Frozen Fish 1: Amiga/FrozenFish-Apr94.iso/bbs/alib/d6xx/d670/mostra.lha/Mostra/Mostra.tex

Text File | 1992-05-21 | 20KB | 412 lines

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\def\Mostra{{\twelvess Mostra}}
\centerline{\big Mostra 1.06}
\vskip 1cm
\centerline{\big A Universal IFF Viewer}
\vskip 1cm
\centerline{\ig \copyright\ 1990,1991,1992 Sebastiano Vigna}
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\parindent=40pt
\parskip=10pt plus 1pt minus 1pt
\baselineskip=15pt
\noindent There are many utilities for viewing IFF ILBM files, but none I'd seen
until now met the goal of displaying every IFF picture; each had its
idiosyncrasies.  If one viewer could display overscan pictures, then every
picture with more than 640 pixels on a line would be shifted like there were 700
pixels; some programs could only show a directory of pictures by forcing the
user to enter all the filenames; some programs would crash with PAL pictures;
others would do the same with pictures larger than any screen; it was rare to
have an option to force a screen mode (for the tech-folks out there:  old IFF
ILBM files don't have the CAMG chunk!); there were no comfortable file
requesters for use when you didn't know the exact name of the file (who can
remember GRABBiT file names?); pressing the right mouse button could cause a
useless drag bar to corrupt the picture$\ldots$

If a program had one feature, it lacked another, so I decided to write a show
utility.  I never would have succeeded without the best friend of an Amiga
programmer:  the ARP library.  If I have been able to write \Mostra, it's only
to ARP's credit.  Pattern matching, resource tracking, powerful resident
functions$\ldots$ The only drawback is that you {\it must\/} have the
arp.library (V39!) in your libs:  directory in order to run \Mostra.  Otherwise,
a message will be displayed, and \Mostra\ will refuse to run. However, the next release of
\Mostra\ will work only under Release 2 and will not need arp.library.
\Mostra\ is a pure program, i.e., it can be made resident.

Note that you can run \Mostra\ from Workbench:  called by itself it will pop the
file requester and will show you pictures until you select {\twelvett CANCEL} or
close the file requester window.  Otherwise, you can select multiple icons, or
you can change the default tool of your pictures.  Note that if you do this with
an IFF CAT or LIST you will have an automatic little slideshow.

\Mostra\ can process {\it any\/} IFF ILBM file; this means not only IFF ILBM
FORMs, but also nested ILBM, FTXT, FORMs, CATs, LISTs and PROPs!  It will
always try to find the screen type that fits the best, and won't give up if
you want to see 1$\times$1 brushes or {\it very\/} large pictures:  Tom
tried up to 5120$\times$4096 (thanks Tom). In any case, you can force the
screen type with several options.

One of the major features in this release is support for multi-palette
pictures, i.e., pictures with the new PCHG chunk which should substitute the
old CTBL and SHAM chunks. See the Changes.doc file for additional
informations. SHAM is still supported, but the support of CTBL pictures via
external call has been dropped since it was shown to be unreliable.


To get the syntax in AmigaDOS style type:

{\obeylines
\parindent=0pt
\twelvett
M ?
\vskip 10pt
\twelverm
This will produce the input template:
\vskip 10pt
\twelvett
{\parskip=0pt Files/$\ldots$,A=All/S,R=Repeat/S,Q=Quiet/S,NoFastDraw/S,
C=Center/S,B=BlackBackground/S,W=Width/K,H=Height/K,Cycle/S,
Secs/K,Fade/K,NO=NoStartup/S,Batch/K,LockPic/S,
N=NoMouse/S,F=FreeMouse/S,LockKeys/S,NA=NoActivate/S,DB=DoubleBuffering/S,
Hires/S,Lace/S,Lores/S,NoLace/S,HAM/S,Halfbrite/S}
\vskip 10pt
\twelverm
If you ask for more help by typing `?' again, you will see:
\vskip 10pt
\twelvett
{\parskip=0pt \Mostra\ 1.06 \copyright\ 1990,1991,1992 Sebastiano Vigna
Usage: M <wildcards [...] | !> [All] [Repeat] [Quiet] [NoFastDraw]
[Center] [BlackBackground] [Width n] [Height n] [Cycle]
[Secs time] [Fade speed] [NoStartup] [Batch file] [LockPic]
[NoMouse] [FreeMouse] [LockKeys] [NoActivate] [DoubleBuffering]
[Hires | Lores] [Lace | NoLace] [HAM | Halfbrite]}
\vskip 10pt
\twelverm
The same help is displayed if you call \Mostra\ with no arguments.
}

\Mostra's first argument is a list of patterns (or file names) as long as you
want; you will get every picture whose name matches one of the patterns.

Alternatively, you can type only the `!' character, and \Mostra\ will display
the famous Heath File Requester, allowing you to scan the entire file system.

