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========================================================================= ************************************************************************* * * * S L I D E S H O W M A N A G E R * * Version 1.2 * * * * Created by Norman C. Borg * * Using AMOS * * * * Copyright © Norcomm Software 1992 * * * ************************************************************************* ========================================================================= Slide Show Manager (SSM) has a number of features which take it beyond the standard slide show viewer which simply displays IFF pictures in a regular sequence. Thanks to its VCR-style panel at the bottom of the screen, the user can 'navigate' through the series of pictures available. THE DEMO DISK ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To have an idea of what is SSM just boot the disk and the demo will automatically load. Use the Control Panel at the bottom of the screen to navigate around the Album, from one slide to the next, and read carefully the information presented in the slides. There's no better introduction to the program than that. Click on the seventh button from the left (the one with a single arrow pointing to the right) to load the next slide. As you go along the Demo itself will explain more about 'navigating' through the Album. Have fun! THE CONCEPT BEHIND SSM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The concept behind SSM is actually very simple. The pictures, or slides, are accessed from the disk one at a time, but not necessarily in a sequential order, and can be kept on screen for as much as needed. The trick for complete control over the slide Album is a user interface with enough features for the viewer to access the slides with ease. This is SSM. Thanks to a "Driver" file, SSM can be applied to any Album of slides, and the Album is completely controlled by the viewer through its user interface: the Control Panel. THE CONTROL PANEL ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are a number of buttons on this panel all with distinctive features which enable the user to go forward or backward through the Album of slides, to jump from one part of the Album to another and to view the slides at one's own leisure. The buttons should be indicative enough as to their functions, but here are some notes on the more important ones. The Control Panel is divided into two 'levels'. On the upper level are two windows; a small one on the left and a larger one on the right. The small window automatically displays the number of the slide currently on screen, out of the maximum number in the Album: "1/13", for instance, means Slide "1" out of an Album of 13. SSM will display this information automatically when the slide is loaded. The larger window will display the title of the Album, or the current slide in particular. This is optional, and its contents will depend on the way the user disposes of it. The lower 'level' of the Control Panel includes all the functions available. From left to right, they are: JUMP TO FIRST SLIDE IN ALBUM REWIND (Rew) GOTO PREVIOUS SLIDE STOP (during Rew or FF only) GOTO FUNCTION Button PAUSE (during Rew and FF only) GOTO NEXT SLIDE FORWARD (FF) JUMP TO LAST SLIDE IN ALBUM Buttons for digits 1 through 0 OKAY Button GOTO FUNCTION Display Screen SWITCH OFF Album (exit) Most of the buttons as described above speak for themselves. Clicking with the Left Mouse Button will enable the required function. Be patient and wait for some seconds before anything happens. As soon as a function is called, the computer will take some time to load the slide from disk: unless, of course, one is using a hard drive. On clicking a particular function, its button will light red. This is an indication that the instruction has been recognized and that the function is in operation. If the button does not light up, this may be because the function called will at the moment be inoperative. For instance, should you click on REWIND while Slide "1" is on screen, SSM will know that there is no other slide to load: the button will not light up and the function will not be called. Note that while on Standby Mode (when no function is being called and you are just idly looking at the slide) calling STOP or PAUSE will have no effect. These two functions work only in conjunction with REWIND and FORWARD. REWIND will skim through all the slides from the one currently on screen back to the first in the ALBUM. FORWARD will skim through all the slides from the current one to the last. While these functions are in operation, they can either be STOPped or PAUSEd. In either case, keep holding the mouse button down until either of the STOP or PAUSE buttons lights up. This is because the computer will not immediately recognize the instruction while accessing the disk. The STOP button will definitely stop the REWIND or FORWARD functions. In this case all related buttons will