Laser Labels Disk Labelling Program Unregistered Version 1.0 Users Manual June 28th, 1991 (C) Copyright 1991 by David J. Evers All Rights Reserved Introduction Laser Labels is a program written out of necessity. I find that I seldom label my diskettes when I create them; and even when I do, the hand-written labels are usually less than desirable. Being fortunate enough to have a laser printer at work, I wanted to be able to print out good looking disk labels on demand. Unfortunately, no disk labeling utility I found seemed to be what I was looking for. Either they were designed with dot matrix printers in mind, or they were too limited. And, being a recent convert to Windows 3.0, I wanted to be able to have a true WinApp at my disposal to create a label whenever I felt like it. Windows programming being what it is (or at least has been), I was far from being able to create the kind of program I wanted. Fortunately, however, Microsoft released Visual Basic; which brought Windows programming down to my level. Laser Labels, as I had visualized it (no pun intended), was a perfect test of the capabilities of Visual Basic; and aside from a few minor annoyances, I was able to create a working program in about 100 hours of serious effort. My guess is that it would have taken at least 10 times that to have done it in the traditional C and SDK Windows programming methodology. Anyway, Laser Labels is a program designed to create labels on a laser printer. Actually, due to the way Windows handles its printing, it is possible to use virtually any printer; since the page is composed in memory and then printed full page just as a laser printer does internally. However, alignment, speed and font issues limit the results using dot matrix printers to only acceptable quality (see the section "Using Laser Labels with a Dot Matrix Printer" later in this document). Where Laser Labels really shines, however, is on a laser printer such as the Hewlett Packard LaserJet series and compatibles. Laser Labels uses single sheet labels specifically sized for diskette use. These labels are manufactured by Avery, and are available at most office supply locations and computer stores (I bought mine at Egghead Software). These labels come in two styles: #5196 for 3-12" disks, and #5197 for 5- 1/4" disks. These are single sheet labels specially designed for use in laser printers and on floppy disks. Single sheet label printing has its own set of problems. Often, you don't need to print a full sheet of labels. Many times, you want only one or two. Laser Labels makes it easy to print any number of labels due to its visual orientation. If you want to print on the first label, simply click on that label in Laser Labels' screen. Only need 3 labels? No problem! Simply print out the labels you need, then store the sheet for future use. Laser Labels lets you pick where you are going to print. I find my labelling requirements fall into two categories: custom labels and directory labels. If I am labelling disks such as a backup set, I want to be able to specify what text is to go on the label. But if I am just trying to catalog the files stored on a disk, I want to have as many of the filenames on the disk as possible displayed on the label; so that I can hunt down that file I moved off my hard disk to recover the space. Laser Labels supports both kinds of labels; even on the same sheet! One of the main benefits of laser printers is the high quality fonts they provide. Laser Labels allows you to use all the fonts your printer (and the Windows printer driver) supports. You can select a different font, size and style for the Disk Title and for the Label Text; including boldface and italics. Virtually any font you can use with Windows can be used for your disk labels. Legalities Laser Labels is a Shareware program. This means that it is not free. You are allowed a reasonable period to evaluate Laser Labels to see if it meets your needs. If you continue to use the program after this evaluation period, you are expected to register. Registration offers a number of benefits. First, and foremost, it allows the author to continue to support the program with additions, corrections, and enhancements. Without revenue from registration, the program cannot evolve or become more useful. If you would like to see the program grow, your support in the form of registration will help. With registration, you get the latest version of Laser Labels that offers several enhancements over the Unregistered version. These include the ability to save your configuration preferences such as font sizes and default label styles to disk so that you don't have to setup the program every time you run it; a true cross-referenced Windows help file, and a printed and illustrated users manual. In addition, the registered version skips the welcome screen that prompts you every time you start up the program. The Registered version also has a Multi-User Site License option. If your company has more than 10 users of Laser Labels, you can get substantial discounts on the per-copy program cost. If you anticipate widespread usage, an Unlimited License is also available that will allow you to legally serve as your own distribution center. With