Welcome to The NV's Helpsystem What you're reading right now is a "Help screen". Most Help screens have some highlighted items ("Help keywords") on them that lead to another Help screen. Press F5 or double click on the title line to enlarge or restore the size of the help screen. You may navigate through the help topics with TAB or SHIFT+TAB and then press Enter to pick a topic Using the mouse simply click on an interesting keyword. Press ESC to exit help. The NOMSSI Viewer This is a graphics file viewer, that reads pictures archived in files with different graphics file formats and displays them using the available SuperVGA vide modes of your machine. i Press F3 or click on the item 'F3 Load' in the status line to open the dialog box "Load an image file". The files can be viewed one at a time or selected for a Slide show with full user control. One can easily generate an array of reduced images using high quality image reduction. Once loaded, the images can undergo simple transformations and color editing, and then be dumped to a palette color file (TIFF, BMP or TGA). The NOMSSI Viewer can be customized using the Options submenu. Open the Preferences dialog box (Ctrl+F9) or the display dialog box (F9). All default values and miscellaneous switches can be set and saved there. ) Choose a topic from the following list: Load image Graphic tools SlideShow Setup Shortcuts Image files informations register Index Help Index The NOMSSI Viewer on-line help topics. O Auto [ OK ] B Setup Copying Beep BMP P C Path image files PCX [ Cancel ] Load cancel R Setup Copying Raster image Center Picture Range error Change drive Registration Continue error Rename Contrast Control panel S Copy Search D Selecting image format Scan DOS shell Scanning Shortcuts E Slideshow SlideShow Exit Slide options [ SlideShow F [ Start Sort File SVGA Read/Write error System Copy to Save Options Copying selected files Text viewer Commands T Scale TGA G The TIFF GIF Toggle video graphic tools ClearBuffer graphic resolution Gray * U I Use buffer Uses driver IFF ILBM/PBM Inputline image name V Invalid error View J View JFIF W JFIF color reduction Welcome Helpsystem L Window Window Close Load image file Window Close ] Window Window M Window Size/Move Window Tile Inputline image file name Name Enter directory path and/or file name. A file mask is allowed. A double click on the input line also complete the input. The history list attached to this box saves whatever text you have typed in the input line. You can use it to re-enter previously entered text. E Press Esc to exit from the history list without making a selection. ` Related information: Load image graphic tools Welcome Online The file list Files ..\ FILENM04.GIF NVDMP001.TIF TOOLS\ FILENM05.PCX NVDMP002.TIF TEXTS\ FILENM06.PCX NVDMP003.TIF NVIEWER.TIF\ FILENM07.TGA FILENM01.BMP FILENM08.TGA FILENM02.BMP FILENM09.TIF FILENM03.GIF FILENM10.TIF The list shows all files in the current directory which meet the file mask, and the sub directories. To force a re-read of the current directory (i.e. after changing the floppy from a floppy drive), enter a new file mask in the input line or re-select drive or change the file mask in filter. A single file can be selected (highligthen) with the arrow keys, the Home/End keys, the Ctrl + PgUp/PgDn keys or using incremental search: type small letters for files and capital letters for directories. The cursor jumps to the next file matching your input. Backspace go back, '.' (period) jumps to the extension. To select a file with the mouse, move through the list with the horizontal scroll bar and click once on its name with the left button. To select a list of files (usefull for Slideshow or file management operations like copy, move, delete), toggle tagging with the space bar or the right mouse button. To complete the input: press Enter or use the Load-button (Alt L) or double click on the fileinput line or on a file name. This leads to a directory change if the selected file name was a directory. The previously visited sub-directory is then highlighten. ` Related information: Load image graphic tools Welcome Online Change drive This list box shows all autodetected drives in your system. Use the arrow keys to focus a drive name and press the space bar or double click with the left mouse button to select a new drive. ~ Press Enter to select the focused drive and get back to the file list. The change will only be effective if no errors occur. G Related information: Load image The system Selecting an image file format mask Filter ( ) *.TIF ( ) *.PCX ( ) *.GIF ( ) *.BMP ( ) *.TGA ( ) *.LBM ( ) *.JPG ( ) *.* The selected item in this field is the default file mask used to read the current directory. The list corresponds to the normal file masks for the supported image file formats. You can overwrite this default by entering a new mask in the input line. L Press Enter to select the focused file mask and get back to the file list. I Related information: Load image Welcome Online [ Options ] Click on this button or use the F9 key to open the control panel and setup default values. [ Related information: Control panel Load image Welcome Online [ Load ] Click on this button or press Enter to load and display the selected image file in the file list. This leads to a directory switch only when the currently selected name is a directory. ` Related information: Load image graphic tools Welcome Online [ Cancel ] Close the dialog box without making any changes. You may also use ESC. I Related information: Load image