Printing or Saving an SAOimage Image

Clicking on the "print" button in the "etc" submenu dumps a hardcopy of the main display image to a postscript printer. The output image includes the central display window and the colorbar. Any cursors, showing in the display window are included in the output. This is a monochrome file, not color postscript.

In order to get a hardcopy that looks something like what you have on the screen, it is best to use the "gray" colormap. You should find a good scaling for the image and manipulate the contrast with the "gamma" control. The output image will be dithered by the Postscript printer's own dithering algorithm.

On color workstations, the image is read from the screen and includes any graphics which may be showing. The image also includes the upper portion of SAOimage (the title area and two auxiliary windows). By default, the buttons are not included, but they may be included by first using the -lprbuttons switch on the command line.

When SAOimage is in its mono (halfone display) mode, an image of the display window, only, is created and printed. This image is made directly the internal data, using the current scaling information, and does not include any cursor graphics graphics. (It will include markings made with IRAF's tvmark task).

The output file can be directed anywhere by setting an environment variable called R_DISPOSE. The R_DISPOSE string is a format statement for an sprintf which creates the UNIX command, where '%s' will be replaced by its temporary file name. The default is lpr -Plp -r %s. The -r in the print statement deletes the postscript file after being printed. One could, for example, set R_DISPOSE to "mv %s /tmp/foo.ps" to save the file for later use.

If no R_DISPOSE environment variable is set, SAOimage looks for a PRINTER environment variable. If one is set, the hardcopy will be sent to that printer using the P_DISPOSE environment variable, which defaults to lpr -P%s -r %s, where the first %s is replaced by the value of the PRINTER environment variable, and the second by the temporary file name.

The Postscript file is scaled to fill an 8.5x11 inch page (regardless of the printer resolution). To get a smaller image, centered on the page, see the comment in the ASCII section at top of the file.

Sending an image to a printer over serial lines at 9600 baud, as is common for the Apple printers, will tie up the printer for about 12 minutes. Be considerate of other users who use the printer.

While this is generally a sufficient and convenient form of hardcopy, the user may also wish to try xwd, xprint, or one of the several other window dump facilities available for X11.