PTViewer.exe 

This is a native port of PTViewer 3.2 to Windows. 
It does not require Java and runs from CD without 
prior installation. It reads and displays the same 
HTML files as the Java version. It is therefor possible
to distribute shared tours displayable on any system 
(Linux, MacOS, Windows, Java, non-Java) on a single 
CD. Just supply the Java-viewer together with the 
.exe version. For a detailed explanation of all 
PTViewer commands, see my website 
<http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch>

Like the Java viewer, PTViewer.exe may be invoked in
three ways:
(1) Load a HTML-file containing a PTViewer applet tag.
This can be done via file-dialog or by dragging and dropping
the HTML file onto PTViewer.exe
(2) Directly load a Jpeg or Quicktime ('.mov') panorama
(same procedure as (1), for QuicktimeVR see the notes
in the PTViewer documentation).
(3) Supply a HTML file named "default.html" with
a PTViewer applet tag in the same directory as
PTViewer.exe. This will be automatically opened
when PTViewer.exe is started. This allows you to
set up autostart tours.

Some PTViewer extensions are included:
PTMViewer for Quicktime cubes, cylinders and objects,
PTZoom, PTROI and PTCompass. All recent additions are included
as well (HDR etc). 

There are some restrictions. The most severe is that
GIF images are not supported. Use PNG instead
which can be used for transparent images
also, and which is also understood by the
Java-version.

PTViewer.exe is compiled using gcj, the Java
compiler from the FSF. Unfortunatly, the gcj-libraries
lack support for AWT (the classes required for
doing any graphics) so I had to write my own version
of AWT. This was not trivial, expect bugs. One 
strange feature that I did not manage to track down
is a speed increase of the viewer if a DOS window
is open at the same time. If someone has a clue
please tell me.

In the course of this work I rewrote parts of
PTViewer to become compatible with gcj including some
optimization of the math routines. An updated version
of the Java viewer will be published soon.

I have packaged PTViewer.exe together with a sample
VR-panorama here:
<http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/PTViewerexe/PTViewerexe.zip>

License:

This program (PTViewer.exe) is distributed under the terms
of the GNU public license. The license text is included in
the file COPYING. As a special addition, the copyright holder of this
program allows you to distribute copies of this program
without supplying the source code (which currently is not
included anyway) provided that each distributed copy of
this program includes
(a) the license text (this file and the file COPYING)
(b) a notice describing where and how to obtain free copies
of this program.

PTViewer.exe makes use of a couple of free resources 
listed below:

(1) The gcj-runtime library "libgcj.a". 

(2) This software is based in part on the work of
the Independent JPEG Group. It is linked with their JPEG library
(www.jpeg.org)

(3) This software is linked with the  PNG library to read
PNG format images. This library is Copyright (c) 1995, 
1996 Guy Eric Schalnat, Group 42, Inc.



Helmut Dersch

02/14/2004