switch off. The PAUSE button will only hold the REWIND or FORWARD instructions for as long as you wish, but these can then be continued. For instance, if you click on REWIND and PAUSE, both buttons will be lit. If you click now on any other button but PAUSE, nothing will happen. To continue the function, click on the PAUSE button. It will switch off and the REWIND function will continue. THE GOTO FUNCTION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The GOTO Function is probably the most powerful feature of SSM. It enables the user to jump to any desired slide in the sequence (forwards or backwards) without having to skim through the entire Album. Clicking on the GOTO Button (the fifth from the left) will switch the function on. Nothing will happen at this point, but the GOTO Button will light up indicating that it is waiting for instructions. Use the digit buttons to enter the figures of the slide number. As soon as this is done, the figures will appear on the GOTO FUNCTION Display Screen. When you are ready, click on the OKAY Button. The required slide will soon appear on the screen. If an illegal number is entered (below 0 or beyond the maximum number of the slide Album) it is ignored and nothing happens. THE INDEX PAGE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ An Index page can be included in the Album containing information on each slide available. The page is an IFF picture in itself, but it is not considered as one of the Album slides. It can only be accessed by simply entering "0" in the GOTO FUNCTION. Although this page is optional, it is suggested you make good use of it, especially in an Album which contains quite a number of slides. It is after all indispensable if one wants to exploit the GOTO FUNCTION at its fullest. CUSTOMIZED SLIDE SHOWS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Of course it is easy to include your own favourite slides into SSM, as long as the following points are kept in consideration: (a) The pictures must strictly be in IFF format (I use DPaint III pictures, for instance). (b) The pictures must be in Med-res mode, 8 or 16 colours. (Sorry for this limitation: I intend to widen the range of screens in a later version of SSM). (c) Each picture must have the Control Panel displayed at the bottom, and must be saved to disk with a number as a name: "0", "1", "2", etc. You can delete the slides of the Demo from the disk and put your own slides (I suggest you make a backup first). The number of slides included is only limited by the disk/s capacity (8-Colour screens take less memory, of course: therefore more can fit on 1 disk). To include your own pictures and have SSM running smoothly, some operations have to be carried out on your pictures first. Simply replacing the IFF files on disk is not enough. First of all the files on disk are not given any alphabetical names, but numbers; from "0" (the Index) up to "99" if possible. Make it a point to check that there are no spaces in front of, behind or between the digits. The Control Panel at the bottom of the slide is actually part of the IFF file itself, and is not superimposed by SSM. This means that in order to have the Control Panel and all its features, you must first stamp down the Control Panel on your own picture while using DPaint. Otherwise, if you put your own pictures in SSM , you will only load the picture, but no panel will appear! Don't panic. In the Drawer marked "tools" on the disk you can find a file called "ALBUMtemplate". This is an IFF picture of the Control Panel with an otherwise blank screen. All you have to do is stamp this down on your own picture. The whole operation is easy to run, provided you do have a copy of DPaint (but I don't believe there's any Amiga user who doesn't!). Follow the instructions below: (1) Load "ALBUMtemplate" into DPaint. (2) From the "Pictures" Menu select "Copy to Spare" in the "Spare" submenu. (3) Load your own picture (it MUST be med-res, 8- or 16-colour!) (4) Again from the "Pictures" menu, go to the "Spare" submenu and select "Merge to front". (5) With DPaint text function write whatever you like in the Control Panel's title window, on the top right-hand side. If you wish you might as well leave it blank. (6) Now save your picture back onto the disk. Remember, use only numerical figures from 0 to 9 to name the file. This has to be done to ALL the slides in the Album, including Slide "0". Your slides should now have their own Control Panel neatly placed at the bottom. This will naturally trim away the bottom part of your own picture, but the Control Panel will cover only a very small area. Note that if the picture's palette is not exactly like the original palette of "ALBUMtemplate", the Control Panel will now have different colours, according to your own picture's palette. If you wish to keep the Control Panel's original colours you can always load your picture first and copy it to the Spare page and then load "ALBUMtemplate" as