PolyView by Polybytes. ====================== PolyView is a shareware graphics viewer, file conversion, image manipulation, and printing utility for Windows NT and Windows 95. PolyView supports the majority of the popular image formats available on Windows and Unix systems. PolyView is authored and copyrighted by: Polybytes 3427 Bever Avenue S.E. Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52403 e-mail: polybytes@kagi.com ============= INSTALLATION: ============= If you downloaded polyv270.zip 1. Unzip polyv270.zip in a temporary directory area. 2. Run setup.exe by double-clicking on it from the Explorer or File Manager. If you downloaded pvfiles.zip or pvfilesnr.zip Unzip the downloaded file in the directory where you want to store and execute. ============= DISTRIBUTION: ============= PolyView is a shareware program and as such it is permissable to load it onto any and all computer systems and networks. Polybytes' only requirement is that ALL the files contained in the PolyView ZIP archive be distributed together, preferably in their original archive. These file include: Readme.txt setup.exe _inst32i.ex_ _isdel.exe _setup.dll _setup.lib data.z Setup.ins Setup.iss Setup.pkg uninst.exe ============== RELEASE NOTES: ============== Version 2.70 Created a new Browse menu which has some of the commands that were previously in the File menu, and several new ones (see below). Added an Open Script choice to the Browse menu for the direct opening of slide show script files. Added commands to the Browse menu to invoke a browser for directories and files marked during slide shows. Added the capability to display slide shows (or multiple slide shows) in on-screen windows. (See the Browsing tab of the Properties dialog.) Added the capability to mark files during slide shows, as well as pause and continue functionality. Added an option to the Browsing tab of the Properties dialog to expand slide show images to fill the available viewing area. Added an option to the Files tab of the Properties dialog to force PolyView to interpret multiple command line arguments as a single file name containing spaces. Added a command to the File menu save a file as wallpaper. Added the Display Reduction Method option to the General tab of the Properties dialog to control the method used to reduce a large image to a small window. Added the Background Color command to the Options menu to set the background color used for images. Added a Tools menu to facilitate selection of the area selection, zooming, and panning tools. Added an area selection tool to the Tools menu and the associated Crop and Copy Selected Area commands to the Edit menu. Added a panning tool to the Tools menu to simplify moving the visible window around in a large or zoomed image. Added a Photo-CD tab to the Properties dialog with options to control the size image to decompress from a photo-CD image pack file. Added a splash screen to display the PolyView logo during program startup and initialization, and added an option to the General tab of the Properties dialog to disable it. Added appearance adjustment commands to the context menu for an image. The thumbnail position now stays constant after Deleting an open image while the Explore window is open. Fixed a bug which caused misbehavior if full screen state was interrupted by a pop-up window or screen saver activation. Corrected the actions of the Tool Bar and Status Bar options in the View menu for the Explore window. Improved the screen update algorithms to reduce flickering when resizing image windows. Corrected the consistency of the actions on the thumbnail context menu of the Explore window. The Add to slide show and Delete options now affect all selected images. Clicking the right mouse button on the thumbnail pane of the Explore window no longer deselects selected images. Fixed a problem which caused a maximized window to be incorrectly displayed after a full screen slide show or image view operation had taken place. Fixed a bug in the Soften routine invoked through the Options menu. Fixed a bug in the Export Image command of the File menu which caused the last save/export directory to not be used. The splitter bar position in the Explore window is now restored between sessions. The thumbnail position now stays constant after Delete or Move operations in the Explore window. Fixed a problem which prevented purging the slide show list if the slide show dialog was closed with an empty list. Version 2.60.3 Fixed a bug which could leave the last few rows of thumbnails unreachable in the Explore window. Version 2.60.2 The slide show dialog now uses a device dependent bitmap for display if the corresponding option is checked in the General tab of the Properties dialog, resulting is a faster screen update on displays configured for more than 256 colors. Fixed a bug which corrupted the output file name during batch file format conversions if the destination directory was the root directory of a drive. Fixed a bug which caused excessive system resources to be used, and a potential for a stack failure, during the opening of some folders in the Explore window. Version 2.60 Added Undo operations. Added variable thumbnail sizes. Added palette optimization techniques to improve display of thumbnails in 256 color systems. Added ReCreate Selected and Recreate All options from the Thumbnail menu of the Explore window to simplify recreation of thumbnails after a size change. Added a progress bar for the thumbnail creation process. Added a command to stop thumbnail creation. Added a Sort option on the View menu for the Explore window to sort thumbnails by Name, Type, Size, and Date, with either ascending or descending sort order. Improved the behavior when moving files in the Explore window so that the thumbnail for the image is retained. Improved the handling of large folders in the Explore window for better responsiveness. Added /E:Startup_Folder to the command line options to specify that the Explore window is to start with a specific folder opened. Example: polyview /E:c:\picture\my