Enigma Amiga Life 113

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Viewer - simply a simple program Author: Jörg van de Loo Hövel 15 47559 Kranenburg Germany OVERVIEW Viewer V4.4 is a simple program to display ASCII-text-files. It does only support standard functions like scrolling up and down. It's not so comfortable as PPMore, MuchMore, Less and so on. The main reason to create Viewer was because PPMore, MuchMore, Less are much too tall for the functions they offer. Viewer is only 24 KB in size, resident capable and offers functions which are not implemented in Less, PPMore and so on, this are: displaying binary files like Amiga-object-files; a picture viewer which can display super bitmap screens and also offers a very easy way to display those hidden parts, brushes can be displayed as well. Of course AA-images become supported (BURST-FETCH mode supported (used all the time)). It's also possible to display IFF-files containing plain characters, mainly the IFF-FTXT and IFF-SWRT formats; first one used in older applications and for clipboard handling, the second is known as a FinalCopy-II document. Additional, IFF-8SVX mono sound files can be made audible. COPYRIGHT Viewer is placed in the public domain as freeware. Because I ask for nothing, you can't ask for anything. Don't blame me when Viewer bombs your Amiga. All use is at your own risk. You can do what you want with the object-file of Viewer so long you don't remove the copyright notice and you have a non-criminal aim. All other things are up to you. The source-code of Viewer is also placed in the public domain, also as freeware - although you have got the possibility to improve Viewer's source code, as long you don't change the copyright notice. After having improved Viewer, you have to place the modified source-code and of course the object- file of it in the public domain pool (e.g. Fish-Disks, Aminet). SUMMARY A -key About page I -key Internal info about Viewer H -key Help page E -key Enlarge? window to specified size L -key Load new file (ASCII, binary, image) R -key Refresh window and set new limits C -key Window contents to file W -key Window contents to printer (prt:) F -key Print file to file P -key Print file to printer (prt:) S -key Search insensitive for a string N -key Search for next occurring of this string B -key Bottom of file T -key Top of file CRSR_UP Scroll up one page CRSR_DN Scroll down one page CRSR_LEFT One line back CRSR_RIGHT One line further ENTER One line down RETURN One line down Right SHIFT One line back LEFT MOUSE BUTTON One line down RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON One line up PG_UP One complete page up PG_DN One complete page down HOME Top of file END Bottom of file PrtSc Print window contents to printer (prt:) REQUESTER Only the 'arp' and 'reqtools' file-requesters will be supported. If the above named libraries are not available, Viewer will terminate immediately. It is possible to work without those file-requesters when you choose directly from Shell or Workbench the file Viewer should display (comes later). Viewer will display an auto-requester of an own kind. There are two gadgets in it; I think you understand their meanings. Because of this simple auto-requester font-sizes up to 15*10 pixels can only be used, so if your default-font is larger, it will trash the auto-requester window. Because I'm using an own made fixed width font of 11*6 pixel this auto-requester is no troubleshooter on my system. IMAGES/PICTURES At the moment only the IFF-ILBM/IFF-ACBM formats are supported, but up to 256 colours or HAM-8 images (64/262144 colours). When the image size is taller than the screen-size, you have got the possibility to scroll that picture. Move the mouse into the direction you want to scroll the screen. When the mouse-pointer hits the screen limits, the scrolling is started. If the mouse-pointer is moved away from the screen border, scrolling is stopped. To scroll the screen faster, press while the mouse-pointer hits the screen-border the right mouse-button. To close the image screen press the left mouse button. FOREIGN GRAPHIC DEVICES On a graphic accelerator board images can be shown up to 24 bit (16.7 million colours) if your board supports such a depth. The IFF-ILBM format is not limited to a rigid depth so Viewer will use a screen depth of 8 bit planes for all images with less or equal to 256 colours and a screen depth of 15 bit for images with more than 257 and less than 32768 colours. A screen depth of 16 bit would require an image with at most 65536 colours. Viewer supports only images with a colour-map with at most 65536 colours (CLUT - colour look up table). A 65536 colour image will need 196608 bytes for the colour look up table - and additional bytes for the data themselves. If images has got more colours Viewer will treat them as 8 bit - exception if the image is a real 24 bit image. This is rendered using true colour mode (a 24 bit screen will be opened in this case). Viewer can display such images only if you have already installed the CystLord or the vanGogh84 package and when you own a 3rd party graphic device. By the way, HAM6 and HAM8 will be decoded into 24 bits and then in high quality and even quite quick. Prove: MultiView using picture.dt 43.41 and ilbm.dt 44.11 24 bit 640*480 pixels full-screen display (ilbm, 620 Kb file size) MultiView Viewer 