KZoom"> ]> Claudiu Costin

claudiuc@kde.org

200120022003 Claudiu Costin &FDLNotice; 2003-11-22 0.40.00 &kzoom; is a &kde; handy tool for magnifing portion of screen. Various zooming controls along with easy of use make it suitable both for professionals in webdesign and distractive toy for rest of us. This document describe version 0.5. KDE KZoom zoom magnify scale screen desktop 0.4 2001-11-22 CC Link and addresses fixes. A bit of reorganization. 0.3 2001-11-11 CC Finished all sections. 0.2 2001-11-04 CC Finished "Command Reference" section and first review. 0.1 2001-10-25 CC Initial release. This is &kzoom; users manual. Sometime need arise for enlarging screen portion to look more closely at some picture, web page or application interface. And more than that to view enlarged screen portions which change in realtime. For first situation it's need by imaging programs like KSnapshots or Gimp. But tracking realtime changing screen at enlarged sizes can be done with &kzoom; like utilities. &kzoom; feature 16 zoom levels very easy to change them, panning zooming rectangle, moving and resizing zoomed area, changing refresh rate and many other features. User interface very simple and intuitive, while professionals can adjust many parameters with precision. Almost all functional parameters are preserved and that way &kzoom; restore previous state when is restarted. &kzoom; interface &kzoom; interface &kzoom; view on the KDE desktop &kzoom; have to main concepts: the screen area to zoom and the view of zoomed area. Most of the time rectangular area on screen which need to be zoomed is not marked, but &kzoom; main window is visible and you can figure where zoomed rectangular area is. This is that portion of screen which &kzoom; will zoom it and show it in view window. Zoomed area is identified by top-left corner coordinate, width and height. Dimensions are in pixels. Zoom Rectangle To satisfy needs for precisions we can view and adjust these paramateres directly from control toolbar which hold 4 spinboxes: X, Y, Width and Height. The're some situations when is not evident where zoom are is located on screen. Here com handy Show Zoom Area toggle button on main toolbar. When you activate it, an rectangle is draw on screen marking zoomed area. This action can be performed selecting View Show Zoom Area from menu or pressing F6 key. &kzoom; main window show rectangular screen magnified by selected zoom factor. If zooming some screen part will go to large dimensions, then view area will cut that zoomed screen part. To view more, redimension &kzoom; window. Main Window Changing zoom factor directly is performed in two ways: select appropriate item from View Zoom menu or select it from main toolbar combobox. For convenience you can incrementaly change it up or down pressing Zoom In or Zoom Out main toolbar buttons or activating shortcut keys: &Ctrl;&Shift;+ and respective &Ctrl;- Two operations are needed to change zoomed area: moving and resizing. The main methods to change position and dimensions are by mouse or using control bar spinboxes. While using mouse is more convenient in day to day work, when you're forced to have precission to make zoomed screen captures spinboxes controled values are a must. Move operation can be performed easily in two ways. The adictive one is to pan view area dragging it with mouse. That is, click on &kzoom; main window zoom area and start dragging. As much you hold mouse button pressed, an rectangle will follow zoomed area when you move mouse. After releasing mouse button it will disappear. The second move method is to press on Move Zoom Area button on main toolbar or press F7 key. Mouse cursor will change in a cross with arrows. Press anywhere on screen and hold the mouse button. Mouse cursor will jump to zoom rectangle area and zoom rectangle will show up. Start moving zoom area where you want. When finished release mouse button. Resize is in fact a move and resize operation which you made on one step. To enter in resize mode press on Resize Zoom Area button on main toolbar or press F8 key. Mouse cursor will change in a cross hair form. Move mouse cursor where you want top-left zoom area corner and press mouse button. While holding down mouse cursor start dragging. An growing rectangle will show up. After you're happy with rectangle size release mouse button. Both when move or resize zoom area you can observe main toolbar spinboxes values changing and &kzoom; main window zoomed area is updated. This way you have visual control on what zoomed and what position and/or dimensions zoom area have. To further control zoom actions, main toolbar have aditional buttons. Ones of them you already encountered in previous section. Zoomed area is by default continous updated. To control update rate change value in Refresh spinbox. Make this value higher if you machine have low resources and mouse is moving slowly when &kzoom; is running. To take a snapshot for some changing portion of screen, deactivate Continous Update toggle button from main toolbar. There are many times when you want to save zoomed screen area. You have two options: save to file or print it. Choose File Save from menu or press Save button from main toolbar. Currently you can save zoomed image as PNG, JPEG or XPM image formats. To print zoomed area choose File Print... from menu or press Print button from main toolbar. Printing include informations about zoom factor, rectangle position and dimensions and date when printing was done. Image is automatically cut to fit in page. Please consider printing as landscape if you want to preserve more zoomed area and width value is large than height. Printed or saved image is what you see in &kzoom; view area. If you want to save more and zoom factor determine that enlarged screen portion is too big for &kzoom; window size, then