vacation Dragging thumbnails to the Recycle Bin icon in the Explore window tree is now supported. Added display of hidden folders in the Explore window Added standard length and width options on the dialog presented from the Options:Change Pixel Resolution command. Added the Gamma Adjustment operation to the Options menu. Added the Change Color Depth operation to the Options menu. Changed the layout of the slide show dialog when the screen resolution is 640x480 or 800x600 to achieve a better fit when large fonts have been selected. Deleting a displayed image from the File menu sends the file to the Recycle Bin on Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0 system. Corrected a problem with the decompression of PNG files which are grayscaled and contain 16 bit channel information. Corrected a scrollbar thumb positioning problem after delete operations in the Explore window. Corrected the View:Refresh option of the Explore window to correctly update when folder configurations have changed. Fixed a problem with color map manipulations which caused printing and other difficulties when the number of colors in an image is less than the maximum. Version 2.53 Fix: Problem with interpolating 24 bit images with display mode set to 256 colors. Version 2.52 Fix: Problems with interpolation which make minor improvements for 24 bit/pixel images, and major improvements for 8 bit/pixel images. Version 2.51 Add: Option to turn off device dependent bitmap generation. Add: Option to create new window from some filtering actions. Add: Neon filter to Special Effects. Fix: Problem with output format in Format Conversions window when the user is unregistered. Version 2.50 Add: Batch file format conversions. (Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0) Add: Various image manipulation filters, including sharpening, softening, edge enhance and detection, negative, and special effects filters. Add: Duplicate Image command. Add: Improvements to 1 and 4 bit/pixel image handling. Add: Additional 1 and 4 bit/pixel save formats. Add: Optimizations to improve speed of initial image display. Add: Refresh option on thumbnail pane. Add: Sort button on slide show dialog. Add: Optional higher quality print routines. Add: Progress bar options. Add: Enhanced printing on monochrome printers. Fix: Explore window folder size limitation on Windows 95. Fix: Problem with "Add All" button functionality on some Windows 95 systems. Fix: Restored old behavior of keeping child windows maximized. Fix: Print Visible and Print Preview Visible image boundaries were incorrectly calculated. Fix: Corrected a condition which could leave a file open when it was not recognized as any valid format. Fix: Double-clicking a file in the slide show dialog now correctly performs an Add operation. Version 2.40 Add: Image format support for more than 20 new formats. Add: Slide show dialog converted to Windows 95 standard to take advantage of drag and drop for slide show building and ordering. Fix: Corrected problem with image manipulations not being saved properly. Version 2.30 Add: The Explore window (Windows 95, Windows NT 3.51 with Shell Technology Preview, Windows NT 4.0) Add: Windows 95 compliant setup and uninstall procedures. Version 2.21: Add: Transparent Color dialog for specification of GIF transparency. File type used for the last file exported is now remembered as the starting type for a new export. Fix: Incompatibilities with Windows 95 taskbar during full screen modes. Errors occurring during manual slide shows were not ignored. Improved recovery from certain varieties of GIF file corruption. Image sizing and full screen behavior when the PolyView toolbar is floating instead of docked on a window edge. Version 2.20: Add: Image resolution changing with smoothing. Interpolated zooming. Slide show errors can now be ignored. Fix: Mark created windows as modified so "Save on exit prompt" will occur if configured to do so. Version 2.19: Add: Printing (for registered users) Print preview (for registered users) Fix: Behavior with screen resolution changes under Windows 95 Version 2.18: Add: Individual image timing during slide shows. 24 bit gray scale images written to PNG 8 bit gray scale. GIF file exporting. Progressive JPEG file exporting. Separate open and save(export) directory paths. MRU file list operations(purge, purge on exit, variable size). Fix: Browsing properties dialog problem. Version 2.17 Add: Export to PNG files. (Registered users only.) Reading of progressive JPEG files. Restored ability to write 8 bit images to JPEG files. Added Randomization of slide shows. Version 2.16 Add: PNG file viewing. Correct: Image sizing now correct for side positioning of toolbar. Version 2.15 Correct: Fixed a bug which prevented the file-open dialog from working correctly. Version 2.14 Add: File saving to 8 bit RLE bitmap format. File saving to 16 bit bitmap format. Multiple file selection from file open dialog. Saving user entered comments to JPEG files. Implementation of a registration key system to provide certain features only to registered users. Note that ALL features of PolyView which were available prior to this change are still fully functional. Version 2.13 Correct: Implemented command line parsing to handle file dragged from Explorer to PolyView shortcut. Corrected behavior when one or more slideshow scripts are dragged and dropped on PolyView. Version 2.12 Add: Display of filenames during full screen modes. Version 2.11 Add: File:Image Properties command. Image context menus from right mouse button. Correct: File handle release error on JPEG files. Version 2.10 Add: Support for 1, 4, 16, and 32 bit BMP files, including 4 and 8 bit RLE. Copy and Paste of bitmaps to and from the Windows clipboard Scripted slide shows Background operation of image manipulation of file saving activities. Version 2.00 This version adds file saving and conversion capabilities and thus no longer uses the image configuration files created by previous versions. All the .PVI files created by PolyView can be safely deleted.