Welcome Online Scan Scan all files currently in the file list for image files. Get picture informations (Width, Height, Compression...) and display them in the file info panel. The file list contains only valid image files after the scan is done. n Related information: Auto Load image graphic tools Welcome Online [ SlideShow ] This button opens a dialog box with Slideshow options to let you adjust the parameters and start the slide show. You must have tagged at least two files to have access to the button. & Also use F8 or the shortcut Alt Related topics: Load image graphic tools Welcome Online Load an image file or SHIFT+TAB selects the next or previous field within the dialog box, each field also has a specific shortcut. This dialog box is a mix of command line and menu driven user interface. To load a file, either enter the file name in the fileinput line or select a file from the file list. Double click on the file name, the fileinput line or press return to start loading. To tag a file, select it in the file list with the *right* mouse button or use the arrow keys to select and press the space bar. You may also use the gray +, - or * for group selection, deselection or to reverse tags. F10 switch to the menu bar. input Files Change drive Filter Options Load Cancel SlideShow Scan graphic tools Welcome Online Mode Select the standard video mode, which is used for graphics and slideshow display. Be aware the option Mode auto from Picture-field can alter this behaviour: when the option is checked, The NOMSSI Viewer automatically switchs to a screen resolution near the picture size. A video mode is a unique combination of screen resolution and the number of colors that can be displayed simultaneously. The list of available graphics modes varies depending on the VGA chipset and the amount of video memory installed. The current monitor may be unable to support some available graphics resolutions, use the DEL-key to disable a mode in the list. You will have to delete the NV.CFG file to have it enabled again. > Related information: Options Welcome Online Color depth The color depth is the number of colors that can be displayed simultaneously. It is often given in bits per pixel. Each SuperVGA card has video mode with 8 bits per pixel, which amount to 256 colors. These colors can be selected from a wider palette of colors. The so-called HiColor modes have 15 or 16 bits per pixel. SuperVGA modes with 24 bits per pixel (16,777,216 unique colors) provide the best representation of a color image for human eyes, they are refered to as "TrueColor" modes. Video modes with lower bits per pixel as the currently selected will also be considered and used for display when the Mode auto option from the Picture-field is checked. While displaying graphics files with a higher color depth as the actually selected video mode, some color informations (image quality) will be lost. The NOMSSI Viewer offers a palette of quantization methods with different quality/speed ratios. Contrast The brigthness and contrast controls (graphic tools) act like the brightness and contrast button on a television set. They allow to to adjust the colors while the image is on-screen. However, a better accuracy is needed while reproducing the colors of digitized pictures from other devices, especially pictures from image scanners. The NOMSSI Viewer uses exponential curves, analytically described with the exponent "gamma", as device-dependent correction curves. H ( ) linear Gamma = 1.0. No correction of the color intensity is performed. This works well with all computer-generated pictures and most of the others, which are already corrected for monitor output. H ( ) Monitor Gamma = 2.2 is. lighten the mid-tones for monitor output. Press Alt+F9 while viewing image to select this gamma value. H ( ) user defined This option enables the 'Gamma' input line. You can specify a gamma value between 0.1 and 7. Values under 1.0 darkens the image midtones, values over 1.0 lightens the midtones. Try a value near 1.8. > Related information: Options Welcome Online [X] Scale Down Rescale large graphics down to fit the screen size. The height and width are set to the screen height and width, or the box height and width, in the case of an image array. C [X] Aspect ratio Aspect Ratio is used in combination with Scale Down. When Aspect Ratio is checked, The NOMSSI Viewer will compute a new width or height to conserve the aspect ratio if the distortion exceeds a certain tolerance. The treshold value is currently hard coded. The NOMSSI Viewer will also enlarge an image to fit the screen size when Aspect Ratio is not checked. Normally the images are only reduced. > Related information: Options Welcome Online [X] Mode auto When checked, The NOMSSI Viewer automatically selects a video mode to display each image, using the graphics mode with the lowest resolution and color depth from the list of supported modes that will fully contains the picture. When Mode auto is unchecked, the user-selected video mode (graphic resolution and color depth) will be used for all images. This video mode is always used to catalogue (image arrays). > Related information: Options Welcome Online [X] Center If checked, small pictures are positioned in the middle of the screen, otherwise the image start at the top left corner of the screen. 