@database FastView.guide @author "John Hendrikx" @(c) "Copyright © 1995 John Hendrikx" @$VER: FastView.guide 1.51 (3.6.95) @node Main "FastView Help" @{b}FastView 1.51@{ub} Copyright © 1994, 1995, John Hendrikx All rights reserved Release date 3 June 1995 SHAREWARE User Manual @{" Introduction " link Introduction} What can I do with FastView? @{" Feature List " link Features} What features does FastView have? @{" Requirements " link Requirements} Will it run on my system? @{" Registration " link Registration} How should I register FastView? @{" Usage from CLI " link UsageCLI} How do I use FastView from CLI? @{" Usage from Workbench " link UsageWB} How do I use FastView from Workbench? @{" Future " link Future} What the future will bring... @{" Known bugs " link Bugs} Things I should know... @{" How to reach me " link About} How can I reach the author? @{" Acknowledgements " link Ack} Who does the author want to thank? @{" History " link History} What's new in this version? @endnode @node Introduction "FastView: Introduction" FastView is a program which shows IFF, GIF, BMP, PCX and JPEG pictures on your screen. Of course many programs exist for this task, but this one is special because it is very fast and was designed with both OCS/ECS and AGA users in mind. For example: FastView can show HAM8 and IFF24Bit pictures on OCS/ECS machines in HAM which was one of the things I missed in all the other viewing-programs I've seen. JPEG pictures are shown using the Tower JPEG Codec Class by Christoph Feck. @{b}COPYRIGHT NOTICE@{ub} FastView software and documentation are Copyright (C) 1995 by John Hendrikx. All rights reserved. The JPEG codec is Copyright (C) 1994 Christoph Feck, TowerSystems. All Rights Reserved. It is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group. @{b}DISCLAIMER@{ub} FastView has proven to be stable in everyday use. @{" The author " link About} is not responsible for any loss of data, damages to software or hardware that may result directly or indirectly from the use of this program. The author reserves the right to make changes to the software or documentation without notice. The JPEG codec is provided "AS-IS" and subject to change without prior notice; no warranties are made. All use is at your own risk. No liability or responsibility is assumed. @{b}PREFACE@{ub} This program is shareware, it is *not* public domain. This means that if you use this program longer than a period of two weeks you'll have to send @{" The author " link About} 20 DM, 20 Guilders, 10 UK Pounds or 15 US Dollars to become a registered user. See @{" Registration " link Registration} for more details. None of the files of the FastView package may be modified or left out without permission of the author. Crunching or archiving is allowed only if none of the FastView files get modified by it. FastView may be distributed freely in Public-Domain collections such as Fred Fish's Amiga Library. You may charge a fee to recover distribution costs. The fee for diskette distribution may not be more than the cost to obtain a public domain diskette from Fred Fish. @endnode @node Features "FastView: Features" - Displays any IFF ILBM picture (even HAM8 or 24Bit pictures) in HAM on OCS/ECS machines. Of course if the picture doesn't need to be rerendered in HAM it will use a normal OCS/ECS screenmode. On AGA machines FastView will show the pictures if possible in upto 256 colors or in HAM8 - Displays GIF pictures of 17 or more colors in HAM on OCS/ECS machines. If less colors are used HIRES-INTERLACED will be used. On AGA machines GIFs always get displayed in upto 256 colors - Uncompressed BMP pictures in 2, 16 or 256 colors and 24-bit BMP pictures are supported - Handles EGA and VGA PCX pictures (from 2 to 256 colors and 24-bit) - JPEG pictures are supported via the Tower JPEG Codec Class by Christoph Feck. FastView will display both grayscale and color JPEGs in HAM6 or HAM8 depending on your machine. - AmigaDOS patterns (wildcards) are supported - Runs from CLI and Workbench - Optional Dithering of rerendered pictures (ie. pictures which are converted from 256 colors to HAM6, or from 24Bit to HAM8 etc...) - If multiple pictures were specified on the command line FastView will automatically load and decode the next picture while you're still viewing the previous one - Optional (Down)Scaling of rerendered pictures to fit screen - On OCS/ECS machines FastView tries to recognize pictures with B&W palettes and will display these in HIRES-INTERLACED instead of HAM - FastView has the ability to pick an ideal set of colors for pictures rendered to HAM6 or HAM8. It can store these colors in the picture's comment so they can be used next time you view the same picture to get very high quality pictures - Very fast conversion to HAM/HAM8 - FastView can save your pictures as IFF files - Keyboard can be used to scroll picture (or the mouse of course) - Coded in 100% Assembler (only 24K in size!) @endnode @node Requirements "FastView: System requirements" FastView should run on any Amiga system with at least 512K RAM and one disk drive. FastView requires Kickstart V2.04 or higher to run. FastView is Kickstart 3.0 compatible and aware. It will use some V39 functions when available. Should you have any trouble running FastView on your machine, please @{" contact me " link About} with the full specifications of your machine, that is Kickstart version, model, expansion boards etc... @endnode @node Registration "Registration: How to register FastView" This program is shareware, it is *not* public domain. This means that if you use this program longer than a period of two weeks you'll have to send @{" The author " link About} 20 DM, 20 Guilders, 10 UK Pounds or 15 US Dollars to become a registered user. Please only send cash, eurocheques or postal money orders (Dutch Guilders only!) to the following address: Until 31 March 1996: John Hendrikx Figarostraat 36 3208 PD Spijkenisse The Netherlands After 31 March 1996: John Hendrikx Maasboulevard 74 3207 RC Spijkenisse The Netherlands @endnode @node About "FastView: About the author and the program" FastView has been created using the Devpac Assembler and CygnusED on an Amiga 2000 with a 68030/22 and 7 MB of memory. The source code for FastView is now over 100K in size. If you have suggestions or remarks about this program, or if you find any bugs, please let me know. When sending in bug reports, please state exactly under what circumstances the bug occurred, what equipment was used and what happened. If possible also try to give me enough information to reproduce the bug (like the picture file which caused the bug). It is very difficult to find bugs when you don't know exactly what happened. Write to one of the following addresses: Fido : 2:286/407.8 AmigaNet : 39:153/201.8 NLA Net : 14:101/200.8 UUCP : john.hendrikx@grafix.xs4all.nl SnailMail until 31 March 1996: John Hendrikx Figarostraat 36 3208 PD Spijkenisse The Netherlands SnailMail after 31 March 1996: John Hendrikx Maasboulevard 74 3207 RC Spijkenisse The Netherlands I will also try to put the latest available version of FastView on the following BBS (this may change without further notice): Grafix Attack (Kees Huizer, Vlaardingen) Tel. +31104745816 (MT 14K4) +31104741062 (ZyXEL 19K2) +31104744682 (Tron 28K8) Magic filename: FVIEW Fido Node 2:286/407 AmyNet 39:153/201 NLA Node 14:101/200 @endnode @node UsageWB "FastView: Usage from Workbench" There are 3 ways to use FastView from the Workbench: 1) Simply double-click on the FastView icon and it will come up with a File requester which allows you to select the pictures you want to view. You may select multiple pictures by holding down shift during selection. 2) You can view pictures by using extended selection: Select the FastView icon and select, while holding down the shift key, the pictures you want to view. Double-click (while still holding down shift) on the last picture you want to view to start FastView. 3) You may use FastView as the default tool for your pictures. To set the default tool to FastView for a picture, simply select the picture's icon and choose Icons/Information from the Workbench menu. Set the default tool field to FastView and save this setting. Now you can simply double-click on the picture to view it with FastView. Selecting multiple pictures is also allowed, as long as the last picture you've selected has the default tool set to FastView. The FastView icon can have several Tool Types which control the way FastView operates. Most of these ToolTypes work similair compared with their CLI counterparts. Here are the Tool Types available which also are available in