When you're tired of looking at the picture, move the mouse pointer to the very
top of the screen and press the right button (you can also press the {\twelvett
RETURN}, {\twelvett SPACE} or {\twelvett ESCAPE} keys).  You can drag or depth-
arrange the screen with the left mouse button (the gadgets are invisible, but
they really are there!).  {\twelvett TAB} will toggle on/off color cycling.  To
stop pattern matching or IFF scanning use {\twelvett CTRL-C} at any moment.

If the screen size is less than the size of the picture, you can move around
with cursor keys by themselves (moving by 8 pixels) or in combination with the
{\twelvett SHIFT} (a screenful minus 16 pixels), {\twelvett ALT} (which
brings you to the borders), or
{\twelvett CTRL} (16 pixels) keys.  A noteworthy feature of
\Mostra\ is that the picture is {\it not\/} decrunched all at one time in a very
large chunk of memory; instead, a fast LM routine decrunches the file in
real-time every time you move (the routine could be faster, but it has lots of
controls to get rid of damaged IFF BODY chunks; safety always first).  This is
not as fast as the memory-eating method, but I think it's {\it much\/} better!
Very large pictures (like 800$\times$900) will be shown in a full screen
(generated on the fly at Workbench size) which you can move around.  Overscan
pictures will retain their size of it's not greater than 362$\times$283 lo-res
pixels (362$\times$241 on a NTSC Amiga).  For hi-res pictures, there is also a
704 pixel width limit due to Intuition (724 under Release 2).  Small brushes
will be shown in a minimum 256$\times$128 pixel screen.  Of course, moving
vertically with multi-palette pictures involves a high system overhead,
since CopperLists are continuously built and deleted.

A weird effect of this method is that you can see pictures that can't even be
{\it loaded\/} into your Amiga.  Let's suppose you have a really crunched
picture; the BODY chunk and a 256$\times$256 lo-res screen could take much less
space than the decrunched picture, so you could create pictures that only
\Mostra\ could let you see in all of their parts.  Why you would want to do
this, well, that's another matter.

\medskip
Then we have a lot of options (parentheses show how to shorten 'em):

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett ALL (A)} recursively scans all of the subdirectories
during the wildcard search.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett REPEAT (R)} will endlessly restart from the first
pattern when it has finished with the last; if you used the `!' line arguments,
the file requester will pop up after every picture until you {\twelvett CANCEL}
or close.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett QUIET (Q)} turns off all messages except in case of
error.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett NOFASTDRAW} leaves the program at priority 0; by
default, \Mostra\ will surround the BODY decrunching operations with a
SetTaskPri(1).  This will not lock the system, but in a multitasking situation
\Mostra\ will perform quickly when needed.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett CENTER (C)} will force the screen to be centered
(640$\times$200 pictures on PAL screens look so ugly$\ldots$) and will use
overscan if necessary.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett BLACKBACKGROUND (B)} will create a 0-bitplane (almost
no memory consumed!) black screen that will stay until you saw the last picture.
This is for aesthetic purposes only.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett WIDTH} and {\twelvett HEIGHT (W,H)} want an argument
that specifies the dimensions of the viewing screen.  However, \Mostra\ is an
intelligent program, and will almost always find the correct screen by itself.
WARNING:  dimensions allowed are from 64 to 1024, at your own risk.  Your Amiga
won't crash, but weird things can happen$\ldots$

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett CYCLE} will automatically activate color cycling on
every picture.  Usually this happens only by request, through {\twelvett TAB}.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett SECS} must be followed by a number between 0 and 1000
(the zero delay was a request from a BIXen).  \Mostra\ will display the picture
for the number of seconds specified, but you can skip it with mouse, {\twelvett
RETURN}, {\twelvett SPACE}, and {\twelvett ESCAPE} keys as always or stop the
show with {\twelvett CTRL-C}.  Cursor keys are disabled.  Greatly reworked on
Warren's request.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett FADE} lets you specify a speed for pictures to fade
in and out.  Valid numbers are 1 to 4, with four the slowest.  Note that HAM
pictures can't be faded.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett NOMOUSE (N)} will hide the mouse pointer while
\Mostra\ is displaying a picture.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett FREEMOUSE (F)} will let you pass from one picture to
another by clicking either of the mouse buttons at any position on the screen.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett LOCKKEYS} will discard any input from the
keyboard during the display.  You must use the mouse to pass to the
following picture.  Note that if {\twelvett FREEMOUSE} is not
activated, the only way to go is clicking the right mouse button while
the mouse pointer is at the top of the screen.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett LOCKPIC} will lock the picture displayed.  You won't
be able to scroll around, but the memory in which the file is loaded will be
immediately freed after the decompression, thus minimizing the memory usage.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett NOACTIVATE (NA)} will inhibit the activation of the
picture screens, so you can keep on typing on your current screen.  This was a
request from Tom.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett DOUBLEBUFFERING (DB)} sets a double buffering show
mode:  while a new picture is being loaded you see the old one, no Workbench
pop-up or black screens.  Eats lots of memory, too.  Again, a request from Tom.
(Note:  it's canceled if you call the file requester.)