2 Exception: TIFF tiled images cannot be centered. > Related information: Options Welcome Online [ ] Tile The picture is mirrored and used as pattern to form a grid. Small pictures (icons) will form a wallpaper background. > Related information: Options Welcome Online [ ] VESA driver Normally, The NOMSSI Viewer autodetects the native VGA chipset in your machine and works with chipset-dependent code. Checking VESA driver forces the use of the Video Electronics Standards Association (V.E.S.A) recommended interface, which is chipset-independent and supported by different manufacturers. [ A SuperVGA video card can be made compatible to the VESA recommended extensions trough an external VESA "TSR" (Terminate and Stay Resident) program that provides extensions to the Video BIOS routine. You may already have a VESA TSR for your video card, check your drivers disk for it. Also check the universal VESA VBE at SimTel (see README.NV). If your SuperVGA is configured to support VESA modes, then The NOMSSI Viewer will automatically detect the mode numbers that corresponds to available video modes. ? Related information: Options Welcome Online [ ] EMS Enables the uses of expanded memory EMS. This is normally the fastest buffer medium. An EMS-driver (EMM386) muss have been installed in your system. When you check Use buffer, the image is first loaded into a buffer on EMS, XMS or disk and then displayed. The option will be ignored if you have no or not enough EMS/XMS/disk-memory (EMM386 or HIMEM.SYS not installed). I Related information: Buffer Options Welcome Online [ ] XMS Enables the uses of extended memory XMS. This buffer medium is noticeably slower than EMS. You will need to have HIMEM.SYS installed in your system to access XMS memory. I Related information: Buffer Options Welcome Online [ ] Disk Enables the uses of Disk space as virtual memory. This is normally the slowest buffer medium. The directories in your TEMP environment variable are used to allocate disk space. I Related information: Buffer Options Welcome Online Buffer The image is first loaded to a buffer when at least one buffer medium is checked, then displayed. An image can be buffered on more than one medium at a time (EMS, XMS and Disk). Every checked options enables the use of the corresponding buffer medium. The selection is ignored if you don't have enough EMS/XMS/disk-memory (EMM386 or HIMEM.SYS not installed). Note that the allocated buffer space is not recovered if The NOMSSI Viewer terminates prematurely while loading an image. You will need to delete the temporary files on disk or restart the DOS session (reboot) to release the memory blocks in EMS or XMS owned by the buffer. A buffer improves the slideshow quality, the next image can be loaded while the current image is displayed. It is a prerequisite to build image arrays. a Related information: EMS XMS Disk Clear Options Welcome Online [ ] Clear Buffer A buffer is normally cleared (filled with zero) as soon as created. This is needed for multi-images files and also to test that there is really enough memory allocated, but it can take a while in the case of huge disk buffers. Disabling the initialization pass should speed up the loading process. I Related information: Buffer Options Welcome Online [X] Confirmations The NOMSSI Viewer will ask you to confirm before deleting files and prompt more information panels, P Related information: Miscellaneous Options Welcome Online [ ] Auto scan [x] When Auto scan is on (checked), The NOMSSI Viewer automatically filters the files and get file informations whenever the current directory is changed. h [ ] When the option is disabled (unchecked), you can perform file filtering using the [ ]-button. P Related information: Miscellaneous Options Welcome Online [ ] Beep When Beep is on (checked), a beep is generated as soon as the loading operation is terminated. P Related information: Miscellaneous Options Welcome Online [X] ScreenSaver Related information: Miscellaneous Options Welcome Online [ ] Keep JPEG cache If checked, the table used to decode JPEG files is not created again for each JPEG file, it is stored in memory (cache). Enable this option you have enough free HEAP space (from the menu bar). P Related information: Miscellaneous Options Welcome Online TIFF, GIF and BMP files may have several images (pages) in them. GIF pages are shown in turn without pause, TIFF and BMP are displayed with a pause between the pages. > Related information: Options Welcome Online [X] Continue on error Do not cancel viewing on some faulty image files. When checked [X], The NOMSSI Viewer will try to display at list a tile of the picture. P Related information: Miscellaneous Options Welcome Online [ ] Beep error When Beep error is on (checked), an alarm tone is generated if an error occured during the loading operation. P Related information: Miscellaneous Options Welcome Online [ ] Monochrome Related information: Miscellaneous Options Welcome Online [ ] Hardware paning [x] Use very fast Hardware panning, with some limtations: the whole image has to fit into the video memory or it will be truncated; there are also some segment problems with some chipsets in standard VGA 320x200 256 colors mode. [ ] use external buffer media (Memory, EMS, XMS, Disk) to reload image tiles. This can be slow, but there is no limits to the image size. P Related information: Miscellaneous Options Welcome Online [ ] Hardware Cursor Some chipset have an hardware cursor feature built-in. The NOMSSI Viewer uses it as pointer device when the option is checked. P Related information: Miscellaneous Options Welcome Online Miscellaneous Related information: Beep Auto Continue error Options Welcome Online Path to the image files This input line contains the