the proliferation of laser printers in corporate America, this should be a welcome opportunity. Finally, only registered users will be notified of future upgrades and enhancements to Laser Labels as they become available. Special preferential upgrade pricing for these updates is another benefit of registration. Disclaimer This program and its accompanying documentation are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will the author be liable to you for any damages arising out of the use or inability to use this program and/or its documentation. Prerequisites Laser Labels requires Microsoft Windows version 3.0 or later. Windows must be installed correctly on your system prior to running Laser Labels; including the installation of the appropriate Windows printer driver for your printer. See the documentation for Windows for installation instructions. Laser Labels also requires the presence of a file called VBRUN100.DLL in your Windows directory or in a directory specified in your PATH. The Unregistered version of Laser Labels is distributed in two forms: one with the VBRUN100.DLL file and one without. (The VBRUN100.DLL file is quite large - about 200K - so it was not included in one package to save download time for those who already had it). If you own Microsoft Visual Basic, you already have this file. If not, and the version you obtained did not include the DLL, you can download this file from CompuServe. The VBRUN100.DLL file is located in the Visual Basic section of the MSLANG forum library. The Registered version of Laser Labels includes the VBRUN100.DLL file on the distribution disk. Laser Labels requires the use of Avery #5196 or #5197 Laser Printer Disk Labels. Laser Labels has been customized for use with these specific labels; since I am unaware of any other manufacturers of similar products. (If there are any such manufacturers out there, kindly send me some samples of your labels and I would be happy to add support for them. Several hundred thousand ought to do it (grin)). While Laser Labels is customized for the task of printing disk labels on a laser printer, it is not mandatory to own a laser printer to use Laser Labels. An appropriately installed dot matrix printer may work if you can control the alignment of the Avery sheet labels in the printer; especially the top of the page. This can only be determined by experimentation. See the section "Using Laser Labels with a Dot Matrix Printer" for more information. Installing Laser Labels Laser Labels consists of a single program file: LASERLBL.EXE. This is a Microsoft Windows 3.0 application and must be run from the Windows environment. To facilitate this, follow these steps to install Laser Labels on your system: 1. The Unregistered version of the program is compressed using PKWARE's ZIP program. You must use PKUNZIP version 1.01 or later to decompress the program and any accompanying files. 2. Once you have unzipped the program, copy the LASERLBL.EXE file (and the VBRUN100.DLL file, if included) to your Windows directory. 3. Enter Windows by typing WIN 4. From the Program Manager, select a Program Group where you would like Laser Labels to reside. In a new Windows system, this might be the Accessories group; or if you have a Printing or Utilities group, this might be an appropriate place to install Laser Labels. 5. In the Program Manager File Menu, select New, then Program Item. 6. Type "Laser Labels" as the Program Description, and "LASERLBL.EXE" (proceeded by a path if you did not install Laser Labels in your Windows directory) in the Command Line field. 7. You should now see the Laser Labels icon (a 3.5 inch disk) in your Program group. To start Laser Labels, simply double click on this icon. Using Laser Labels You enter the Laser Labels program by either double clicking on the Laser Labels icon installed earlier, by selecting Run... from the Program Manager File menu and entering "LASERLBL", or by typing "WIN LASERLBL" from the DOS command line. In the Unregistered version, you will be greeted by a Welcome screen that describes Laser Labels and prompts you to register your copy. Click on the OK button to enter Laser Labels. (Note: This Welcome screen is removed from the Registered version of the program). The Laser Labels Screen The majority of Laser Labels work is done from the Main Screen shown below. This screen consists of several sections, which are identified as follows: 1 Menu Bar This area contains selections for About, which describes the program; Help, which provides information on the use of Laser Labels, and Quit, which can be used to exit the program. In the Unregistered version of Laser Labels, and Order menu item also allows the printing of an order form for the Registered version. 2 Label Type Selection This area is used to select the style of labels being used. The radio buttons allow the selection of either Avery #5196 labels for 3-1/2" disks, or Avery #5197 labels for 5-1/4" disks. Selecting one of these choices causes the appropriate representation of the label sheet to appear in the Label Display area. 3 Label Display This area shows a graphic representation of a sheet of the chosen label styles. Clicking on one of the labels in this area selects it to be the target for the printing operation. 