Index
Index To Program MapNames

GENERAL

Placing the cursor on any point in the display and clicking the left mouse button will cause the globe to rotate to place the selected point in the center of the display.

New displays may take up to a full minute on 486DX-33MHz machines; use of the program with slower machines is NOT recommended.

COMMANDS

Names

Show

Hide

GoTo...

Zoom

Image

Print

As File

EXIT: Terminates the program.


Names

The Names menu selection presents a sub-menu allowing you to choose to Show or Hide


Show names

Choosing Show on the Names sub-menu causes the program to load the file containing names of countries, seas, islands, and capital cities. If no Zoom is in effect when the selection is made, Zoom will be set to 2 to allow enough space for display of the names.

Names are only displayed when the Zoom is sufficient to allow the names to show without obscuring the map. In general, the names of countries are displayed at Zoom=2, and names of capital cities are displayed at Zoom=4. Many of the smaller countries, or those with long names, require a larger Zoom to make space for the names.

If the name that you are looking for is not shown, you may try Zooming in more, or, better, you may use the GoTo... command to choose the desired name.

Names will continue to be displayed until the Hide sub-menu selection is made.


Hide names

Choosing Hide on the Names sub-menu causes the program to display the map without names. The display is unchanged in other respects.


GoTo...

Selecting GoTo... from the menu produces a dialog with a list of all available country, sea, island, and capital city names. Selecting a name and clicking on OK will result in the program displaying a map with the selected place in the center of the screen with Zoom set at a high enough level for the name to show.

The list of names may be scrolled, or, if you enter a letter, the list will automatically scroll to that part of the alphabet.

Names will continue to be shown until Hide is selected.


Zoom

The Zoom command increases (2X and 4X), or decreases (1/2X and 1/4X) the magnification of the map. A maximum of a magnification of 32 is possible. The lowest magnification, 1, shows the global display. Many names cannot be displayed at low magnification without obscuring map features. If the name that you are looking for is not displayed, try increasing the Zoom. If that fails, use the GoTo... menu selection.


Image

The Image menu selection will cause display of a sub-menu allowing you to either Print the display or, with the AsFile selection, save it as a standard Windows Bitmap File that may be viewed and manipulated by Windows Paintbrush or any other Windows utility capable of reading files with the .bmp extension.


Print

A printer configuration dialog, allowing you to select the printer and its variables, will be presented to you before printing actually begins.

If your printer can handle color, angled text, and polygon draws, the program will draw directly to the printer. Otherwise, a bitmap drawing will be prepared and passed to the printer. If your printer cannot handle bitmaps larger than 64K, you will not be able to print the displays at all.

The bitmaps produced are quite large. It may be necessary for you to choose a lower than maximum printer resolution (say 150 dpi) if your printer cannot handle bitmaps approaching 1 Mbyte in size.


As File

Choosing As File... from the Images sub-menu will cause presentation of a dialog box in which you must enter the file name to which the bitmap will be written. If you enter a name with no path, the file will be in the same directory as PLACES.EXE. If you wish the file to be in another directory, enter the full path name.

If you enter a file extension, it MUST be .bmp; if you omit the extension, the program will add it.

The bitmap file is in Windows 3.0 bitmap format. It may be viewed and handled by Windows Paintbrush and by many other graphics utility viewers.