Copyright: (c) Peak Systems, 2002


UI-Captioner

What Is It For?

UI-Captioner is designed to write date/time stamps on UI-View32 images, which have been automatically captured using the CAPTURE_MAP command in the UI-View32 Schedule Editor. It was requested by users who wanted to capture images at regular intervals and export them to web sites.

It has two modes of operation -

1. Time Stamp Mode

If UI-Captioner is passed an image file name as a command line argument, then it will write a date/time stamp on the image and immediately exit. For example, if you put these two commands in the Schedule Editor -

E2 CAPTURE_MAP TEST.PNG

E2 RUN UICAPTIONER.EXE TEST.PNG

The first command would save the current UI-View32 map image as TEST.PNG every two minutes, and the second command would write a date/time stamp on it.

In the above example the file name passed to UI-Captioner does not contain a path, so it will look for the file (a) in its program directory, and (b) in a sub-directory called Capture. This is designed to match the fact that CAPTURE_MAP will save the image in the Capture sub-directory if the name doesn't contain a path.

Here is an example of how to use the commands with a full path name  -

E2 CAPTURE_MAP "C:\CAPTURE DIRECTORY\TEST.PNG"

E2 RUN UICAPTIONER.EXE "C:\CAPTURE DIRECTORY\TEST.PNG"

Note that, because the path name contains spaces, it must be surrounded with "".

2. Setup Mode

If UI-Captioner is run without any command line argument, then a set-up dialogue will open. The dialogue window has a small map as the background, and it allows you to configure where the date/time stamp is placed on the image, what font is used, etc. Every time you make a change, the time stamp on the background map will be updated to show how the time stamp will appear when the program is used in time stamp mode.

Time

If you select 'Local Time', then the date/time stamp will use the PC clock local time. If you select 'System Time', then it will use Windows system time. If you have correctly configured your time zone on the PC, and the local time is correct, then System Time will be UTC.

Position

Where the date/time stamp will be put on the image.

Border

Whether the date/time stamp will be surrounded with a border one pixel wide.

Date/time format

This specifies how the date/time will be displayed. You can use a variety of date and time formatting tokens, the following are the most useful -

yyyy - the year as four digits.

yy - the year as two digits.

mmmm - the full month name, e.g. January.

mmm- thr abbreviated month name, e.g. Jan.

mm - the month as two digits.

dd - the date as two digits.

hh - the hour as two digits.

nn - the minute as two digits.

ss - the second as two digits.

If you wish to include text in the fornat, you may find that some letters will be interpreted as tokens. To avoid that happening, you can precede letters with a ''\'. For example, to include the text "UTC" in the format, you could put "\U\T\C".

For a full ist of all the possible date/time formatting tokens, see this HTML document.

Opacity

Controls how much the background image shows through the date/time stamp.

Font

Opens a font selection dialogue.

Text colour

Opens a colour selection dialogue for the text colour.

Back colour

Opens a colour selection dialogue for the background colour.

Ok

Save any changes you have made.

Cancel

Abandon any changes you have made.