4 Drive Select Box This control allows you to select the drive to be used for retrieval of filenames for disk directory labels. 5 Files Display Box This box displays the filenames on the drive selected by the Drive Select Box. These filenames (or as many as will fit) will be printed on the label unless there is text in the Label Text box. 6 Get Files Button This button is used to "refresh" the Files display box when a disk is changed. If you are using the same drive to retrieve filenames for directory labels, press this button after every disk change to read the new disk and display its files. 7 Title Entry Field This field is used to enter a Disk Title to be displayed in the title block of the label. A Disk Title can be used for either a text label or a directory label. This label is "persistent"; that is, it will continue to be printed for every subsequent label until it is either changed or deleted. The font size and style for this field can be chosen from the Printer Setup dialog box. 8 Label Text Entry Field This is a multi-line text input area that is used for entry of custom text for a text label. When any text is entered in this field, the Files display is suppressed and the label will contain only the text shown in this box. When all text is deleted from this field, the Files display is enabled. Laser Labels defaults to directory label mode unless any text is entered here. This field is also "persistent"; that is, any text entered here will continue to be printed on subsequent labels until it is changed or deleted. 9 Clear Label Text Button This button is used to delete all text from the Label Text entry field for either re-entry or to enable directory label printing. 10 Printer Setup Button This button invokes the Printer Setup dialog box which is used for font size and style selection and the entry of X and Y offsets for alignment purposes. 11 Send To Printer Button This button is used to print an individual label. Once the information for the label is obtained, pressing Send to Printer will print only the label selected in the Label Display area. When the label is printed, the selected label is replaced by a disk icon to represent a printed label. 12 Print Button This button is used when all desired labels have been printed for a given sheet. A full sheet does not have to be used prior to using this button. Only the labels you wish to print need to have been sent to the printer. Pressing this button causes the labels to be printed and the sheet ejected from the printer. Selecting A Label Type Laser Labels currently supports only Avery #5196 and #5197 labels. These labels are organized as either 3 rows of 3 labels (#5196) or as 6 rows of 2 labels (#5197). The Label Type Select radio buttons are used to choose which type of labels are to be printed. When a selection is made, the Label Display are is updated to show a graphic representation of the appropriate label sheet, to allow you to visually pick the label you want to print. Selecting a Label To pick a label to be used for printing, simply click on the desired label with the mouse. The label will be highlighted. You must select a label before you can print one; otherwise the program will give you an error message. Directory Labels Laser Labels defaults to Directory Label mode; that is, unless you specify otherwise, the label that is printed will be a list of the files on the selected disk drive as specified by the Drive Select box. On entry, this box will display the "current drive". Often, this will be the hard drive where Windows resides. More than likely, you will want to print a label of the files on a given floppy disk. Therefore, you must select the drive to use with this control. Pressing the drop-down button on the Drive Select box will present you with a list of the available disk drives for your system. When you select a drive, the disk in that drive will be read and its files listed in the Files Display box. If no disk is in the drive when you select it, an error will be generated and displayed in a message box. Once the correct disk has been read, you may elect to have a Disk Title printed on the label with the filename list. This is done by entering the desired title in the Title field. The maximum number of characters that can be displayed on the label depends on the font style and size selected for the Disk Title. You may want to experiment with different fonts and styles by printing sample labels on plain paper to determine how many characters can be successfully printed in the Disk Title area. Text Labels Many times, you may want to print a label that contains not the filenames on the disk but rather custom text that you specify. In this case, you type the text you want to print in the Label Text field. Any text in this field automatically suppresses Directory Label mode and causes Laser Labels instead to print the custom text. The Label Text field automatically "word-wraps" lines that are longer than the width of the field. Because the Label Text field uses screen fonts that may not accurately represent the actual printed font, you may find that it takes more than one line of Label Text on the screen to print correctly on one