Centering is no longer performed via Preferences, so if you move the screen the
centering will go away.  {\twelvett NOSTARTUP} and {\twelvett BATCH} options
will be discussed later.

Now, the graphics options.  You can force all screens to be {\twelvett HIRES} or
{\twelvett LORES}, {\twelvett LACE} or {\twelvett NOLACE}, {\twelvett HAM} or
{\twelvett HALFBRITE}.  Note that if \Mostra\ finds a six bitplane picture with
no indications (no CAMG chunk), it won't set the {\twelvett HAM} flag by
default.  These flags are ``dumb,'' that is, they'll do exactly what you say,
even if it is meaningless.  However, if you use both {\twelvett HALFBRITE} and
{\twelvett HAM} together, only the former will take place.

And now, some examples:

\twelvett
M MyPics:* SECS 5 FADE 1 NOMOUSE BLACKBACKGROUND REPEAT CENTER ALL

\twelverm

\noindent will generate a real (and endless!) slide show of the pictures in the
MyPics:  dir and in all its subdirs, centered and with no mouse pointer hanging
around.  In order to stop the slide show, you must press {\twelvett CTRL-C}.

\twelvett
M df0:*.image df0:pictures/*.pic HIRES LACE

\twelverm
\noindent will show the files ending with .image on the drive df0:  and the
files ending with .pic in the directory df0:pictures.  \Mostra\ will be forced
to use high resolution, interlaced screens.  Setting the {\twelvett HIRES} flag
on pictures with more than 4 bitplanes usually leads you to see absolutely
nothing.

\twelvett
M dh0:hirespic LORES NOLACE

\twelverm
\noindent will show a hi-res picture in lo-res (`zooming in').  You can move
around with the cursor keys as described above.

{\twelvett WIDTH} and {\twelvett HEIGHT} can be useful when you have a picture
that cannot be displayed because there's not enough Chip RAM (you get the
``Can't open Screen'' error message).  In such a case, try:

\twelvett
M pic WIDTH 128 HEIGHT 128

\twelverm
\noindent This will usually allow you to at least get a peek at something.


\vskip 1.5cm
\centerline{\big Advanced features}
\vskip 0.5cm


\noindent For maximum flexibility, \Mostra\ allows you to use ``startup'' files
and ``startup'' Tool Types, with which you can configure the program to suit your
tastes.

There is a standard startup file, called `S:Startup-Mostra'.  \Mostra\ will
search for it when run from CLI.  The format of this file is {\it exactly\/} the
same as the \Mostra\ line format minus the command name ({\twelvett M}).
Commands may be spread out over several lines or gathered together onto a single
line.  Every switch or keyword in the startup file will act as a default, and
will be toggled or superseded by any command line arguments.  Command line
switches will act as toggles (if your startup file has the keyword {\twelvett
ALL} and you say {\twelvett M * ALL}, you {\it won't\/} go into subdirectories),
while keywords simply assert the new value (if you have {\twelvett FADE 1} in
your startup file and you say {\twelvett FADE 3} in the command line, your
pictures will be faded at speed 3).

Two options concern startup files:

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett NOSTARTUP} inhibit the search for startup files,
useful if you have one of them and you want to specify your options from
scratch; it can be shortened with {\twelvett NO}.

\item{$\bullet$}{\twelvett BATCH} wants a complete path/filename that \Mostra\
will use as startup file.

From the WB side, you can write the startup options in the Tool Types of the
\Mostra\ icon, and it will use them.  The format is the same of
`Startup-Mostra'.  Please note that {\twelvett FADE=1}, {\twelvett WIDTH=352}
are valid, but {\twelvett FREEMOUSE=ON} is not; use only {\twelvett FREEMOUSE}.

Or you can set the first Tool Type of a project icon to {\twelvett STARTUP} and
put your options in the following lines; the project picture file will be shown
with those options when you double-click its icon.  You can do the same thing
with an icon that has no related file, and put some wildcards in the Tool Type.
The wildcards will then be shown with those options.  If you don't put in
wildcards, you get a ``style'' icon:  you can {\twelvett SHIFT} click some
icons, {\twelvett SHIFT} click the ``style'' icon (in {\it this\/} order) and
then {\twelvett SHIFT} double-click the \Mostra\ icon (or directly {\twelvett
SHIFT} double-click the last icon, if its default tool is \Mostra):  you will
see the selected picture files with the options specified in the style icon.
The style icon by itself will pop up the file requester.  Please note that even
an icon with wildcards can be used as a style icon because multiple selections
supersede wildcards.