resize window to large values. &Ctrl;S File Save Save current zoomed area as image file. You can choose image format by filename extension. &Ctrl;P File Print... Print current zoomed area in a pretty print format. Zoom rectangle coordinates, zoom factor and date are informations printed along with image. &Ctrl;Q File Quit Exit &kzoom;. &Ctrl;&Shift;+ View Zoom In Enlarge zoomed area by one unit. &Ctrl;- View Zoom Out Shrink zoomed area by one unit. View Zoom Open submenu with zoom factors list. Select a zoom factor to chage current one. F5 View Continuos Update Toggle on/off continuos updating of zoomed area. Most of the time you want this turned on. When some hard to reproduce screen event occur, you can imortalize by pressing F5 or selecting this menu item. F6 View Show Zoom Area Toggle on/off zooming rectangle area displaying. Turn on this function when you're lost and don't figure what screen portion is zoomed. F7 View Move Zoom Area Enter in zoom area moving mode. Click anywhere on screen and start dragging. When you're finished release mouse button. F8 View Resize Zoom Area Enter in zoom area resizing mode. Move mouse where you want zoom area top-left corner. Click and start dragging. When you're happy with zoom rectangle dimesions release mouse button. Settings Show Toolbar Toogle on/off main toolbar displaying. Settings Show Cntrol Bar Toogle on/off zoom control toolbar displaying. Settings Show Statusbar Toogle on/off status bar displaying. &Ctrl;M Settings Show Menubar Toogle on/off menu bar displaying. Settings Configure Key Bindings... Open key bindings configuration dialog. Here you can redefine &kzoom; application shortcuts if defaults ones don't feet your needs. Settings Configure Toolbars... Open toolbars configuration dialog. Here you can rearange &kzoom; toolbars buttons if default settings don't feet your needs. Settings Save Settings Save &kzoom; settings imediately. Note that when you exit &kzoom; settings will be preserved even you not saved them explicitely. F1 Help Contents Open &kzoom; documentation main page. &Shift;F1 Help What's This? Mouse cursor change into question mark and you can click on &kzoom; window parts to obtain more informations about buttons or actions. Help Report Bug... Open bug reporting dialog for &kzoom;. Very usefull to send feature requests and, of course, bug reports. Help About &kzoom; Open information window about &kzoom; displaying application version, authors and contributors list and license file. Help About KDE Open information window about KDE project displaying current version and contact information. save Save current zoomed area as image file. You can choose image format by filename extension. print Print current zoomed area in a pretty print format. Zoom rectangle coordinates, zoom factor and date are informations printed along with image. zoom in Enlarge zoomed area by one unit. zoom out Shrink zoomed area by one unit. zoom list Open drop-down box with zoom factors list. Select a zoom factor to chage current one. refresh interval Enter here time interval for zoom area update. Values are in miliseconds and cannot be under 50 ms to prevent resource exhausting. continuos update Toggle on/off continuos updating of zoomed area. Most of the time you want this turned on. When some hard to reproduce screen event occur, you can imortalize by pressing F5 or selecting this menu item. show zoom rectangle Toggle on/off zooming rectangle area displaying. Turn on this function when you're lost and don't figure what screen portion is zoomed. move zoom rectangle Enter in zoom area moving mode. Click anywhere on screen and start dragging. When you're finished release mouse button. resize zoom rectangle Enter in zoom area resizing mode. Move mouse where you want zoom area top-left corner. Click and start dragging. When you're happy with zoom rectangle dimesions release mouse button. set x coordinate Set X coordinate for zoom rectangle top-left corner. The (0,0) point is located in top-left screen corner. set y coordinate Set Y coordinate for zoom rectangle top-left corner. The (0,0) point is located in top-left screen corner. set width Set zoom rectangle width. set height Set zoom rectangle height. Why mouse start to move too slowly? The bigger resolution is and the bigger zoomed area is, more computing power is needed. Specialy for magnifing operation. When refresh rate is very high, CPU is used very hard and when mouse move over &kzoom; window slowness can be present. Try to use zoom and refresh values not too stressing if your computer is limited in resources. In some situations zoomed rectangle leave trails on screen. Why? Zoomed rectangle drawing method is very simple. Because of this you can notice some flashings when is redrawed. It is possible that screen repainting enter in conflict with rectangle drawing resulting in image on screen to not be corectly updated. There is no harm. Screen will be cleaned when you force that portion to by repainted: i.e. move any window over that area. I hope to find another mode to draw rectangle. &kzoom; Claudiu Costin claudiuc@kde.org - programming, documentation Special thanks for my wife, Iuliana Costin, who allowed me to spend countless hours to work on Linux and KDE. &underFDL; &underGPL; &kzoom; web site is hosted on SourceForge servers and can be reached at: http://www.ro.kde.org/kzoom/ Source code and binaries distributions can be downloaded from: http://www.ro.kde.org/kzoom/download.html It can be compiled on any platform where KDE and Qt have been ported. You should have at least KDE 3.0 and Qt 3.0 You need to have GNU C++ compiler and associated tools. To regenerate the user documentation you need to have meinproc. Compile and install with the usual: % ./configure % make % make install Last command must be run as root user. &documentation.index;