PicView 1.3 An Picture Viewer Copyright 1989,1990 by Greg Thomas & Brad Mettee What is PicView? PicView is an picture viewer that offers features not found in other viewers. This is not the end all program (yet). Other viewers do offers some features that PicView does not, such as graphic conversion. Some of the 'deficiencies' of PicView will be added to later releases. Currently PicView will read and display GIF, Colorix and MAC formats. We are currently working on implementing more formats, notably compressed RIX files, PCX and Deluxe Paint LBM files. Other formats are being looked into, and will be implemented as we accrue information on them. What makes PicView different than these other viewers? Ahh glad you asked that question (you did ask that, didn't you?) Well, for starters, our biggest pride with this product is the superb ADJUSTABLE palette animation. A picture can be animated through the entire palette, a portion of the palette, and through a range of colors in the palette. The effects of the animation must be seen to be truly appreciated. It also sports a very easy to use window interface that if not for the complex animation capabilities, would preclude the need for docs at all. It uses very easy pop-down windows for all parameter setting and selection very similar to the environments used in Borland's Language's (Guess will have to look out for the look and feel police.) PicView supports ATI, Tseng, Trident, Video7, Paradise, C&T, Everex, Cirrus, and Ahead A & B chipsets. It will auto detect if these adapters are installed, and adjust the mode selections (screen size) accordingly. Also, for you True Blue users, a special 360x480x256 mode is implemented for you to get almost SVGA perfor- mance out of your motherboard VGA. This will also work on all register compatible VGA cards. PicView currently does not (and most likely won't ever) support standards less then VGA. There are several viewers on the market that support EGA and below, so it seemed rather pointless since PicView's animation abilities are best done on VGA. 2 Files contained in PicView.zip PV.EXE PicView executable file PVDOC.TXT PicView documentation REGISTER.TXT PicView registration form REVHIST.TXT Revision History PICVIEW.GIF PicView.gif is a gif file which demonstrates the viability of partial palette animation. Using the random palette (any palette will do, but works best with random or plasma) set starting register to 92, and end register to 112. DATA.PIX Data for laserline opening credits. WAVE1A.GIF Wave1a.gif, boxesa.gif, and tunnela.gif have BOXESA.GIF continuous smooth palettes making TUNNELA.GIF experimentation of the default palette's possible settings. DEMO.BAT Batch file which creates and demonstrates PicView's Slideshow abilities. In the Works Some of the features that PicView will be incorporating in future releases are: A script language for slideshow presentations. Support for more file formats i.e. PCX, LBM, etc. Mode lockout. Getting Started with PicView You can start PicView by either typing PV at the DOS prompt to get into menu mode, or you can specify a filename or listfile from the command line to immediately display a file or slideshow. When starting PicView in menu mode, a credit screen will pop up. By default, PicView starts in 50 line mode. If you prefer, you can start it with the command line option -25 or /25 to have it default to 25 line mode. Strike a key, and you will be in the file selection window. From the main menu, you have 4 choices, detailed here. Note: If you get tired of viewing the laserline, you can delete the data.pix file and it will no longer display. 3 Info Pops up the opening credit screen. (In case you get bored, or want to know who wrote this contraption.) File Pops up a sub menu used for file selection. Options Brings up a sub menu to select PicView's options. Exit Exits the program. (That's a hard one to figure out, eh?) Submenus have a varying number of selections that either pop up an additional submenu, prompt you for data, or display a selected file. Submenu options will be detailed here. File Select File(s) This selection pops up a file selection window which allows you to select the file to be viewed. The window sports a scroll bar to give you an indication of how far along you are in the list of files. There is a real file limit of 16,384 files that can be read into the directory (assuming you have a 640k machine). You can use first character selection to speed you through your files. Hitting 'T' once will take you to the first file beginning with T. Hitting it again will take you to the next and so on. The list can be scrolled beyond the end or beginning if scrolling in reverse. When you find the file you want to display, Hit the 'ENTER' key and it will be displayed. If viewing a MAC file, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, up & down arrow keys will scroll the picture. After the file has been displayed, strike any key to return to the file selection window. When you return, you will have the last file displayed still highlighted. File Type This selection will pop up a little window that allows you to select which type of file you wish to have in the selection window above. Currently your choices are, GIF, RIX, and MAC. 4 Options Screen This will pop up a submenu allowing you to select which screen mode you want the picture displayed in. Depending on your video adapter, you may not be able to select all of the choices. The Auto select option will let the program select the best video mode for the picture to fit in. Note: You can hot-key into this window with the F3 key. Animate This will pop up a window prompting you for data to control the animation facilities of PicView. The first data item you are prompted for is whether or not you want animation on. If you select 'N', the window is dropped, and you are returned to the next level up menu. If you select 'Y', you are then prompted for the direction, palette, starting and ending registers, and depending on the palette selected, starting and ending color data. More detail will be covered on this topic later. Note: You can hot-key into this window with the F4 key. Exit This selection returns you to DOS. Optionally, you can hit the escape key at any top level menu to return to dos as well. Hot Keys Hot key access to menus are as follows: F3 - Pops up screen size selection window. F4 - Pops up animate window. F5 - Brings up PalView for selected file. F6 - Displays the dimensions of the highlighted file. Alt D - Deletes the highlighted file from your drive. The 'A' key while viewing a picture will cause animate to start using the defaults, or the selections made when you last turned animate on. To start PicView with a filename, simply type PV filename. Extensions are optional, but if omitted, GIF is assumed. Filename can consist of a filename and optional path of up to 80 characters. PicView will then display the file and wait for a keypress (or an 'A' key to begin animating the pic). If you also specify a /r or -r on the command line, PicView will display the image and exit leaving the graphics mode intact. This is useful for calling PicView from other programs to display a graphic image. When started with this option, PicView will not animate. 