PCX Toolkit

Continued from Page 6.

rather than the PC Paintbrush

family of fonts. Of course, a

conversion utility is included so

that the user can go either way,

but the library functions use the

GEM format. This seems odd

because all three packages

emphasize PC Paintbrush com-

patibility and because of the .pcx

emphasis.

One utility program which draws

special attention is the txEdit

stand-alone. This program allows

the editing or creation of a PC

Paintbrush type font. Unfortu-

nately, it is limited to 16x16 pix-

els and is not meant for anything

elaborate, as the documentation

states. That is too bad because it

means you must purchase yet

another program such as Zsoft’s

Publishers Type Foundary.

Then, these have to be con-

verted anyway to the GEM

format for use in display only en-

vironment. Sound like a lot of

pain for small gain?

PCXeffects:

PCXeffects provides quality

display effects such as wiping,

sliding and exploding of images.

It also has some very interesting

effects such as sand and drip

where the image is built up

slowly from top or bottom (like

sand or dripping paint). This

package also has a CUT utility to

define an area of an image and

save it to another file.

The package also contains music

(a Ia Basic) functions and a

utility which can be fun even

with our little PC speakers. Most

importantly, however, the

libraries require the PCX

Toolkit in order to be util-

ized(!?) Naturally, the three

stand-alone utilities work fine,

but is that cause to segregate this

package?

PCX Toolkit

The heart of these companion

programs and libraries is, of

course, the Programmers

Toolkit. With the utility pro-

grams as inspiration and the

companion libraries you can put

together a heck of a graphics

demo or training session. Of

particular interest in this pack-

age are the PCXcut, PCXtrans

and PCXgrab utilities. These

utilities allow the user to capture

any screen, text or graphics, cut

out portions of interest into

smaller files, then translate them

back into text for document

inclusion, if so desired, or leave

them in .pcx format for use in

publishing programs, such as

Pagemaker. These can be

extremely useful functions in

manual preparation, for ex-

ample, where portions of screens

need to be reproduced and

merged into text.

The PCXIib utility is also very

useful as it allows the creation

and management of image

libraries. With the use of this

utility, an entire slide show can

be kept in one file which, if

properly managed, should help

keep the many incompatible

video mode headaches under

control. If you do assume the

ugly prospect of distributing your

graphics images to end users whc

use the whole array of graphics

adaptors known to man, then a

library of the same images with

the same names, but formatted

by mode type, could be built.

You would, then, avoid the

potential disaster of sending a

Hercules image out to an EGA

user.

As of this writing, the only

printer support is for the Hewl-

ett Packard LaserJet Series II.

Dot matrix support is projected

for a future release, but will no

doubt be the Epson/IBM driver

only.

Conclusion

These programs and library

functions are nifty. I like what I

can do with them and already

have some ideas I’m anxious to

try out. However, compared to

other libraries they seem very

pricey. There is some obvious

and very useful capability here if

you’re willing to plow through

the three manuals and multiple

libraries. But, to buy all three

with source code, you rack up a

grand total of $1097.00!! Even

with the meager member dis-

count of 10% this is big time

spending for some nice library

functions.

There is not space nor time here

to cover all the functions avail-

able in these libraries. I have hit

the high and lowlights and can

safely say that graphics oriented

programmers will find them

essential after an initial expo-

sure. No software has it all; but a

keyboard interactive, font

supported graphics mode would

really add meat to the table for

the group.

I implore the folks at Genus to

combine these three into one,

simple, easy to use library and

associated utilities (which could

easily be reduced in number due

to the redundancy of the pack-

ages). Charge a reasonable price,

and still sell more!

The Newsletter of the Dbase Language Professional Developers Group, October 1990

Page 7