standard directory, where The NOMSSI Viewer looks for image files at start. This default can be overwritten at start using a command line parameter, i.e.: H C:\> NV.EXE . (forces the use of the current DOS directory) The NOMSSI Viewer either writes files (saved images or catalog files) at this location or it uses the root of the start drive if no default directory is specified. ? Related information: Options Welcome Online [ OK ] Press or click on the OK button to save your inputs. The NOMSSI Viewer checks and saves them in the NV.CFG file if they are valid and then closes the dialog box. Otherwise it selects the invalid fields in turn to let you correct them. You can nevertheless cancel the input. + You may also use Enter or hotkey Alt see also: Options Welcome Online [ Cancel ] Close the dialog box without any change. The NV.CFG file is not updated. ESC is the corresponding key, you can also use the hotkey Alt Related information: Options Welcome Online Display options Press F9 to open the control panel with the display options. You can also press Ctrl+F9 to open the Preferences-panel, allowing you to customize The NOMSSI Viewer. Use hotkeys to execute an active Command. Use TAB or SHIFT+TAB to select (highlight) a field. The following fields are available: b Image Picture Scale Scale Auto switch Center Picture Mosaic Image editing Contrast Graphic tools Video mode Resolution Color depth Quantization Color reduction methods Miscellaneous Beep Auto buffer VESA driver Pages Error behavior Buffer Others Save Your default values will be saved in the NV.CFG file. Welcome Online Preferences Use this dialog box to set the default sort method in the file list. Files may be sorted alphanumerically, by size or by time. N The values in this dialog box are first saved when you use the setup window. Welcome Online Options|Save This command saves the current settings to the configuration file NV.CFG, that is, all display settings and preferences. The configuration file is loaded automatically at startup from the NOMSSI Viewer-directory. Welcome Online File list sort Sort by allows you to change the sequence files in the 'Load' dialog box are displayed in. The files can be sorted using the following options Name: Files are sorted alphanumerically Time: Files are sorted by time, the newest files are normally moved to the top of the list. Files with identical time stamps are sorted alphnumerically Size: Files are sorted by size, the largest files are first inserted in the list. The order is either ascending or descending, depending on the Sort Direction Normal : The files are sorted as mentioned above Reverse: The ordering is reversed, i.e. tiny or old files are now at the top of the list. Directories are always inserted at the top of the list. graphic mode tools Help Press F1 while the image is displayed to pop an help screen with file and graphic mode informations and a short description of the available commands. Any subsequent mouse or key event will quit the help. Quit Slideshow Space bar Freeze slide (Mouse right button) Enter Next slide (Mouse left button) TAB Reverse slide ordering ESC Exit slide show/view, Cancel loading Single image Press the right mouse button or ESC to exit. If you press Enter or click on the left mouse button, The NOMSSI Viewer will try to locate and display the next image in the file list. Panning A picture larger than the current screen size can be scrolled horizontaly and verticaly over the screen limits with the cursor and the PgUp/PgDn keys (soft scroll). > You can speed up the scrolling significantly by checking "[x] Hardware scroll" from the Preferences dialog box. The NOMSSI Viewer will use fast hardware scrolling, but large images could be truncated if they don't fit in the video memory. A work around would be to scale the image down to half or to the screen size. Transform Scale down to one half F3 Scale up to fit screen size F4 Flip vertically (up/down) F5 Flip horizontally (mirror) F6 Rotate counterclockwise 90 Shift+F6 Save current image to buffer F7 Restore image from buffer F8 Switch to higher graphic resolution (Zoom out) Gray+ Switch to lower graphic resolution (Zoom in) Gray- Color Editing Enhance the image quality by shifting and scaling the colors in the image consistenly using the palette-editing tools Brightness/Contrast control The "Del" and "Ins" keys increase or decrease the image brightness over a greater range than the television brightness and contrast buttons. You can create false color pictures or negatives. Increase or decrease the active contrast value with the "Home" and "End" keys. Gamma correction With Alt+F9 you can set the gamma to the active monitor value (standard 2.2 or user-defined value). Standard palette Some images are saved without a valid color palette, assuming a standard palette used by the application. F9 Convert the colors in the current palette to gray-scale. Shift+F9 Set the first 16 colors in the current palette to the standard EGA palette. Crtl+F9 Set the standard palette for uniform quantization, that is 3 bits for red and green and 2 bits for blue in the palette index (3-3-2). Color Cycling Gray *, Rotate all used palette colors (up to 256) one step. This is best used on palette images with monotonous color values (i.e. fractals) Undo Restore the original palette with F10 Save to disk Use the F2 key to save the current image with your editing to disk in TIFF, TGA, BMP or GIF format. = The default filename for the first image saved after starting The NOMSSI Viewer is NVDMP001.GIF; subsequent