Category : Printer + Display Graphics
Archive   : GRABB396.ZIP
Filename : WHATSNEW.396

WHAT'S NEW IN GRABBER(tm) VERSION 3.96
---------------------------------------

Here are some of the more significant additions and improvements in
Version 3.96 of GRABBER, a shareware release. Corresponding changes
have been made to the registered release.

* GRABBER.EXE -- Several bugs have been fixed which affected many
systems that are compatible with the VESA video
BIOS extension. In particular, users with ATI, Paradise and
Western Digital video adapters should notice improvements in
capturing high-resolution Super-VGA graphics images.

* GRABBER.EXE -- A bug affecting EGA systems has been fixed. The
bug arose in V3.95 and made it impossible to
capture the standard EGA 16-color graphics modes on a system which
was not VGA-compatible.

* GRABBER.EXE -- A new command-line option called VGAREGS2 has
been added. This enables GRABBER to correctly
capture screens from the growing number of arcade-style games
using certain advanced animation techniques for smoother perform-
ance, such as Wolfenstein 3-D, PGA Golf, and many others. See
GRABBER.DOC for more information. A new section has also been
added to GRABBER.DOC which contains helpful tips for capturing
screens from games and other animated programs generally.



WHAT'S NEW IN GRABBER(tm) VERSION 3.95
---------------------------------------

* GR4AI.EXE, GRAI2PCX.EXE and GRAI2GIF.EXE -- These utilities are
new with this
release. GR4AI is a special version of GRABBER which is designed
exclusively for capturing high-resolution graphics from adapters
that are compatible with the 8514/A Adapter Interface. GRAI2PCX
and GRAI2GIF are companion utilities for GR4AI, which convert the
captured 8514/A graphics to the PCX and GIF file formats. All
three of these programs require an Adapter Interface (AI) driver
that is compatible with IBM's HDILOAD.EXE.

* GRAI2PCX.EXE and GRAI2GIF.EXE -- There are actually two different
"flavors" of the Version 3.95
shareware GRABBER package floating around in shareware channels.
This one is the more current, up-to-date package of V3.95, with
the GRAI2PCX.EXE and GRAI2GIF.EXE files dated 12/04/92. In the
older V3.95 package, these two files are dated 11/26/92. If you
find a copy of the older package, please delete it and replace it
with this one. The 11/26/92 versions of these two programs don't
work at all because of a simple but profound bug which causes them
to always abort with the message, "Input file was not created by
GR4AI.EXE", even if it was. The 12/04/92 versions of these
programs are fixed and *do* work, and are the ones which were
supposed to go out with the V3.95 package. Apologies for my
stupid office mixup; if I could fire myself, I would.

* GRABBER.EXE -- Super-VGA users now need to configure GRABBER
by telling it which type of Super-VGA chipset is
installed on the adapter. GRABBER does not try to guess which
type of chipset is present. A similar configuration choice must
also be made when "replaying" a high-resolution Super-VGA graphic
offspring image. Configuration should not be necessary, however,
for adapters which are fully VESA-compliant. See pages 13 and 31
in GRABBER.DOC.

* GRABBER.EXE -- Several small bugs have been fixed, including one
which resulted in offspring text images that
blink on and off if they were captured from an application which
uses high-intensity background colors for text, such as the Norton
Utilities Version 6.

* GRABBER.EXE OFFSPRING IMAGES -- All offspring .exe images now
support "fade-in" and "fade-out"
options when being "replayed" on VGA-compatible adapters, which
can help improve appearances in slide shows. All offspring images
also provide quick on-screen help through a new /? command-line
switch. Also, high-resolution Super-VGA graphic offspring can now
be replayed on any adapter which supports the 8514/A Adapter
Interface.



WHAT'S NEW IN GRABBER(tm) VERSION 3.94
---------------------------------------

* GREDIT.EXE, GR2ASCII.EXE and GR2ANSI.EXE -- These utilities
are being released
as part of the unregistered GRABBER package for the first time
with Version 3.94. GREDIT is a text-only screen editor and has
its own documentation file. GR2ASCII and GR2ANSI are command-line
utilities which convert captured text screens to plain ASCII and
ANSI graphics formats, respectively. They are documented in
the CONVERT.DOC file.


* GRABBER.EXE and GRTXT.EXE -- In both of these programs, the
old command-line configuration
options have been changed from cryptic "slash-somethingorother"
switches to more or less plain English words. For example,
/M+ and /M- have been changed to MOUSE and NOMOUSE, respectively,
and /U has been changed to UNLOAD. The new vocabulary is listed
in the revised .DOC files for these programs.


* GRABBER.EXE and GRTXT.EXE -- In both programs, it is now
possible to define a hotkey which
consists only of a combination of shift keys, i.e. ,
and the keys. This may allow GRABBER and GRTXT to capture
screens from some foreground applications which commandeer the
keyboard hardware almost (but not quite) entirely. Experiment.


* GR2PCX.EXE and GR2GIF.EXE -- Corrected a serious bug which
had crept into the previous
revision (October 1991) of these utilities. The bug caused a
system crash when these programs were used to convert a super-VGA
graphic image on a system which does not have VESA BIOS compat-
ibility. Some users assumed that the shareware issue of GRABBER
was not intended to be able to handle super-VGA conversions, but
this is not so. It is, and (now, finally) does.



WHAT'S NEW IN GRABBER(tm) VERSION 3.93
---------------------------------------

* GRABBER.EXE -- A new command-line option switch, /L, has been
added. VGA users who get garbled screen captures
from certain types of graphics applications, notably animated
games such as "Commander Keen," "Crystal Caves" and others, should
experiment with the /L+ switch when installing GRABBER in memory.
This enables GRABBER to make a more intelligent guess as to the
video memory scheme being employed by the foreground program.
It will work on many VGAs, but not all. If /L+ does not solve the
problem, or creates a new one by causing super-VGA captures to
become scrambled too, it should be disabled by entering the
command: GRABBER /L-. [NOTE: /L+ and /L- were changed to
VGAREGS and NOVGAREGS, respectively, in Version 3.94.]


* GRABBER.EXE -- New techniques have been employed which should
result in more reliable screen captures for users
of Microsoft's Flight Simulator, Version 4.X, and any other
animated graphics applications which work similarly. It appears
that Flight Simulator attempts to continue manipulating the
EGA/VGA hardware registers in the background after GRABBER has
been popped-up by the user, causing a variety of undesirable
results. V3.93 corrects this by shutting off Flight Simulator's
background activities entirely for the duration of the screen
capture operation.