the CLI: DITHER NOBESTMODEID NOLACE POINTER SCALE ROM INFO SCREENMODE MAKECOMMENT WAITFORPIC For more information about the function of each tooltype please refer to the @{" Usage from CLI " link UsageCLI} section. There is also one Workbench specific ToolType: DEFAULTDIR This ToolType allows you to set the dir which FastView will list in the File Requester when you start FastView by simply double-clicking on it (Method 1, see above). @endnode @node UsageCLI "FastView: Usage from CLI" There is nothing to it really. Just start it from the CLI or install it in your favourite Directory utility. Command line: FILES/M,DITHER/S,NOLACE/S,SCALE/S,DELAY/K/N,INFO/S,WAITFORPIC/S,ROM/S, NBMI=NOBESTMODEID/S,MAKECOMMENT/S,POINTER/S,SAVE/K,DEBUG/S,MULTISAVE/S, SM=SCREENMODE/K or: [FILES][=] [DITHER] [NOLACE] [SCALE] [DELAY[=]] [INFO] [WAITFORPIC] [ROM] [(NBMI/NOBESTMODEID)] [MAKECOMMENT] [POINTER] [SAVE[=]] [DEBUG] [MULTISAVE] [(SM/SCREENMODE)[=]] FILES/M This argument is not required. If you don't specify any files FastView will pop up a file requester where you can select which pictures you want to view. You can use AmigaDOS patterns (wildcards) to make viewing multiple pictures easier. You can add as many names/patterns on the command line as you want, and all pictures will be viewed in the order you specified. (Note: Patterns matching multiple pictures will be shown in a somewhat random order) In case you're viewing multiple pictures the Right Mouse button will act as an abort function, thus it will enable you to exit FastView completely at any time. Left Mouse button will continue to the next picture. DELAY/K/N Using this option you can turn FastView into a slideshow. It allows you to set the number of seconds each picture will be displayed. Note that FastView will automatically load the next picture in the background while you're still viewing the current picture, which makes slideshows look much better. DITHER/S Specify this on the command line if you want to add a simple form of dithering to the (rerendered) pictures. This will slow down FastView by about 50%. NOLACE/S Specify this to make sure FastView doesn't use interlaced displays. SCALE/S When you specify this on the command line FastView will scale down (rerendered) pictures so they will fit on your screen, while keeping the aspect ratio intact. INFO/S Add this to the command line if you want the filename of the picture you're viewing to be displayed at the top of the display. WAITFORPIC/S When used in conjunction with the DELAY keyword WAITFORPIC will ensure that the picture being decoded in the background is fully decoded before FastView switches to the next picture. This should make slideshows look a bit better. ROM/S This will make FastView use ROM functions (WritePixelLine8) to draw the pictures instead of poking directly into the screen's bitmap. This is only partially implemented and for now will only work on IFF24Bit pictures, JPEG and GIF pictures. Comments from graphics card users on this function are welcomed! NOBESTMODEID/S or NBMI/S This switch will disable the use of FastView's BestModeID routine. This is a completely rewritten version of the BestModeID found in V39 kickstarts and should work much better. Another bonus is that this routine functions from Kickstart 2.0 and up. You can try this switch if FastView picks the 'wrong' screenmode to display your picture. Normally this shouldn't happen, so if it does check your DEVS:Monitors drawer and see if there are any monitors in there your system can't display correctly, if so remove these monitors, reboot and try again. If the problem persists try the DEBUG option and send me its output and some information about the problem. See DEBUG for more information. MAKECOMMENT/S If you specify this keyword FastView will automatically calculate the optimal palette for the pictures you're viewing and store this palette in the comment of those pictures. Next time you view a picture FastView will use the palette stored in the comment which should ensure you get a bit higher quality pictures. This only works for pictures which are displayed in either HAM6 or HAM8. POINTER/S Specify this on the command line if you don't want FastView to blank the mouse pointer after decoding the pictures. SAVE/K This keyword enables you to save a single picture as an