saves in the same session are automatically incremented 002, 003... The file is a color palette image with up to 256 unique colors (not always equally good as the original, since The NOMSSI Viewer uses fixed parameters to create it). Use the Prefix field in slideshow/options to change the name and select the file format using the Save as-field in preferences. Files left over from previous sessions are not overwritten - the first unused NVDMPnnn name is used. Welcome online Slide show options Time in Seconds Enter delay time in seconds (0 up to 99s) to specify how long a single image from the sequence of tagged files will be displayed, although you can influence the pause for the current image. T [X] Cycle Slideshow Decide whether the sequence will be repeated or if it should break after a cycle. You can stop the running Slide Show with ESC. T [ ] Superpose pictures [X] When Superpose pictures is checked, the current image will not be cleared prior crossing to the next image. However, this will only work if no graphic mode switch is necessary. } [ ] When Superpose pictures is unchecked, the screen will always be cleared between images or screenfull or reduced images. T [X] Reset tagged files The list of tagged files will be cleared after the slide show. T [ ] Disable beep Related information: Catalog options Welcome Online Cataloging [ ] Arrange to an array The screen is divided in nxm parts, each picture is scaled to fit in this tile, so you may have nxm images on the screen at the same time. Press F4 to zoom the current image. This process is detrimental to picture quality. The NOMSSI Viewer uses dithering and antialiasing to preserve as much of the picture quality as possible. Z [ ] Save completed array When you check Save completed array, each completed arranged array screen is automatically saved to disk, that is, each screenfull of reduced image and the last page, which may not be full. In this case the slideshow is interrupted after the last slide, regardless of whether Cycle Slideshow is checked or not. Z [ ] All open windows The slide show will run over all open "Load an image file" dialog boxes. This is a kind of batch processing, that may be used to catalog a whole disk at a time. Q [X] Catalog with frame Related information: Slide Welcome Online Array size When the option Arrange array is checked, The NOMSSI Viewer uses the value in this field to compute the size and position of each image in the array of reduced images. Some examples: 2x2 1x2 3x1 3x5 Related information: Slide Welcome Online file name prefix Enter the five first characters of the filenames, which will be used while writing the image to a graphics file. The last three characters are always a number xxx with x between 0 and 9. The extension is the standard extension for the used file format (.BMP, .GIF, .TGA, .TIF). By default, The NOMSSI Viewer writes files with the name NVDMP000.TIF, NVDMP001.TIF, NVDMP002.TIF etc. P Related information: Cataloging Slide Welcome Online [ Start ] Your input is examined and the slide show is initiated if it is validated. Otherwise the first invalid field is focused to let you correct or cancel your input. [ Cancel ] Cancel or ESC or Alt C to break off your action, you go back to the dialog box Load image file. @ Related information: SlideShow Welcome Online SlideShow The NOMSSI Viewer can run a slide show. First select several image files in the file list. The image files will be displayed one after the other with a given delay, exactly in the order of selection. Press F8 or click the "Slideshow" button. The delay between two images can be set from 0 up to 99s, a cycle can be repeated, other slide show options can be changed. While the slide show is running, you may click on the mouse right button or press the space bar to hold on an image (freeze the slideshow) and later click on the mouse left button or press enter to go on. Use ESC to quit a running slide show. A The graphic mode tools are also available during the slideshow. 7 Array of reduced images To generate an array of reduced images, check Arrange to an array in the catalog options. The array size can be customized. Welcome Online Bitmaps are used under Windows 3.x and OS/2 to store bi-level, palette color and full color images (1, 4, 8 and 24 bits/pixel). The NOMSSI Viewer can load both uncompressed and compressed bitmap files (BMP/RLE). OS/2 2.x bitmaps may include several pictures, which are shown in turn. ^ The NOMSSI Viewer writes uncompressed palette color Windows 3.x BMP files with 8 bits/pixel. / Image formats Welcome Online "The Graphics Interchange Format(c) is the Copyright property of CompuServe Incorporated. GIF(sm) is a Service Mark property of CompuServe Incorporated." GIF files may include several pictures with up to 256 colors/pixel. The GIF89a specification allows GIF files to store text and commands for animations. e The NOMSSI Viewer ignores the GIF89a extensions like comments and pauses. It only display graphics. WARNING: The NOMSSI Viewer writes GIF89a graphics file with a local color map. Older release (prior 1.2c) are unable to handle these (valid) image files. / Image formats Welcome Online Truevision TGA file format is mostly used to store True Color images. m The NOMSSI Viewer can handle TGA file types 1,2,3, 9,10 and 11 (uncompressed and run-length encoded files). The NOMSSI Viewer writes color-mapped (type 1) TGA files with 32 bits/color map entry and 8 bits/pixel. The pixel data ordering is left-to-right and bottom-to-top (incorrectly stated in rev 1.20). / Image formats Welcome Online TIFF TIFF is a tag based, rich file format for storing and interchanging raster images. It enables storing bi-level, grayscale, palette-color and full color image data in several color spaces. The NOMSSI Viewer is (should be) a Baseline TIFF 6.0 reader which supports several TIFF 6.0 Extensions (CCITT 1D and LZW Compression, TIFF Tiles, planar and packed images, YCbCr color space). 