5.91 sec 5.63 sec 68040 caches on 14.65 sec 14.94 sec 68040 caches off HAM-8 736*654 pixels full-screen display (ilbm, 320 Kb file size) 5.82 secs 5.35 sec 68040 caches on 14.91 sec 18.57 sec 68040 caches off Note: EHB images are supported and also 24 bit images up to 1360 pixel in width, taller images are forced to 16 bit - this is due to the limit of the 3rd party graphic device I use. IFF-FTXT/IFF-SWRT You are able to load IFF-documents. Viewer will use two passes to extract the ASCII-character codes out of those files. The maximum limit for one line I set to the amount of characters that can fit into one line, this means at least at the last letter of the window a word-wrap is made. Please note: Don't expect too much from the extractor, Viewer itself is a RAM-based text-viewer rather than a desktop publishing program! To convert e.g. a FinalCopy-II document to ASCII simply load in the document. A requester will appear; response to this requester should be "Okay". After this is done, the plain characters are shown. Simply save that file with Viewer (press key "F"). Read the new created file with a text editor (like CygnusED) and modify. Currently supported file types are: Plain ASCII IFF-Text FinalCopyII WordWorth KindWords IFF 8SVX MONO SOUND FILES Viewer is able to make 8SVX mono sound files audible over the build-in original Amiga hardware and software. Viewer will use the audio device for this task. Viewer will ever use 28kbyte of CHIP-RAM for the sound-data to make them audible (required by the Amiga built-in audio hardware) while the audio-data that are currently unused will be hold in fast-memory. By the way, no check if done whether FAST-RAM is available. Viewer will ever think that the unused audio data are in non-CHIP-RAM! So you should have FAST-RAM otherwise this routine to make data audible is crap. The main reason why is: through this trick it's possible to play samples that are taller than 128 Kbytes, which is the current limit for the Amiga audio hardware (and software - namely audio device). You may play samples up to the size of a sample that fits into your memory, e.g. you have got 16 Mbytes of FAST-MEM free, then the sample size must be smaller than 16 MB, or for a F.-Delta compressed audio file, then the file can be up to 5 Mbytes tall. The additional memory when decompressed is used for the decrunch buffer. POWERPACKER-LIBRARY PACKED FILES Viewer does support Powerpacker-library packed files. LOADING The easiest way to load a file in is to select it via one of the two file requesters that will offer this. Another way is to select it via its name from the CLI or Shell: 1> Viewer hd2:sources/viewerv3.c11.asm as second argument you can specify the scroll width, e.g.: 1> Viewer hd2:sources/viewerv3.c11.asm scrollwidth=11 From Workbench you can enter in the default-tool field of the project-icon (-file) the path and the name where Viewer can be found: DefaultTool: Workbench:Utilities/Viewer You may also press the shift key and click once the program-icon (Viewer) and while the shift key is not released click twice the project-icon. If you choose only the volume/directory name where the file you want to display stays (either from both: Shell or Workbench) - then a file requester occurs with this volume/directory and all to it belonging files - if the arp- or reqtools-libraries are available. In case you have chosen an incorrect file- or pathname in the requester module like: "1> Viewer SYS:Prefs/Env-Archive/Szs/font.prefs" Viewer attempts to get the last valid directory, here: "SYS:Prefs/Env-Archive/" and set up the requester-module with this path. TOOL-TYPES Supported tool types are: EXECUTE=<dos-command-line> Execute command on start EXTENTWINDOW=w,h Console window width, height WINDOWOFFSET=x,y Console window x-, y-offsets FONT=topaz,8 Use other than default font SCROLLWIDTH=n Use other than computed lines to scroll up or down WRAP=ON Make a word wrap when contents of a line doesn't fit into console window NOWARN Don't display warnings NOPRTCHECK Do not check printer (PrintCheck() does only work well with Epson-printers) WINDOWOFFST You can specify the X- and Y-offsets for the console window on your own, e.g. 0,16 although you can let Viewer do the work, the command for this is "WINDOWOFFSET=AUTO". Viewer will then adjust the window so that it is placed directly under the screen's top border. When the EXTENTWINDOW command is set, the settings of the WINDOWOFFSET is subtracted from it, e.g. EXTENTWINDOW=872,612 WINDOWOFFSET=20,16 == window 852 * 596 on position 20,16. SHELL When Viewer is started from the Shell, some outputs will be made, e.g. 1> Viewer 21;79R 20 This means that one page can contain 21 lines (20 will be used for scrolling) where each line can contain 79 columns. KNOWN BUGS When running under Kickstart 1.2 or 1.3 (including A2024 monitor ROM) and displaying a picture, the picture's top border shows blank. On default no word-wrap is made. When you now scroll via PgUp and or PgDn one complete page and only one line contains more characters than characters fit in a line (window limits), the output is stopped at the last displayable char. To avoid this you have to set the tool types to "WRAP=ON". When showing ASCII-files with escape-sequences and scrolling up via mouse or keys (CRSR-left) the escape-sequences are started but not finished, e.g.: Text set <ESC>[1m