IFF file. This turns FastView in a very simple conversion utility. Simply specify the name of the picture after the keyword and the first picture which is viewed is saved as an IFF file using the specified name. Don't forget the DITHER option, it often makes the rendered picture (and thus also the picture it saves) look a lot better. If you want to save an entire dir of pictures then specify MULTISAVE on the command line as well. This will change the behaviour of the SAVE keyword. When using MULTISAVE you should specify the extension which should be appended to the name of the files you're viewing using the SAVE keyword. Example: FastView foo.gif bar.gif SAVE=.iff MULTISAVE This line would result in FastView displaying both pictures and saving them as 'foo.gif.iff' and 'bar.gif.iff'. DEBUG/S If you have problems with FastView picking the wrong ScreenMode you might want to set this option and post me the results. Using this option you get a list of all ScreenModes FastView considers to be good enough to display your picture. The final line contains the ScreenMode FastView found to be the best available. MULTISAVE/S This will allow you to save multiple pictures, using the SAVE keyword to specify the extension to be appended to the names of the pictures, see the SAVE keyword for more information. SCREENMODE/K or SM/K People owning VGA monitors or owners of graphics cards may want to tell FastView which ScreenModes it is allowed to choose from when looking for the best ScreenMode to display a certain picture. You can do this with the SCREENMODE option. It accepts a string which specifies which ScreenMode(s) FastView may choose from. This string may contain AmigaDOS patterns (wildcards) for maximum flexibility. Examples: ScreenMode="DBL#?" This will allow FastView only to pick DBLPAL or DBLNTSC modes (ie, ScreenModes which start with 'DBL'. ScreenMode="~(#?low#?)" Using this ScreenMode string FastView will never select any ScreenModes which contain the word 'low'. This means modes like "PAL:Low Res" and "MULTISCAN:Extra-Low Res" won't be picked. Keys while viewing pictures: Arrow keys or the Numeric Keypad can be used to scroll the screen Holding shift while scrolling will use larger steps Holding alt while scrolling scrolls one pixel at the time Space, Enter - Skip to next picture Escape - Exit FastView completely @endnode @node Future "FastView: Future" Here is a list of things I want to add to FastView later: A NOVIEW keyword which will turn FastView into a CLI utility to convert and save pictures in IFF format, without you having to view the actual picture(s). The possibility to load/decode more than one picture while the user is viewing the current one Support for the IFF PBM format produced by DPaint 2 enhanced (pc version) If you have suggestions for new features which you think would be nice to have in FastView, don't hesitate to contact me about them. @endnode @node Bugs "FastView: Known bugs" While you're viewing a picture and you switch back to another screen the FastView screen/window will get deactivated which will break the Delay function. This is because FastView won't receive IntuiTicks messages from Intuition while its window is deactivated, and so can't tell when the Delay time is over. FastView doesn't check the result of CloseScreen(). If you use another program like Lens which opens a window on the FastView screen and you accidently exit FastView while the window is still open, FastView will simply forget about the screen (leaving it opened) and exit. @endnode @node History "FastView: History" Aug 20 1994 - V0.90 - Added GIF decoding Aug 24 1994 - V0.91 - Speeded up HAM conversion routine by almost 20%; Speeded GIF conversion by about 5%; LMB now also exits the viewer when displaying a GIF Aug 25 1994 - V0.92 - Handles interlaced GIFs; Uses LoRes HAM if picture is smaller than 320x256; Displays B&W pictures in Hires 16 colors instead of HAM Aug 26 1994 - V0.93 - Almost doubled IFF displaying speed thanks to the BackFill-Hooks (Other picture types will also benefit from this) Aug 27 1994 - V0.94 - Displays uncompressed IFFs Aug 31 1994 - V0.95 - Finally figured out how to convert HAM8 to 24Bit (it turned out IFF-HAM8 has its control-bits as bit 6 and 7...); Added Dithering for pictures which are converted to HAM or B&W V0.96 - Now outputs