4 The NOMSSI Viewer writes palette color TIFF files. + TIFF is a trademark of Aldus Corporation. / Image formats Welcome Online The PCX image file format is in widespread use on the PC. The NOMSSI Viewer can handle PCX-files with 1...8 and 24 bits/pixel. Some 256 color PCX are written without color informations, The NOMSSI Viewer uses a grayscale map. Pictures with 2 or 4 colors are displayed using the CGA color map. SHIFT+F9 switchs to the standard EGA color map. / Image formats Welcome Online IFF is a file format for storing and interchanging data (text, images, music,...). It is in widespread use on the Amiga. IFF stores data in FORMs. The NOMSSI Viewer can handle IFF ILBM (Interleaved Bitmap) with 1...8 and 24 bits/pixel and PBM (Packed Bitmap) forms, which contains image data, offering support for run-length and HAM encoding. / Image formats Welcome Online JFIF The Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) has created an international standard for digital compression of continuous-tone still images. The widely used baseline JPEG is a lossy process, that gives up some image quality to achieve very high compression ratios. JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF) is a minimal file format which enables JPEG bitstreams to be exchanged between a wide variety of platforms and applications. It is entirely compatible with the standard JPEG interchange format. Q The NOMSSI Viewer only supports JFIF on PCs with a 80386SX processor or better. 2 Image formats Welcome Online Execute program Shell to DOS and execute a programm using the command line with all parameters given here. You must always specify complete file names with drive and path. Welcome Online [ OK ] Press Enter or click on the OK button or use Alt+K to confirm and execute the command line Welcome Online [ Cancel ] With this button you close the dialog box and cancel executing. " You can also use ESC or Alt + C. 7 See also Shortcuts Welcome Online SuperVGA SuperVGA or SVGA terms a graphics card standard for PCs, that electronically take control of the screen output in graphic modes with a resolution of at least 640x480 pixels with 256 simultaneous colors. A SuperVGA card converts the digital color values in analog voltage to control analog monitors using a digital-analog-converter (DAC). A normal DAC includes 256 registers, each subdivided in three groups of 6 bits (for the colors red, gree, blue), thus there are max. 64 gradations for each priming and altogether possible 262144 colors. However only 256 colors can be displayed at a time (HiColor and TrueColor DACs allow more colors). The NOMSSI Viewer supports the 256 colors, HiColor and TrueColor modes for a variety of SuperVGA cards, using the VGADOC package (c) 1994 by Finn Thogersen. . Raster image Welcome Online Raster image data Bi-level images contains two colors - black and white. Grayscale images store shades of gray for each pixel and have one component per pixel. Color pictures are usualy described using the RGB model. Each pixel is made up of three components (red, green and blue). In the RGB full color case, each component is 8 bit deep. Palette-color images still have one component per image, but the component value is used as an index into a full RGB-lookup table. - Image file formats The NOMSSI Viewer 1.3 supports the following raster image file formats ( TIFF Aldus tag-based Image File Format PCX ZSoft PC Paintbrush Format GIF Compuserve Inc. Graphics Interchange Format BMP Windows and OS/2 2.x Bitmap TGA Truevision TGA File Format IFF IFF Interlaced Bitmap/Packed Bitmap JFIF JPEG File Interchange Format Once loaded, the images can saved as palette color images with up to 256 colors using the BMP, GIF, TGA or TIFF file format. J Related information: graphic tools Welcome Online Range error ! You have tried to input a numerical value out of the allowed bounds. Correct the value or cancel the operation. Welcome Online Invalid char error ! You have used an invalid char while entering a numerical value. Correct or cancel the input. Welcome Online Keyboard commands general Alt + Key Select an active Option. Press left Alt-key *together* with the lit letter. (i.e. Alt + S for "SlideShow", Alt + A for "Scan", Alt + N for "Name"). ESC Cancel the current operation. Enter Confirm a vaild input/selection TAB Select (highlight) the next field in a dialog box. Alt+F3 Close window Help: F1 Open Helpwindow F5 Zoom/restore size of the active helpwindow Ctrl+F5 Change the size and/or position of the active window File: F3 Open dialog box "Load an image file" X Space bar Select (tag/reverse tag) file. Needed for slide show or for group copy Gray + Tag all files Gray - Clear all tags Gray x or * Reverse all tags F10 Go to the menubar F7 Copy file(s) Alt+F7 Search for image files F8 Slide show Options: F9 Open dialog box "Options" Tools Palette editing Ins Brightness +, lightens the image Del Brightness -, darkens the image Home Contrast + End Contrast - Gray * or x Cycle colors Gray or / Cycle colors backward Shift+F9 EGA Palette Crtl+F9 TrueColor Quantization Palette F9 Gray scale Alt+F9 Correct