5 To start PicView with a listfile, simply type PV @listfile. PicView will then read filenames from the listfile and display them in a round robin fashion, in a continuous cycle (or until aborted with the esc key). Filenames in the listfile with no extension are assumed to be GIF. A list file can be generated as simply as typing, DIR > LISTFILE. No editing of the dir output is neccesary as anything not valid is ignored. The next release of PicView will have a more robust script language to control delays and animation. What is PalView? PalView is a handy utility that will display on screen the contents of all you palette registers. For PalView to work, you must have the file selection window open with a file highlighted. Then, hit the F5 key and your screen will change to display the palette. If animate is turned on, it will animate the palette display. Any key will return you to the file selection window. (This is useful for determining the ranges of any smooth palette blends you may see in a picture.) OK, Let me go into some details on the animation options, as some of it can be a bit confusing. After selecting 'Y' to the animate prompt, your next prompt will be for the direction to animate. View both, as the different directions can have an entirely different effect. The direction is relative, and can/will be different from file to file (dependent on how the palette registers were laid out at the time the file was created). The next prompt after selecting the direction, will be for you to select the palette. You have 3 choices here, a random palette, the default palette, and a plasma palette (based loosely on the demo plasma). Use experimentation here, as different images work better with different palette selections. The random palette will look pretty good for just about any image (note: images with smooth palette ranges animate the best). If the default palette is laid out well without many 'holes', this one works well too. Although, I have viewed some images that DO have 'holes' which enhanced the animation effect. The plasma palette is based on a smooth transition of red, green and blue and restricts the animation to the first 180 or so registers (again, based loosely on the images created by the demo plasma). If you select the Default palette, a window will pop up prompting your for starting and ending color. This will be discussed in the next section as it is related to registers, but only applies to the default palette. 6 OK, I trust you've kept up with me so far. Here's where it can get confusing. Your next prompt is for the starting and ending register. If you've selected either the Random or Plasma palette, this will tell the program which color register to start the animation at, and which to stop it at. This gives you the ability to animate a portion of the image, instead of the entire image. This works VERY well for images that use a smooth palette range in a portion of the picture. Now, if you've selected the Default palette, your start and end registers take on additional meaning in conjunction with the start and end color window that popped up after you selected DEFAULT. To give you a better understanding, picture your image like this. Every pixel gets its color from one of 256 palette registers. The start and end registers are exactly that, PHYSICAL registers in the machine. The start and end colors are the color data contained in those registers. When you select your start and end register, you are selecting the physical registers that are scrolled. When you select the start and end color, you are selecting the range of color data that you want scrolled through those registers. If you select a color range smaller than the palette range, the number of colors you selected will determine the number of registers scrolled. However, if you select a smaller range of registers than colors, then the registers will scroll through the entire range of colors you selected OK, are you thoroughly confused? I thought so, but experiment a little after reading the docs (preferably with the images that came with the PicView file since they have smooth palette ranges, it makes it clear sooner what exactly is going on). Command Line Option Summary -25 or /25 Start menu mode in 25 line mode. filespec Bypass menus and display single file. /r When single file specified, exit PV with graphics intact. @listfile Display filenames in list file continuously. Hot keys F3 - Pops up screen size selection window. F4 - Pops up animate window. F5 - Brings up PalView for selected file. F6 - Displays the dimensions of the highlighted file. Alt D - Deletes the highlighted file from your drive. The 'A' key while viewing a picture will cause animate to start using the defaults, or the last selections made when you last turned animate on. 7 SHAREWARE PicView is a shareware product. You are granted a limited 15 day noncommercial use of this product. At the end of this period, if you are still using PicView, you may license PicView for noncommercial use on one machine by sending $15.00 to: Greg Thomas & Brad Mettee c/o Greg Thomas P.O. Box 5244 Balto., Md. 21224-0244 PicView may be licensed for commercial use on up to 5 computers for $50.00. A commercial site is defined as, but not limited to, a business or individual seeking to make a profit by distributing PicView as part of a package, either hardware or software, use of PicView as demo to sell hardware or software. If PicView is distributed as part of a package, notice MUST be given to the purchaser that they are not a licensed user. Commercial site's requiring more copies, may contact the authors for special pricing arrangements. All rights are reserved. PicView may not be changed, modified or reverse engineered in any way except by the authors. PicView may be freely distributed as long as it remains in its complete form. Regardless of how the copy is obtained, all users are required to comply with the licensing agreement. All warranties are disclaimed, including damage to hardware and/or software from use of this product. In no event will the authors be liable for any damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental or consequential damages due to your use or inability to use the program, or any other claim by any other party. Any suggestions or comments can be mailed directly to me, emailed to me on CIS (user 73047,57) or left on my BBS: Jolly Roger (301)675-2566 3/12/2400 baud GIF and Graphics Interchange Format are trademarks of Compuserve, a H+R Block Co. 8