I know, it seems a little twisted, but using it you'll find, instead, that it's
the way you'd think.

{\bf WARNING}:  strange interactions can take place.  If you have some picture
icons, and you {\twelvett SHIFT} click all but one of them and then you
{\twelvett SHIFT} double click the last {\it and\/} the last picture icon you
clicked had some {\twelvett STARTUP} options, you will see {\it all\/} of the
pictures with those options.  Right?

For curious/tech/interested people, here is the exact algorithm:

\item{1.} If sm\_NumArgs$>$1 (the user started \Mostra\ with al least an icon
argument), check if sm\_ArgList[1] (the first `real' argument) has Tool Types
with first Tool Type = {\twelvett STARTUP}.  If so, scan the whole Tool Types list
like a command line, accepting mixed commands on a single Tool Type as well as
separated commands in separated Tool Types.

\item{2.} If 1.\ goes wrong, check the \Mostra\ icon Tool Types, and take them as
a command line.  (Note:  {\twelvett STARTUP} is not requested.)

\item{3.} Now, if sm\_NumArgs$>$1, check every sc\_ArgList[i] with i$>$0 and if
there is a related file ({\it not\/} a .info file!) generate a list of arguments
as if the user entered them manually, {\it superseding\/} eventual
filenames/wildcards found in 1.\ and 2.


\noindent Now, examples, by means of common problems:


\item{1.} ``I have a hundred pictures on my 360M hard disk, and I've organized
them in a few groups.  How can I make simple slideshows, with each group
separate?''

Simple:  Create a project icon for each group, and add a Tool Type {\twelvett
STARTUP}.  Then add a Tool Type like {\twelvett PICS:Group1/* ALL SECS 5 CENTER}
to choose your options, set the default tool to {\twelvett C:M} (or wherever you
put it) and double-click (of course, this must be done with every group icon).
Don't give the icons the same name as a directory, or \Mostra\ will collapse in
confusion.


\item{2.} ``I want to always see the black screen when I start from WB.''

Set a \Mostra\ Tool Type to {\twelvett BLACKBACKGROUND}.


\item{3.} ``I have some pictures.  Sometimes I want to see a few of them with a
full screen and no mouse, sometimes with a 128$\times$128 screen, sometimes
centered.''

Create three ``style'' icons.  Each icon must have as its first Tool Type
{\twelvett STARTUP}, and the following ones must be something like {\twelvett
NOMOUSE}, {\twelvett WIDTH 128 HEIGHT 128} and {\twelvett CENTER}.  The default
tool must be {\twelvett C:M}.  When you want to see in a certain style,
{\twelvett SHIFT} click the picture icons and {\it then\/} {\twelvett SHIFT}
double-click the style icon you desire.


\item{4.} ``I like to click my pics one at a time, each one with different
options.  I'd like also to see them in irregular groups, each picture with its
options.''

You need a psycho-analyst, not \Mostra.


\vskip 1.5cm
\centerline{\big Acknowledgments}
\vskip 0.5cm

I wish to thank some people, first of all the ARP team for the arp.library
and the SAS team for the best Amiga C compiler. Speed and compactness of
\Mostra\ come from the fabulous 5.10b release. Also I would like to thank the
people that encouraged me someway or helped me to find bugs, in particular
Warren Block, Tom Rokicki, Christopher A. Wichura and Loren Wilton.

If you're reading this, you probably have access to a \TeX\ system.  Anyway, if
you spent a good part of your time preparing and printing documents, I'd suggest
you to take a look at Amiga\TeX, a wonderful package from Radical Eye Software
which is probably the best implementation of \TeX\ you can
find on any computer.

\Mostra\ is \copyright\ 1990,1991,1992 Sebastiano Vigna and it's not public
domain: it is shareware. You should send me \$20 (or more, why not?) if you find
it useful.  Please don't send checks drawn on a US bank, they're almost
impossible to cash.  I'd prefer postal money orders, currency or checks drawn
on an italian bank (in this order). \Mostra\ is freely distributable as long as
all of its files are included in their original form without additions,
deletions, or modifications of any kind, and only a nominal fee is charged for
its distribution. This software is provided ``AS IS'' without warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied. By using \Mostra, you agree to accept the
entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program.

Comments, complaints, desiderata are welcome.

\vskip 1cm
{\obeylines\parskip=0pt
\twelvett Sebastiano Vigna
    Via Valparaiso 18
    I-20144 Milano MI
\vskip 0.5cm
    BIX: svigna
    INTERNET: [e-mail]
    UUCP:seba\[e-mail]
         ...$\{$uunet$|$pyramid$|$rutgers$\}$!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmita!sebamiga!seba
    FIDO: 2:331/301.6 (aka 2:21301/6)}
\bye