line of the printed label. You can create a "hard line break" by pressing Return during text entry in this field. This will cause a line break at this point on the printed label. Any text in the Disk Title field will be printed on the label; just as for a Directory Label. Printing a Single Label Once you have selected the disk and files for a Directory Label or specified the custom text for a Text Label, you can print the label. This is done by pressing the Send To Printer button by clicking on it with the mouse. When you do this, the information for this label is sent to the printer at the label position you have specified. The completion of this process is signified by the replacement of the label position by a disk icon. At this point, you have printed a single label. If that is all you with, simple press the Print button by clicking on it with the mouse. This will cause only this label to be printed and the label sheet to be ejected from the printer. The balance of the sheet may then be stored with the rest of your labels for future printing. Printing Multiple Labels If you prefer to print multiple labels from a sheet, simply select the next label you want to print from the Label Display area, retrieve the directory files or enter the custom text, and press Send To Printer. Repeat this process for as many labels as you desire or until the sheet is filled. Then press the Print button to print out your labels and eject the label sheet. Printer Setup Pressing the Printer Setup button invokes the Printer Setup dialog box. This form lets you select the font sizes and styles for the Disk Title and Label Text for your label. You may also specify an X (horizontal) and/or a Y (vertical) offset for your printer should you find the default settings do not locate correctly on your brand of printer. In the Registered version of Laser Labels, the Save As Defaults and Reset To Defaults buttons are activated. These buttons allow you to save specific settings to an .INI file for automatic retrieval on program startup. In the Unregistered version these settings must be reentered every time the program is run. Using Laser Labels with a Dot Matrix Printer Since Windows handles printing for all printers identically, it is feasible for Laser Labels to be used on dot matrix and other "graphics" style printers that have Windows 3.0 printer drivers. Windows manages the composing of the page in memory and then translates that image to the printer; whether it is a laser printer or any other type of graphics printer (note that this excludes such printers as daisy wheels or TTY style printers). Although use of dot matrix printers with Laser Labels is technically feasible, the practicality of this option is debatable. Laser printers have a primary advantage in that their paper handling characteristics allow repeatable accurate paper alignment for single sheets. Few dot matrix printers can match the precision that is required to automatically advance a single sheet of paper to the exact "top of form" position that would allow Laser Labels to print correctly on the Avery labels forms. Thus, use of Laser Labels on dot matrix printers should be considered "experimental" at this time. Should you choose to try Laser Labels on your graphics printer, the following suggestions should help you get started: 1. It is expected that printers with an "Auto Sheet Feeder" option would be more suitable than one without. These printers have a button or switch that advances a single sheet of paper to a fixed position in the printer. This may or may not be the correct position for use with Laser Labels and the Avery label forms, but it is possible that with the use of the X and Y offsets in the Setup Printer dialog box any differences might be correctable. 2. If your printer does not include and automatic paper positioning feature, you must manually insert the paper to a known position. Usually there is some reference position that can be used for alignment purposes; whether it is a mark on the printer mechanism or just some recognizable position. (I have often used the top of the print head for this purpose). Use of this manual positioning with the X and Y offset parameters might provide acceptable results. 3. Adjust your printer for "Medium" or "Heavy" paper thickness. The Avery labels are a bit thicker than regular paper; and the ribbon might smudge the labels if used at the regular settings. 4. Use of a new ribbon is recommended for label printing. 5. Printing on a dot matrix printer will be very slow! If you are printing a full page of labels, this could take several minutes. 6. You may want to experiment with font sizes and styles with the Printer Setup dialog box. Since many dot matrix printers have poorer resolution than laser printers (although some have better!), certain fonts and sizes may look better than others. 