palette for monitor output F10 Restore original palette Viewer PgUp/PgDn Scroll up/down (smooth) Direction keys Scroll (fast) Gray + Increase the current mode (higher resolution) Gray - Decrease the current mode Transform F3 Scale down (half) (Buffer needed) F4 Scale to fit screen size (Buffer needed) F5 Flip vertically (up/down) F6 Flip horizontally (left/right) Shift+F6 Rotate F7 Write image to buffer F8 Restore image from buffer Save F2 Save image (as TIFF- or BMP-file) Slide show: F8 Space bar Freeze image, stop (Mouse right button) Enter Continue, next image (Mouse left button) TAB Reverse image ordering ESC Cancel slide show, end Welcome Online Gray +, Gray -, Gray * The keys +,- and * on the keypad simplify the selection of files for slide show or file operations. h Use + to mark the complete files list box or - to cancel any previous selection in the files list box. Use * to reverse the current selection of files, the list of marked files is released while the previously not selected files are marked. 7 Related topics Hotkeys Welcome Online Copy file This menu item opens the "Copy" dialog box, you can enter the target directory and select between group or single file copying. ] Copying can only be performed while a valid file name is focused within the files box. > WARNING: The copy routine will NOT clean up files on error. Welcome Online Move file This menu item opens the dialog box "Move". You can move files to another drive or directory. Welcome Online Rename file This menu item opens the dialog box "Rename". You can only rename one file at a time. Welcome Online Erase file This menu item opens the dialog box "Delete", where you can specify the files to delete. Welcome Online Associate This menu item opens the dialog box "Associate", allowing you to set a link between some data files and a appropriate application. Trying to load an "associated" data file (i.e. a text file or a sound file) will automatically start the appropriate application to process the data (edit the text file or play back the sample). Welcome Online View as Text This menu item opens a text file viewer for the current file. It is only enabled while a file name is focused in the files box. ; The whole file is loaded into memory prior to displaying. Welcome Online View as Hex This menu item opens a Hex-dump viewer for the current file. Only the first 64 kB can be displayed. The menu item is only enabled while a file name is focused in the files box. Welcome Online Commands Left Ctrl-S or Cursor left Right Ctrl-D or Cursor right First char Ctrl-A or Home or Ctrl+Cursor left Last char Ctrl-F or End or Ctrl+Cursor right Line up Ctrl-E or Cursor up Line down Ctrl-X or Cursor down Page up Ctrl-R or PgUp Page down Ctrl-C or PdDn First Page Ctrl-PgUp Last Page Ctrl-PdDn Welcome Online Search for file This menu item opens the dialog box "Search", you can set a file mask to match and enter the start directory. The directory tree is recursively scaned, all images files are shown. M You can switch to another window and load images while the task is running. Welcome Online File Read/Write error You may cancel or retry the operation, depending on the error cause. Welcome Online Copy to Enter the target directory. You must enter a valid path here or no copying will occur. Actually, The NOMSSI Viewer assumes the path is refering to a directory located on the start up drive. That may be wrong, so you could have to expressly specify a drive in the path to have it validated. Welcome Online Copying selected files ( ) current file Select this item to copy only the curently focused file (highlighten) to the target directory. K ( ) selected files Select this item to copy all tagged items in turn to the target directory. The selection remains intact. Welcome Online [ OK ] Press Enter or click on the OK button or use Alt+K to confirm and start copying. a Shall the path be invalid, the dialog box will not close until you correct or cancel the input. Welcome Online [ Cancel ] With this button you close the dialog box and cancel copying. " You can also use ESC or Alt + C. 4 See also Shortcuts Welcome Online Toggle video mode Choose which type of screen display the NOMSSI Viewer will use. You can select a display of 25 lines by 80 columns or a display of 50 lines by 80 columns. 4 See also Shortcuts Welcome Online Exit (Alt+X) This command exits The NOMSSI Viewer. 4 See also Shortcuts Welcome Online DOS shell With this command you temporarily exit The NOMSSI Viewer to DOS. Type EXIT and then press Enter to return. 5 See also Hotkeys Welcome Online Scanning All files in the current directory are being scanned, searching for valid image files. Just wait a moment or press ESC to break. File Press Enter to list the menu items. & See also Welcome Online This list shows the currently defined associations. The data files are recognized by the file name extension, like .VOC, .WAV or .MOD for sound files. The associated applications are defined using a command line. Extension Command line .TXT COMMAND.COM /C TYPE .MPG C:\GO32.EXE D:\IMAGES\VIDEO\VMPEG .MOD D:\MISCELL\MUSIC\PLAY.EXE The NOMSSI Viewer will use the user-defined command line to start the application, handing the data file name over as the last command line parameter. The complete path and other extra parameters should be given. & See also Welcome Online Enter the specific data file extension. C Related information: Associations Welcome Online Edit the command line, give the complete path and file name of the linked application. C Related