This is a test <- this text should be shown in bold <ESC>[0m If you scroll up these lines, the text "Text set" is shown bold instead of "This is a test". To avoid this change the above to: Text set <ESC>[1mThis is a test<ESC>[0m and all works correctly - but, if you are using sequences that exceed one line, you have to set and unset each line for its own. Viewer has got a small bug in its audio set-up that doesn't render the gadget into the window in some circumstances and thus doesn't allow the sample to be played. Occurs when the audio device is already used by an other task, meanwhile Viewer attempts open the audio device, it will get no access to the audio device, therewith an error occurred and thus Viewer will not display the gadget. Audio file treated ever as mono file although it could be a stereo one. SEARCH/NEXT Viewer offers only a simple search routine that compares the entered string (comes later) and the text in the text buffer of Viewer case insensitive. It's very slow but it works. The case insensitive search supports the full ASCII-one character code set, this means for example that the character "ø" is treated the same as "Ø". To enter the string you want to search for, press key "S" on your keyboard. The window is cleared and a cursor is shown behind the text "Search for: ". You can now enter the string. Please note: Only Viewer with extension LE (source) will support cursor-keys (left/right), tabulators and the DEL-key. Plain versions not! (At the moment I don't know which version I will enclose). To delete a letter use the "BackSpace" key. It's allowed to enter an Escape sequence to search for. If you press the Escape-key, the character "·" is shown as a synonym for the Escape-character. Tabulators will be handled correctly; this means you can search for a string, which contains tabulators. If the string has been found, the first line with the occurring string is displayed as first line in the window - if it is not found, the current page is restored and the screen will be flashed. Press the N-key to search for the next occurring string. If no more occurring string is found, the screen is short flashed and the current page is restored, otherwise the line with the occurring string is displayed as first line in the window. Viewer will not search backward for a string nor it continues searching after the last occurring has been found. To re-search you have to re-enter the string. Examining binary files is a little difficult because the file is converted to ASCII. Example: search string "dos.library". 00000110: 222F001C 4EAEFCA6 224B2C6F 00204EAE "/..N(r)ü¦"K,o. N(r) 00000120: FE626010 307C0004 22502069 0114707A þb`.0|.."P i..pz 00000130: 21400094 20074CDF 4CCC4E5D 4E75646F !@.. .LßLÌN]Nudo 00000140: 732E6C69 62726172 79004452 4956452F s.library.DRIVE/ 00000150: 412C4255 46464552 532F4E00 24564552 A,BUFFERS/N.$VER 00000160: 3A206164 64627566 66657273 2033372E : addbuffers 37. At offset 0x13E the string in the binary file starts ("dos.library"). Because this file is first converted to ASCII, the string "dos.library" is split into "do"RETURNxxx...xxx"s.library". Now it should be clear why the string couldn't be found. REQUIREMENTS Viewer will run up from Kickstart 1.2 (V33) and up to Kickstart 3.1 (V40). It works correctly with a 68000 CPU but a better CPU is recommended (68060?). Required libraries: exec (V33+) ROM dos (V33+) ROM intuition (V33+) ROM graphic (V33+) ROM icon (V33+) DISK (WBench start only) diskfont (V33+) DISK (when a disk resident font is used) ---------------------------- arp (V39) DISK (for file requester) (do not use arp 40 - no file requester) reqtools (V37+) DISK (for file requester) cybergfx (V40+) DISK (for 24 bit images) MEM-EATER Viewer is memory-hungry when displaying screens and/or brushes, also when a binary file should be converted to ASCII. When you are going to display ECS/AA-pictures, make sure the monitor-driver is available, otherwise the screen is forced to NTSC/PAL (depending on video system). Also 2 MB chip-memory is not wrong! Displaying 24 bit images requires no chip-memory but a 68020 (or better) CPU. There is no CPU checking routine although it (Viewer) attempts to open the CyberGraphics library and this library itself requires and checks for a 68020 CPU (hopefully). By the way, no screen promoter is required to display images on a foreign gfx board neither chip-memory! Memory usage: Plain ASCII = file length + 3 bytes Binary = file length + 3 + (file length * 4.25) + 72 bytes Picture = file length + 3 + unpacked picture size Picture24 = file length + 3 + unpacked picture size + one temporary RGB row Brush = file length + 3 + unpacked brush size FTXT = file length + 3 + ASCII-codes + 3 bytes SWRT = file length + 3 + ASCII-codes + number of RULErs + 3 bytes 8SVX = file length + 3 + 28 Kbytes CHIP-RAM 8SVX F.DELTA= file length + 3 + uncompressed audio size + 28 Kbytes CHIP-RAM Viewer will free the not needed memory as fast as possible, i.e. the "basic file" is freed after successful converting / depacking. FUTURE Currently Viewer does my daily work, displaying images and text-files, make audio data audible and so on. Because I mostly use Viewer on CD-ROMs in the near or far future it will convert HTML files into ASCII. If I find a well-documented guide to use PNG I will extend Viewer to support PNG images. 30.6.1994 ONIX (Updated '94 to '99)