the main picture before merging; but then of course, your own picture's colours will change drastically, then. A hint on saving disk space: DPaint files are generally automatically iconized. Icons in this case are unnecessary, so select the "No Icons" function in the "Prefs" menu in DPaint before resaving any pictures. THE "TOOLS" DRAWER ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The "Driver" File ***************** You may have noticed that the "Tools" Drawer contains more than just the "ALBUMtemplate". The most important item here is the "SSM-DriverCreator" program, which enables SSM to manipulate any customized slide Album. In short, in order to function properly SSM will want to know how many slides are in the Album and in which device or devices are they stored. SSM collects this information from a sequential files called "Driver". At the moment, the information in "Driver" concerns the demonstration slide Album, and is telling SSM that the Album has 13 slides accessible from device "df0:". If you want to change this information (you MUST if your Album will contain more or less than 13 slides), run the AMOS program "SSM-DriverCreator". Simply follow the prompts, and the new information will soon be written to "Driver", over-writing the previous data. Note that "SSM-DriverCreator" will automatically take "df0:" as the current drive where to store "Driver", so make sure to have the Album disk in device "df0:" before running the program. Note also that the Index page (Slide "0") is taken for granted by SSM, so on the Creator's prompt to enter the number of slides, do not include the Index page. If, for example, your Album is made up of 24 slides and an Index page, type in "24", and not "25". Since the index is considered as Slide "0", it is automatically included in the Album. SSM can access pictures either from a hard drive (dh0:) or from as much as three floppy drives (df0:, df1: and df2:). You may have an Album of slides distributed across three disks. By putting the bootable disk (including SSM and "Driver") in df0: and the two other disks in the external drives, SSM will happily access any slide from any drive without any fuss. For this to happen SSM will have to know how many of the slides are in which drive. This explains why the SSM-DriverCreator program will ask for the number of the last slide in each of the drives. Make sure you enter the necessary information here correctly, or there will certainly be trouble during the Slide Show session. Palettes ******** Some extra IFF files included in the "Tools" Drawer which have no direct relevance to SSM but which can be useful as tips for budding artists are the PALETTE screens. In an 8-Colour screen, 28 additional tints can be created in addition to the eight basic colours (totalling 36 colours). This is achieved by mixing one colour with all the rest of the palette. Using a brush two pixels high by two pixels wide with two colours in a chequered fashion, an area can be filled in with any of the proposed tints. In a 16-Colour screen, there can be up to 136 colours. It is a way of having a greater number of colours while using less memory. Load the Palette screens into DPaint, use the Zoom tool to observe the patterns and note the extra number of tints which can be achieved with only eight colours. This trick of course is much more effective in Med-res than in Low-res. All the slides in the Demo Album are actually 8-Colour files, but you can note, especially in Slides "5" and "6", how much effective this "blending of colours" can be. In short, with a basic 8-Colour screen you can access around 36 different hues; but this will occupy just the space of an 8-colour file on disk. MORE HINTS ON SAVING DISK SPACE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Deleting Files ************** The best way of having your own bootable Album is by copying the Demo disk and replacing the slides with your own. But once this is done, a number of files and drawers can be deleted from your own Album disk. The "Tools" Drawer, for instance, can be completely deleted. Also delete any Trashcan drawer and files with ".info" at the end. These are useless for SSM, and the disk space can be used for more slides. Compacting Screens ****************** If you own AMOS you may know that IFF screens saved from AMOS are compacted and take slightly less disk space. I found little difference when trying it our, but if you wish to include as much slides as possible into one disk, compacting them could help. The "Compacter" program in the "Tools" Drawer does just that. Run the program, type in the number of the first slide and the number of the last slide in the disk, sit down and let Compacter do the rest. It will load all slides (starting from Slide "0") one by one and will resave them in a compacted form. STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO CREATING AN ALBUM ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We have