info about the picture; Possible to specify multiple pictures on command line and RMB now exits completely when viewing multiple pictures; Uses BusyPtr while decoding; Blanks mouse after decoding V0.97 - Added IFF 24bit decoding using fixed HAM palette; Also added NOINTERLACE command line option Sep 5 1994 - V0.98 - Added variable (Down)Scaling; Now centers picture if it is too small (this avoids the trash at the right-edge due to Hardware limitations) Sep 8 1994 - V0.99 - No longer crashes when a BadCode is encountered in a GIF file Sep 16 1994 - V0.99 - Fixed color-selecting algorithm -- it now does very good color-selecting Sep 17 1994 - V1.00 - Added AGA support (hopefully) and made it Kick2.04 compatible Sep 18 1994 - V1.01 - Added intelligent ViewMode selection if CAMG chunk is missing from an IFF file Sep 19 1994 - V1.02 - Fixed small bug which caused uncompressed HAM8 pictures not to be displayed Sep 20 1994 - V1.03 - Fixed problem with IFF pictures which weren't exactly the same width as the screen; Added rendering to HAM8 for AGA machines Sep 25 1994 - V1.04 - Fixed Enforcer hit when no palette was found in picture; Added Wildcard support Sep 29 1994 - V1.05 - Fixed LoadRGB4 code; Fixed bugs in Wildcard support which caused memory freed twice errors; Fixed HAM8 support Oct 3 1994 - V1.06 - Added simple local-colormap handling code to GIF decoder; When initial codesize was too small or too big GIF decoder crashed, bug fixed Oct 4 1994 - V1.07 - Added Delay keyword; Added keyboard support while viewing/decoding picture Oct 12 1994 - V1.08 - FastView now automatically loads and decodes the next picture in the background for nicer slideshows and faster viewing; Fixed small bugs which caused small uncompressed IFF files to be displayed incorrectly Oct 14 1994 - V1.09 - Finally IFF24->HAM8 works; Removed some more bugs Oct 20 1994 - V1.10 - Added file requester Nov 14 1994 - V1.11 - Fixed enforcer hit (reported by: Richard Hartmann) Nov 24 1994 - V1.13 - RGB to HAM/HAM8 conversion now 10% faster Nov 25 1994 - V1.14 - Sometimes crashed when running low on ChipRam when viewing large pictures -- fixed V1.15 - Uses BestModeID under V39+ to pick the best display type; Added INFO switch on command line which will print the name of the picture at the top of screen V1.16 - Separate 68000 and 68020 versions available Nov 28 1994 - V1.17 - Fixed bug causing excessive HAM-fringing effects while viewing HAM8 pictures (reported by: Edmund Vermeulen) Dec 1 1994 - V1.18 - Fixed bug causing excessive HAM-fringing effects on Kickstart 2.0 (reported by: Remco van Hooff); Fixed bug with ASL requester causing the CurrentDir of the CLI it was started from to be modified (reported by: Jan van den Baard); Fixed bug causing interlaced-GIF's to be screwed up while using the INFO switch (reported by: Martijn Hoogesteger); Fixed INFO-text color-pick bug V1.19 - DELAY was ignored when there was no memory for the 2nd screen -- fixed (reported by: Arthur Pijpers) Dec 6 1994 - V1.20 - Fixed bug in IFF decoder when multiple FORM's are encountered in an IFF file (reported by: Jan van den Baard) V1.21 - Added 'WaitForPic' option. When using the delay option to create a slideshow, WaitForPic will make sure the picture in the background is ready before switching to that picture (requested by: Arthur Pijpers) Dec 8 1994 - V1.22 - Fixed bug with GIF's containing a local colormap. This bug crept in in V1.13 (reported by: Arthur Pijpers) Dec 22 1994 - V1.23 - Fixed bug which a division by zero by BestModeIDA(). V1.24 - FastView now correctly skips the masking bitplane sometimes found in IFF files. Dec 31 1994 - V1.25 - Small bug fixed created by 1.24, FastView accidentaly treated pictures with a transparent color as pictures with a mask. Jan 4 1995 - V1.26 - Fixed aspect ratio when using BestModeID(). Jan 9 1995 - V1.27 - Added JPEG support using the Tower JPEG Codec Class by Christoph Feck. Jan 22 1995 - V1.28 - Added a command line switch to disable BestModeID. Also fixed a problem with WShell. Names which are too long to display above the picture are shortened. V1.29 - Significantly improved quality of pictures rendered in HAM6 and HAM8. Jan 23 1995 - V1.30 - Added GrayScale support for JPEG pictures. Feb 28 1995 - V1.31 - FastView can now store color information of the picture in