• The other day, I was looking for an application that could give me quick information about GIF files without viewing each one. (The image itself is sometimes not important...) Information such as such as size, whether it is interlaced and such. The GIF format is still the preferred format when using images in Netscape or Mosaic. The only problem was that I could not find a suitable application for the Macintosh. Fortunately, I found some code on the Net that did most of what I was looking for. Unfortunately, this was written for command line systems. Fortunately again, I am not completely new to Macintosh programming and I decided to build some interface around it. This is the result of my efforts. If I have a need for something like this, there must be more people that could use it. So, I decided to release it. I have been working on it for a while now and since the first version, a few things have changed:
- You can now drag and drop files from the Finder into the window.
- You can drag out information from the window.
- Window position and size are now remembered.
- You can now save the output more than once...
- No longer uses MetroWerks SIOUX window.
- More bug fixes and options for the output.
How to use it?
• Real simple, just select the file (or files) that you want this information for, and drag them on the application icon. What the result could be is shown here:
I don’t know all of them (really!) but the most useful are (for me) the version (GIF87 or GIF89A), the image width and height, the number of colors and whether the GIF is interlaced or not. If you like, you can copy output from this application to paste in elsewhere, or you can drag parts out of the window if you have System 7.5 or Drag and Drop. (The HTML specification would be most useful in this respect I think. You will can also show just the filename here instead of the full path, set in Preferences). Apparently, Netscape displays images faster if you use the HEIGHT and WIDTH with the IMG tag. The ALT is added so Lynx users (like myself on occasion) don’t get the word [IMAGE] all over their screen. You can also save the output in a text file.
If you resize the window so that it shows at the bottom of your screen and choose only show HTML stuff in the preferences, you can drag files into the window and easily copy or drag out the HTML tag to your HTML document.
The menus
• Under the File menu:
- Open... : Open a file through the standard file selection dialog.
- Hide/Show: Hides or shows the window.
- Save As... : Save output to text file.
- Preferences...: Here you can set if your preferences, please refer to the next section.
- Quit : Do I really have to say what you can do with this?
• Under the Edit menu:
- All standard stuff, undo doesn’t work and would not be very useful...
The Preferences
• The Preferences window is show here:
Copy HTML Tag to Clipboard automatically: This copies the determined HTML tag to the Clipboard, if you drag multiple files to the application, it will only copy the HTML tag for the last file.
Just show HTML info and forget the rest. You can opt to only show the HTML stuff in the window and forget about the rest.
Show info for all colors (Hexadecimal, Decimal, Percentages): If you have this option turned on, you will get a table showing all available colors in the GIF file in hexadecimal, decimal or percentages RGB.
Prompt to save text files at close. If this is checked, you get the option to save the data to a text file, not very useful so it is turned of by default.
Use full pathnames. If this is turned on, pathnames in the HTML specification are shown in full, default it is off so only the name of the file will be shown.
The help symbol at the bottom can be used to turn on Balloon Help which I have implemented in this version (Thanks to Peter Lewis’ Perl script, this is not very hard at all).
About the source code
• It should be available wherever you got this and most likely it is in the same archive. I assembled it using DropUnix 1.1 (which is DropShell 2.0 by Leonard Rosenthal et. al., adapted to easily port command line applications to Macintosh, by Ryan Davis) and the file gifscan.c, written by James D. Murray (in 1989 I think!). I wrote it using MetroWerks 6.1 (C Compiler version 1.2.2., I only have the 68k version) on a Macintosh Quadra 630 8/1200. I even did some debugging, ran it with DoubleTrouble and such and heap scrambling on in MacsBug 6.5.2, and all seemed to go well. However, my access to different machines is limited, so if you have a machine or System that it doesn’t work on, I apologize in advance.
What does it cost me?
• Absolutely nothing! Well, an e-mail, a postcard, job offers or even money is always a nice gesture. However, this also implies that I, the author, cannot be held responsible for any damages that are a result of using this application. Although I can’t imagine what could go wrong except for an occasional crash or freeze, which is easily cured by a simple restart and absolutely no reason for panic.
Version History
1.0 - Initial release.
1.01 - Added the HTML specification so all HTML authors can easily paste this in your HTML IMG specification. (by special request of Dave Grossman).
- You can now hold down the command key to show the color codes if you have turned this feature off in the Preferences.
1.5 - Doesn’t use the SIOUX window anymore, Drag and Drop aware (by special request of Paul Constantine). Changed command key down behaviour to toggle between show codes and not, depending on the preference settings.
1.6 - Added option to show only the filename, instead of the full pathname, in the HTML tag.
- You can change the default font (both by special request by Snorre Milde).
- Added the option to save the HTML tag to the Clipboard by default.
- Apparently, 1.5 did not run on systems that did not have Drag and Drop installed. Sorry, I did not completely check if D&D was available before using TEGetHiliteRgn(...). I hope to this version runs on more machines.
About the author
• For questions and bug reports, you can send e-mail to:
- m.l.a.boon@mp.tudelft.nl (Delft University of Technology).
You can visit my web page at: http://wwwtg.mp.tudelft.nl/~marcb.
If graduated last year with a M.Sc. in Applied Geophysics, I just finished some contract work for the University. If you work in the oil exploration business (or any other business for that matter...) and have a need for someone, please contact me. I would be forever grateful.
