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Subject:Re: Screen dumps into online help From:Tim Altom <taltom -at- IQUEST -dot- NET> Date:Wed, 2 Jul 1997 06:57:52 -0500
At 12:55 PM 7/2/97 +1200, you wrote:
>Can anyone tell me how to get screen dumps from FrameMaker
>into a reasonable viewable size for a RoboHelp online
>document? (Using FrameMaker 4 and RoboHelp 3).
>
>
>
>Katherine
>
Depends on what you're using to capture the screen. If you're just copying
the screen to the clipboard and dumping it, you can resize it in
Word/RoboHelp if you place the graphic in the topic, instead of just
referencing it. However, it'll be a bitmap form of a WMF and every reduction
forces the system to kick out more bits to gain the reduction. While this
works tolerably well going down, it makes serious jaggies going up. Note
that, again, this only works with direct placement, not with reference. If
you're referencing to save space, the graphic will always appear at 100%.
The problem with most screen caps is that they're almost always snapped as,
and remain, bitmaps instead of descriptives or vectors. Even a screen cap
saved as a WMF or EPS will usually be embedded in the graphic file as a
bitmap...ones and zeroes. That's why most people take the screen cap as a
whole, then clip the part they want at the moment. Unless you really need a
total screen dump, which is not only hard on the user but wasteful of
storage space, you might want to take the cap, then carve out the dialog box
or button you really need. This will require an intermediate step in HiJaak
or some such, of course, and that increases time and complexity.
Tim Altom
Vice President, Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882 (voice) 317.899.5987 (fax)
FrameMaker support ForeHelp support
FrameMaker-to-HTML Conversions
HTML Help Consulting and Production
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