As of A-Shell / Windows Build 771, you can perform basic display and print operations on BMP, JPG, TIF and PCX format images. Display operations are handled by AUI_IMAGE, while printing operations are handled by the IMAGE embedded print file. TWAIN ACQUIRE (i.e. scanning or other image input) is also supported in IMAGExs.
Aside from the documentation for IMAGExs and //IMAGE, you will find the sample program image.bp in SOSLIB:[908,32] and four sample image files (sample.jpg, sample.pcx, sample.tif, sample.bmp). There is also a sample GDI print file, image.txt, which prints a couple of the sample images. The image.bp program prompts you for opcodes, filenames, and other parameters needed by the IMAGE routine, allowing you to experiment with the various parameters. It also demonstrates one way to implement the ability to temporarily maximize the image via a function key, menu prompt, or mouse click.
If you don’t have the sample programs, you can install just them from the standard A-Shell / Windows release package by selecting the Custom install method.
IMAGExs and the //IMAGE printing function are implemented with the help of an external library, vic32.dll, which due to licensing restrictions, is not included in the standard release of A-Shell. However, the licensing fee is rather nominal and activating the library can be accomplished without having to update the A-Shell executable. Contact MicroSabio for details on obtaining and distributing the library.
Unisys Corp holds a patent on the LZW compression type used in nearly all GIF files found on the web. Although the imaging library we are using supports LZW decompression, it is not enabled until you obtain some kind of "certificate" from Unisys indicating that you have paid their license fee. In the absence of that, we suggest you stick with uncompressed images or other compression types (such as JPEG for color images and G3/G4 TIFF for bi-level document images.)