the comment. The 2nd time the same picture is viewed it will look better due to the precalculated colors Mar 2 1995 - V1.32 - ASL requester now uses a bit more normal values for its initial window-size (requested by: Edmund Vermeulen); FastView now checks if the user specified a path, and copies this in the path field of the requester (requested by: Edmund Vermeulen); Added an option to not blank the mouse Mar 5 1995 - V1.33 - Hopefully improved BestModeID code a bit; Added a IFF saving routine (requested by: Benbuck Nason) Mar 16 1995 - V1.34 - FastView now has an icon (thanks to Edmund Vermeulen) and can be started from Workbench. Several Tool Types are supported to help control FastView from the Workbench Apr 14 1995 - V1.35 - Multiselecting FastView plus some pictures will now cause FastView to display the selected pictures (requested by: Edmund Vermeulen); FastView now has an install script (thanks to Edmund Vermeulen) V1.36 - FastView now pops up the file requester again after viewing some pictures (requested by: Edmund Vermeulen) V1.37 - When using the ROM option FastView now uses WritePixelLine8() instead of WritePixel() Apr 16 1995 - V1.38 - Fixed several sneaky bugs which could cause trash at the right-border of a picture Apr 18 1995 - V1.39 - FastView now supports 2, 16 and 256 color (uncompressed) BMP pictures as well as 24-bit BMP pictures V1.40 - FastView now supports EGA and VGA PCX files; Fixed small bug causing B&W JPEG pictures to be trashed on AGA Apr 21 1995 - V1.41 - Added ROM and WAITFORPIC tooltypes; Fixed bug which caused a crash when a picture is too big to display; When using Delay and WaitForPic FastView didn't exit after showing you the last picture May 2 1995 - V1.42 - Some pictures weren't saved correctly under AGA, fixed; Fixed enforcer hit when passing NULL as the path for the ASL requester under V40 (works fine for V39 and earlier) May 4 1995 - V1.43 - Added DEBUG option; When you select no files in the ASL requester FastView assumes you want to view the entire directory May 5 1995 - V1.44 - Specifying MULTISAVE on the commandline together with SAVE will save all pictures viewed as IFF pictures using the name you specified after SAVE as the extension May 18 1995 - V1.45 - Removed a bug in the 68000 version of FastView which caused some GIF pictures to be trashed; FastView no longers specifies Workbench as the public screen to pop-up on V1.46 - FastView now uses a custom routine to replace BestModeID. This routine will hopefully work correct with graphics cards and/or Kick 2.0; Added SCREENMODE keyword which allows you to specify the name of the monitor you wish to use (supports AmigaDOS patterns) May 19 1995 - V1.47 - Fixed some problems with my new BestModeID code, and added a SCREENMODE ToolType; Added DEFAULTDIR ToolType May 25 1995 - V1.48 - Fixed stupid bug causing an enforcer hit May 26 1995 - V1.49 - Fixed bug causing crashes when exiting FastView which was started from Workbench; Fastview now checks for Ctrl + C and exits when it receives one May 30 1995 - V1.50 - Fixed bug, ROM ToolType now works; Fixed bug which caused some pictures to be saved wrong; Fixed bug which caused pictures to be saved with wrong palette Jun 3 1995 - V1.51 - No longer picks Graphics-card screenmodes for HAM pictures; FastView now will run without monitor drivers (previously you had to use the NBMI option) @endnode @node Ack "FastView: Acknowledgments" Thanks to all who registered so far: Folkert de Gans Øyvind Falch Vincent Zee Glenn J. Shutts Martijn Hoogesteger Bill Bennett R. Veenman Stephan Lichtendahl Tom de Ruyter Robert Guezen Henk Siemer Romen Patzner Thanks to Michael Zucchi for creating ZGif which inspired me to write this program! Thanks to Edmund Vermeulen for the installer script and the FastView icon. Thanks to Romen Patzner for creating a nice MagicWB icon for FastView. Thanks to Jan van den Baard, Richard Hartmann, Remco van Hooff, Martijn Hoogesteger, Jim McKinney, Benbuck Nason, Raymond Penners, Arthur Pijpers, Romen Patzner, Maarten Ploeg, Edmund Vermeulen, Richard de Vos and Vincent Zee for bug reports and suggestions! Thanks to Christoph Feck for creating the Tower JPEG Codec Class which made it very easy for me to add JPEG support in FastView! _ _ // Thanks to \\X/ Amiga for being the best computer ever! @endnode