7. Do your testing on plain paper to determine the suitability of your printer before you try the expensive label stock. I would be interested in hearing about your success (or lack thereof) with using Laser Labels on a variety of printers. The Problem Reports form at the end of this document can be used to report your progress. Also, the Registered version of Laser Labels includes the Visual Basic source code to the program; so that if you are willing to invest a bit of time in experimentation and modification of the code, you might achieve somewhat better result. Just one more reason to encourage you to register! Laser Labels Site License Laser Labels is available under a very liberal Site License policy. For a fixed fee based on the number of users within a given licensed entity (which may be a particular location or even an entire corporation), you may serve as your own distribution center for Laser Labels. Site Licensees are provided with are provided with one (1) Master Disk, one (1) printed User Manual, a disk version of the User Manual in Microsoft Write format, and a Site License document for the stated number of users. Licensees are responsible for all copying and duplication of both program and documentation. Site License Pricing 10 to 24 Users..................................... $ 75 25 to 49 Users..................................... $150 50 to 100 Users.................................... $250 Unlimited License (over 100 users)................. $500 L A S E R L A B E L S O R D E R F O R M REGISTERED VERSION PRICING Single User Registration.............................. $ 10 per copy Multi-User Site Licenses 10 to 24 Users...................................... $ 75 25 to 49 Users...................................... $150 50 to 100 Users..................................... $250 Unlimited License (over 100 users).................. $500 ORDERING INFORMATION Mail this Order Form to............................. Dave Evers 1260 Park Place Quincy, IL 62301 (217) 224-3615 Taxpayer ID: 530-52-3088 Name.................................................................. Company............................................................... Address............................................................... ...................................................................... City............................ State.......... Zip.................. _____ Single User License _____ copies at $10 per copy .... __________ _____ Site Licence ______ Users ........................... __________ (see pricing above) _____ Special Shipping: UPS Next Day and Federal Express are available at $20 additional.... __________ Disk size: ___ 5-1/4" ___ 3-1/2" TOTAL_____________ PAYMENT _____ Personal Check _____ Company Check _____ Company PO #___________ (established businesses only) Sorry, I cannot accept credit card orders at this time. Canadian users: Payment must be made in US funds. Postal Money Orders are best. International users: Payments must be made in US funds drawn against a US bank; or by Postal Money Orders. Problem Reports/Feature Suggestions Please use this form to describe any problems that you may encounter with Laser Labels, and also to suggest any features and enhancements that you would like to see incorporated into the program. Problem..................................................... ............................................................ ............................................................ ............................................................ ............................................................ ............................................................ System Configuration: CPU Type............. Memory ....... K Display.......... Resolution.......... Mode (Standard, Enhanced)............. Feature Suggestions......................................... ............................................................ ............................................................ ............................................................ ============================================================ Name........................................................ Company..................................................... Address..................................................... ............................................................ City......................... State........ Zip............. Phone Number................................................ Mail to.........................................Dave Evers 1260 Park Place Quincy, IL 62301 Future Directions This version of Laser Labels is the first in what I hope is a long line of enhancements that will make this product a truly useful Windows utility. Following is a list of planned additions to the product over future versions which should give you some idea of where Laser Labels is headed: 1. PCX Graphics and Icons on Labels 2. Support for reading Disk Size and Free Space available for Directory Labels. Also support for reading and/or changing the Volume Label of the disk. 3. Support for file management of disks prior to label printing; such as copying, moving, and deleting files. 4. Interface with a disk cataloging program via Windows DDE so that both cataloging and labeling can be accomplished in one step. 5. Better support for non-laser printers; including support for pin-feed labels for dot matrix printers. 6. Auto-Serializing for disk sets such as backups and other multiple disk collections. 7. You tell me!! Let me thank you in advance for your support of Laser Labels. 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