information: Associations Welcome Online When Checked [X], The NOMSSI Viewer will prompt for further parameters to be passed to to associated application at run-time. C Related information: Associations Welcome Online [ Add ] Add a new file association. C Related information: Associations Welcome Online [ Edit ] Edit an existing association. C Related information: Associations Welcome Online [ Delete ] Delete the highlighten association. C Related information: Associations Welcome Online [ OK ] Close the dialog box. The changes are first saved after the setup dialog is entered. C Related information: Associations Welcome Online [ Cancel ] Close the dialog box without making any changes. You may also use ESC. D Related information: Associations Welcome Online Window The menu item "New" opens a new "Load an image file"-window on the current drive and path, and makes it active. Several windows may be open at a time, each one displaying a different drive and/or directory. The display is updated after files operations like copying, renaming, etc. W Selecting the 50 lines mode gives a better overview if you open more than one window. * Welcome Online Screen Window Close All Close all windows on the desktop / To close a single window select Window Close. Welcome Online Window Size/Move (Strg+F5) Adjust the size or position of the active window. Size To change the size, keep the Shift-key down and use the arrow keys. Press return when you are done. Y Some windows have a corner-field, that can be used to change their size with the mouse. Move Change the position of the active window by pressing the arrow keys. Press return when you are done. 4 Alternatively, drag the title bar using the mouse. Welcome Online Window Zoom (F5) Enlarge or restore the size of the active window. r You can also double click on the window title bar, or use the zoom symbol in the upper right edge of the window. Welcome Online Window Use this command or F6 to make the next window active and put it in the foreground. Welcome Online Window Close (Alt+F3) Close the active window. y You can also use the close symbol in the upper left edge of the window. Use Window Close All to close all open windows. Welcome Online The list shows all available drives in your system, with network names. Welcome Online The directory viewer for displays the whole directory tree of a drive as a graph with nodes and levels. One can easily navigate trough the subdirectories with Enter or by using the * (recursively expand), + (expand) and - (collapse). Welcome Online The file viewer shows all files in the active directory with size, date/time, attribute. Incremental search can be performed to locate a file name. A group of files can be selected for copy/delete and slideshow operations. Welcome Online Color reduction The NOMSSI Viewer actually offers six quantization methods to display TrueColor images in 256 color modes. 2 Grayscale This is the fastest method to display JPEG images. The luminance information is used to control the grayshade. Pattern dithering Dithering is the use of more than one pixel to represent a color value, giving up some spatial resolution. It is fairly fast and produces quite good looking color images in video modes with higher resolution. Floyd-Steinberg error diffusion method The error made on the current pixel after dithering is distributed over its neighbors. An image with enhanced quality is obtained, but both time and memory usage grow quickly with the image size. The viewer may be unable to display some large JFIF-files. Median-Cut This method builds and uses a 3D-histogram to divise the RGB-color space in subboxes, allowing to select accurately 256 unique colors as the best representative for a given image. The Floyd-Steinberg error diffusion method is then used in the second pass while mapping RGB colors to palette colors, producing high quality images. The 3D-histogram requires quite a lot of memory, and since the image data have to be read twice, the method is also slower than one-pass methods. Oct-tree This method uses oct-trees to recursively divise the RGB-space, using normally less memory than a 3D-histogram. Kohonen Neural-network This method can compute the optimal palette for a given image with the best accuracy and the least memory usage of all, but the long "learning phase" is a serious drawback in this implementation. Welcome Online Window (Alt+W) Open, arrange and close windows # Window Commands New Close Size/Position Zoom Next Close Welcome Online Registration form Please send me the latest release of The NOMSSI Viewer 1.3, a graphics file viewer for SuperVGA Copyright (c) 1994 by Jacques NOMSSI NZALI Thueringer Weg 3/435 09126 Chemnitz, Germany I will get a personally registered version. 7 NAME ____________________________________ 6 STREET ____________________________________ 6 CITY ____________________________________ 7 COUNTRY/STATE ____________________________________ 5 E-MAIL ____________________________________ 5 number : ______ X 36 DM (incl. postage in europe) A _______ X 29$US (incl. postage to all other countries) = __________ language: ( ) english floppy disk type: ( ) 3 1/2 " (1.44 Mb) C ( ) german ( ) 5 1/4 " (1.2 Mb) DATE / SIGNATURE _______________________________ K Please send money / Eurocheques / money order to the account in Germany: L Bank: Deutsche Bank Chemnitz Bank Code: 870 700 00 a/c no.: 1206259 # COMMENTS / SUGGESTIONS / PROBLEMS 8 _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Thank you for your support. The Nomssi Viewer, Version 1.40