* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Grabbit (tm) Version 1.0 * * Copyright 1990 by RSE Inc * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *** Welcome! *** Grabbit (as in "GRoger GRabbit") is a simple program that lets you grab ASCII characters off your screen and send them to your printer to print envelopes, labels, or partial screen dumps. In addition, you can store the captured characters in a buffer and insert them into your application whenever you press the insert "hot key". This lets you easily exchange data between different programs. Grabbit is copyrighted by RSE Inc. There is no charge for the program. It's a freebie. We're asking you to freely distribute unmodified copies of the GRAB.EXE file to anyone you can think of, as long as you don't charge for the copies. Why are we giving it away for nothing? Because we hope it will make you want to take a look at our other products. *** Our other products *** We have a disk full of user-supported shareware we've written. The "Sampler" disk includes at least the following programs: * PC-Directory: professional file manager A powerful file manager for the power-user. Attach 160 character "pop-up" FileNotes to your filenames. One touch functions to view files, rename, change directories, tag copy, tag delete, tag move, find file, find text, find FileNote, change file/directory attributes, tree listing of directories, change drives, print files, and much more. Very fast. TSR (33K) and non-TSR versions included. If you like your utilities to get in, quickly do what you want (with a minimum of fuss) and exit cleanly - this is your file manager. * PC-FileNotes: attach pop-up notes to your filenames Attach 160 character "pop-up" FileNotes to your filenames. Activate PC-FN at any time - a sorted directory instantly appears. Hi-lite the desired file-its FileNote "pops-up". Leave memos to yourself and others on the contents or status of your files. One- touch "menu" functions for viewing, deleting, renaming, tag copying files, changing drives and directories. Extremely easy to learn and use. TSR and Non-TSR versions included. * PC-IMAGES: create pop-up slide shows Create self-running "pop-up" slides shows from captured screen images. "Fred" captures the images, "Wilma" helps you group them into Carousels -which can also be used as "screen-savers"; popping up after a period of keyboard inactivity, or at your command. You can also have DOS display one of your pictures whenever a program ends, instead of the blank DOS screen. Also create stand-alone slide shows. Its a great way to personalize your computer. * Remind Me!: never again forget an important event Reminds you of the important events in your life BEFORE they actually occur, so you can prepare for them. Great way to keep track of birthdays, holidays, paydays, when bills are due, business meetings, anything that you need to be reminded of in advance. Comes with a calendar that displays any date in any year. Easy to learn and use. You'll never forget an important event again. * Conjecture: great fun for all ages Conjecture is similar to a very popular TV game show. You spin wheels guess letters and try to solve puzzles. The graphics are excellent. There is a mode for playing solo, or with up to four other players. Conjecture was sold nationwide thru major software retailers at $24.95 and is now being released as user-supported shareware. Comes with plenty of puzzles. You can customize the game, and registered users can even create their own Puzzle files. We'd love to send you our Shareware Sampler disk with all these programs on it. Just send $5 to: * * RSE Shareware Disk Visa and Mastercard * * * 1157 57th Drive SE (206) 939-4105 * * * Auburn, WA 98002 Compuserve: 72371,1557 * * We also offer several products for pilots. A brief summary of each follows: * PERFORM - Aerodynamic performance software for sport aircraft designers. $50 PERFORM was written to aid the sport aircraft designer in the development of his design. Its forte is doing trade-off studies. You can change one or more aspects of your design and PERFORM will calculate the effect these changes have on performance. It can create tables, or even better yet, graph the results. There are 26 variables you can change and 41 performance values you can monitor. PERFORM also includes a weight and balance program. If you're thinking about designing an aircraft, PERFORM will pay for itself within the first 5 minutes. * The FltGuide EX Pocket Flight Planning Computer $249 The FltGuide EX is simply the best pocket flight planning computer you can buy for less than $500. It has all your E-6b functions plus direct navigation calculations that enable you to fly direct with no more than a single VOR. If you have a Loran it makes a great backup. If you fly R-Nav it will instantly generate waypoints for your direct flights. In addition to direct navigation it also has Rhumb line calculations, a flight planner, vertical navigation, a Data Bank, storage for 250 waypoints in memory (with identifier recall), conversions, and much more. The FltGuide EX also has automated weight and balance with CG check, zero fuel weight calculations, %MAC, and other advanced features - customized for your aircraft. You can store multiple aircraft in memory and recall them by name when you want to do a Wt&Bal. Because you're prompted for all inputs, the FltGuide EX is easy to learn and use and easily fits in your shirt pocket. * The LM-1 Pocket Weight and Balance Computer $159 The LM-1 is a derivative of the weight and balance program in the FltGuide EX. It's primarily designed for part 135 and part 91 pilots who want to automate their weight and balance calculations. It has many advanced features including ramp, take-off and landing weight and CG check, zero fuel weight calculations (and CG check), automatic variable arm calculations, %MAC, and much more. In short it's everything you need to complete your FAA weight and balance manifest