace" prompt the SG10 uses 8 and the FX85 uses 27^106^24. You can now boot HARDCOPY as EA5 or from its own Xbasic HCLOAD program. Even those who are using a 99/4A that does not have a 9938 video chip (no AVPC card or Mechatronics 80 column peripheral) can use HARDCOPY to print MYART graphics. Unfortunately the screen display is slightly distorted on such a "no 9938 chip" 99/4A system, so data input is more or less blind. Since the screen display is only slightly distorted, I expect the XHi author should have little trouble creating a HARDCOPY that works ok on "ordinary" 99/4A systems. When first booted, you are prompted for the MYART file name. You can now have trailing spaces to the left of the cursor after this name without causing an I/O error. Type the file name, complete with drive number, and press . After entering the picture file name, HARDCOPY displays the number of colors it thinks are possible in the picture, 16 for G6 mode and 256 for G7 mode. Press to move on. If the initial test printout looks totally black, like a black cat in a coal bin, HARDCOPY probably guessed wrong about G6 or G7 mode. Try restarting HARDCOPY and when the number of colors appears (either 16 or 256) press "1" or "2" to change to the alternate number of colors and then press . Now you see the two boxes and are given the opportunity to change the printer dot density of any colors you wish. Usually this is an exercise in frustration and you should just press to go to the main menu. The box on the left shows a color and the box on the right shows the dot density. The first number immediately below the color box is the color number (0-15 for G6 graphics, and 0-255 for G7 grpahics). The three digit number immediately under the color number shows the red, green, and blue intensities of the displayed color. Each of these RGB color numbers can be from 0-7. A 7^7^7 is black. If you want to see the various colors you can cycle through them with the up/down arrow keys (FCTN/EX). You can also directly display a color by pressing any letter key, then type the color number (0-15 or 0-255), then . When a color is displayed its dot density can be altered by using the left/right arrow keys (FCTN/SD) or by typing numbers, and then pressing . Pressing a second time immediately after ing a dot density leaves the dot density alteration part of HARDCOPY and goes to the main menu. At the bottom of the screen display it says "First color" followed by a number. The XHi author suggests that this is probably the background color and that changing this color number to a minimum or zero dot density will improve the printout by making the foreground easier to see. I have almost always found that lightening the density of this "First color" has little effect on the final printout of the picture. If you want to save your altered set of color dot densities, or to load a previously created custom set of color dot densities this can be done with options "5" and "6" of the main menu. Pressing "2" in the main menu allows you to enlarge the printout H(orizontally) and V(ertically) as much as 999 times larger than the minimum size. A small cursor appears below where you are entering data. First type the horizontal enlargement (1-999) and then press . Just pressing uses the already displayed number as the default. Next type the Vertical enlargement (1-999) and press . Next set the S(tretch) flag by pressing "1" (extra picture elongation horizontally) or "0" (no extra picture stretching beyond what you just set with the H and V prompts). G7 pictures (256 colors) usually benefit from setting the S flag to "1". You are now back to the main selection menu. Pressing "3" from the main menu allows you to crop the printout and only print part of a picture. Again, a little cursor appears immediately beneath where input is expected. To enter data type a number and press to move on to the next input area. Just pressing at any input field accepts the already displayed number as the default. "H" and "V" are the horizontal and vertical coordinates of the lower left corner of where you want the printout to begin. 0,0 are the lower left coordinates of the original picture. "H" left to right is 0-512 for 16 color pictures and 0-255 for 256 color pictures. "V" from bottom to top is 0-211 for both kinds of pictures. "dH" and "dV" designate the size in pixels of the rectangular part of the picture to be printed horizontally and vertically from the just designated starting coordinates. If your picture is set up to print off the right edge of the paper this causes no problems. After configuring "2" and "3" from the main menu, as described above, you are now ready to press "4" and start printing the picture. Any printer output directed off the right side of the paper is ignored and printing of the next line proceeds correctly. Small pictures only take a few seconds to print. Very large pictures may take hours. I printed my 4 foot tall G6 picture by setting H and V magnification to 35 with option "2" of the main menu. I then printed strips of the picture by advancing the H(orizontal) starting coordinate 30 pixels with each new strip and leaving the V(ertical) starting coordinate always set for 0. I did this by changing "H" (and only the "H") of option "3" from the main menu to 0, 30, 60, 90, 120, etc every time I printed a new strip. I hope you find these HARDCOPY operating instructions an improvement on the original HARDCOPY doc. I think HARDCOPY has alot of potential and by itself is worthy of a fairware dontaion to the XHi author. .PL 1