in seconds. And because it easily fits in your shirt pocket, it's always there when you need it. Each of our aviation products has a money back guarantee. If for any reason you're not completely satisfied just return it in original condition within 30 days for a complete refund. No pressure. Absolutely no hassle. Like more information on any of our aviation products? Send a self addressed stamped envelope to the product name you're interested in, care of the address listed above. We'll rush you a brochure. If you'd like to place an order with Visa or Mastercard then call the number above and we'll rush you your order. If you're a professional pilot, we've got an offer you can't refuse. Just send us your business card with an address and phone number on it and we'll send you any of our aviation products for a free evaluation. After you've had it for two weeks I'll give you a call. If you like it, great, we'll bill you. If you don't, just return it in original condition and I'll thank you for your time. No strings attached. *** Grabbit Instructions *** Well, now that I've tried to sell you everything but the kitchen sink, I suppose it's time to tell you how to use Grabbit. Grabbit is a small TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) program. You load it once at the beginning of a session and it stays hidden until you press its "hot key". Then it goes to work. When you're done with it, your original program continues as tho nothing had happened. When I said it was a small program, I meant small. It only takes up about 1.6K of memory, plus whatever you allocate for the insert buffer (more on that later). To keep it tiny I left out some of the niceties you'll find in our other programs. Things like pop-up windows and menus. But because the program is so simple, you won't need them. ** To load Grabbit into memory ** -- Go to the disk or subdirectory where GRAB.COM is and enter GRAB at the DOS prompt. You'll notice the information displayed when Grabbit is loaded contains a menu of all the keys you'll use to operate it. If you're familiar with TSR's you could probably just use this information to figure out how things work. However, there are a few things you might miss if you don't read these instructions, so please continue on. ** Activating Grabbit ** You activate Grabbit by pressing its "hot key". The default is Ctrl- G (press the Ctrl and the G key at the same time), but you can change the "hot key" by using the Configuration program. We'll discuss the Configuration program later. -- Activate Grabbit by pressing Ctrl-G Hear those two low beeps. They're letting you know Grabbit's ready. In text modes Grabbit also makes the cursor bigger when it's activated. In graphic modes Grabbit draws its own little cursor. The cursor may or may not be located at the same place as the cursor being used in your application. If you can't find Grabbit's cursor, check the upper left corner of the screen. ** Escaping ** If you need to exit Grabbit, just press the Escape key. You'll hear one low beep indicating that Grabbit has finished. Your cursor will be restored to its original size and location. ** Marking your text ** Once you've activated Grabbit you need to tell it what part of the screen you want to capture. First, you mark the upper left corner of the area you want captured. Use the cursor keys (up, down, left, and right arrow keys), Tab, Home (move to start of line) or End (move to last column in line) to move the cursor to the upper left corner of the characters you want to get. Press S (for start). You'll hear an ascending series of beeps letting you know that this is the starting place. -- Mark the upper left corner of the area you want to capture by moving the cursor to that point and pressing S for Start. Now that you've marked the start, it only makes sense to mark the end. This time move the cursor to the end (the lower right corner) of the area you want to capture. The key you press to mark the end depends on what you want to do. Your options are: For printing, press: E to print a regular size envelope B to print on a big envelope L if you want to print a label, or just send the text to the printer unformatted. To store in the Insert buffer, press: I to capture the text as is Space Bar to capture the text, removing carriage returns and multiple spaces ** A Sample ** Load Grabbit into memory (if you haven't already) by entering "grab" at the DOS prompt. Let's say you want to order our Sampler Disk so you need to print an envelope to put the $5 in. Activate Grabbit by pressing Ctrl-G. Move the cursor to the upper left corner of the address (the R in RSE) and press S to signal that this is the start of the block. Then move the cursor to the lower right corner of the address (on the zip code line, directly below the E in SE). Turn on your printer, insert an envelope, and press E (for Envelope). That's it. Tough huh? ** What Grabbit Grabs ** What Grabbit actually grabs depends on what you ask it to do. If you're sending it to the printer then it grabs all the characters within a box defined by where you press S and where you press E, B, or L. However, if you are putting it into the Insert buffer then Grabbit grabs from S to the end of the line, and all of the lines down to where you press I or the Space Bar. Envelopes and labels grab like this: S............ ............. ............E The Insert buffer grabs like this: S.............................................................. ................................................................................ .............................I If you press I, the Insert buffer grabs the block as it is, with carriage returns and multiple spaces intact. However, if you press the Space Bar the insert buffer strips out carriage returns and multiple spaces. Grabbit uses a BIOS call (a built-in function of your computer) to grab the characters off the screen. In text mode it recovers everything (although Grabbit doesn't capture the color of the characters). In graphics modes it really depends on what your application is doing. Programs like desktop publishers which use a WYSIWYG display aren't going to capture anything. On the other hand, there are many other applications that do fine. As a general rule, if your screen is showing more than one typestyle, or more than one size of type, then you're probably not going to be able to grab anything. The only way to know is to try. If it works, it works. (I went to college so I could write like this?....) ** Printing ** The only difference between pressing E, B, or L is how many spaces the printer moves over before it starts printing and how many lines it scrolls after it's done. The table below shows the default values. You can change these using the infamous configuration program we'll discuss later. 06 # of lines for label FormFeed envelope FormFeed big envelope 0 Tab spaces for label 40 envelope 50 big envelope "# of lines" needs some explaining. When Grabbit finishes printing what you captured, it continues scrolling until it reaches a multiple of the "# of lines" value. For example (using the values above), if you printed a label and the area you captured was 4 lines long, then Grabbit would scoll another two lines after it was done printing, for a total of 6 lines. If the captured area had been 8 lines long, then it would've scrolled 4 lines upon completion. If you set the "# of lines" to "FormFeed" then Grabbit sends a form feed to the printer when it's done. This normally causes the printer to scroll to the end of a normal 11 inch long page. ** What's that obnoxious noise? ** If you try to print something and you hear a continuing series of low notes that sound like they're pronouncing impending doom, Grabbit's telling you it can't send the material to the printer. It continues making this noise until the problem is fixed or you press a key. Usually someone forgot to turn the printer on. If that someone tries turning on the printer, things will probably work just fine. If it's not the power, then check if the printer has paper. ** Partial Screen Prints ** The normal DOS print screen function works fine if you want to print the entire screen. But what if you only want to print out part of the screen? No sweat. Just use Grabbit, and print a Label. If you find yourself doing partial screen prints a lot (it's addicting) and you hardly ever use Grabbit to print real labels then you might want to use the Configuration program to change the "# of lines for labels" to "LineFeed". That way when you do a partial screen print using Grabbit, the printer will scroll to the end of the page after it's done. ** Inserting text ** When you press I or the Space Bar, Grabbit stores what it grabs into the Insert buffer. You can adjust the size of the buffer from 512 bytes to 3072 bytes by using the configuration program. Unless you plan on capturing entire screens, 1024 bytes (1K, the default value) should probably be enough. Grabbit only grabs as much as the buffer holds, even if you try to grab more. Once you've grabbed something and put it into the Insert buffer, it stays there waiting for you to press the Insert "hot key" (Ctrl-I by default). When you press the Insert "hot key" Grabbit waits until the program you're using goes looking for an input from the keyboard. Grabbit then jumps in and gives your program what is in the Insert buffer instead. The effect is the same as if you were typing the "grabbed" stuff in yourself. This can be really handy. The most obvious use is to copy data from one application to another. For example, the letter you wrote Bob last week has a paragraph in it you want to put in Freds letter. You bring up Bob's letter, capture the paragraph using Grabbit, and then edit Fred's letter. Move to where you want to place the paragraph and press the Insert "hot key". The paragraph will be inserted as though you were typing it in anew. You could have just as easily entered the paragraph into your spreadsheet program, data base, or desktop publisher. Let's say you want to write an instruction manual and you want to insert part of directory listing. Since format is important here, you'd grab the directory listing using I instead of the Space Bar. Remember, pressing "I" leaves all multiple spaces and carriage returns intact, the Space Bar strips them out. So if you want to retain the general format of what you are capturing, press "I". In all other cases press the Space Bar. You can also use this feature as a keystroke expander. For example, you're writing a letter and there's a particular word or phrase that occurs over and over again. Use Grabbit to capture it and then use the Insert "hot key" to type it in whenever you need it. ** The Configuration program ** We've mentioned several items that you can change using the configuration program. Here's how: -- Make sure GRAB.COM and CONFIG.COM are on the same disk or in the same subdirectory. -- Enter "config" at the DOS prompt -- A list will appear of the items you can change, and their current values. -- Press the up and down arrow keys to select the item you want to change. -- Press the left and right arrow keys to change the value of the selected item. To change a "hot key" you first select the shift state of that hot key and select either Ctrl, Alt, or Ctrl-Alt. Then select the item below it, press the right arrow key, and then press the key that goes with the shift state. For example to change the Insert "hot key" to "Alt-F10" you'd first select the Insert Shift State, press the right arrow key until "Alt" appears, move down one line, press the right arrow key once, and then press the F10 key. When you're done press the Escape key and the new values will be inserted into Grabbit. If Grabbit is currently in memory then you'll have to reboot and reload it to notice the changes. ** See ya around ** Well, that's about it. Hope you enjoy Grabbit enough to take a look at our other products. Take care.