already discussed the method of putting together a customized Album, but here is a resumé of the more salient points to use as a quick reference: (1) Make a copy of the Demo Disk and place the original safely away. Two or three copies, in fact are better than one, just in case! (2) Delete from your copy unnecessary files and drawers in order to make more disk space for your slides. Suggested drawers to delete are the "Tools" drawer and the "Documentation" drawer. Delete also all files which have ".info" at the end. (3) Run DPaint and switch on the "No Icon" function in the "Prefs" menu. This will make sure no unnecessary ".info" files are saved when you resave your slides. (4) Load the "ALBUMtemplate" picture and copy it to the Spare page. (5) Load your own picture, and Merge-to-Front the Spare page. If you do everything correctly, the Control Panel should now be superimposed at the bottom of your own picture. Don't mingle with the colour palette of the "ALBUMtemplate" screen before you merge it. The colour white in "ALBUMtemplate" is considered as the transparent colour. You must leave it as it is, or else, when you merge the two pictures, "ALBUMtemplate" will completely cover the other picture! (6) Check again that the "No Icons" function is on. Resave your picture into the Album disk. Remember to give a NUMBER as a name. (7) DO make an Index page of your own on the disk. If you don't over-write Slide "0" with your own, your Album will load the Demo Index instead. (8) Leave everything else on the disk as it is. There is no need change the startup-sequence. Install the disk if it fails to boot, but apart from that, there should be no other problems. (9) Run the Compacter program to compact your slides should you wish to save some more space on your disk. (10) Run the SSM-DriverCreator and give precise information on the way your Album is set up: how many and which devices are to be used, and how many slides are there in how many disks. Leave your Album disk in drive "df0:" during this session, and SSM-DriverCreator will automatically update the Driver available in the disk. APPLICATIONS AND FURTHER SUGGESTIONS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When I originally created SSM my intention was to have a facility to access IFF pictures easily from disk. Actually in time I realized SSM could be used for other applications as well, apart from being simply a slide viewer. Educational Programs ******************** With the help of the text functions of DPaint, your IFF pictures can include quite a deal of text as well. Of course there is nothing in DPaint of the usual wordprocessing facilities, but text can easily be typed in and then manipulated as a brush. The Demo Album, in fact, includes more text than actual graphics. Educational programs are therefore natural in this case, including charts, notes and drawings on particular topics. In this way SSM can create simple-to-use reference Albums which are easily accessible to children. Simple Databases **************** SSM Albums can be used as rudimentary card systems. The Index page can help as a reference to the contents of the cards. The best use I have found for SSM in this case is an Album of Clip Art brushes. Each slide includes a number of Clip Art graphics. The Title Screen on the Control Panel serves to indicate the Disk and drawers where the graphics can be found, and in the Index page the graphics are grouped according to subjects or topics. Going through them by means of the GOTO Function is very easy, and the Album will serve as a quick reference to the hundreds of Clip Art graphics one could have spread about in countless disks. Branching the Index ******************* If there are too many slides in the Album to be all listed in a single slide, other slides in the Album can be used as sub-indexes apart from the main Index which is Slide "0". Slide "0" can then be used to refer to these sub-indexes. If, for instance, you are creating an Album on "Mammals", and wish to divide it into sections such as "Land Mammals", "Sea Mammals" and "Air Mammals", each section can have its own sub-index which will be accessed through the main Index. Considering these ideas it is actually up to the user's imagination how to go about using SSM. I am sure other users will have more ideas for using SSM which I have not yet considered. CREDITS ~~~~~~~ This program was mainly created using AMOS The Games Creator, by François Lionet and DPaint III, by Dan Silva. They are both excellent programs which have in their own right helped me to access the full potential of the Amiga: something which would have otherwise been much more difficult if not impossible. PROGRAM HISTORY AND FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This present version, Version 1.2, actually has little changes from Version 1.1. The most notable difference is the position of the Control Panel itself, which in the previous version tended to hide a slightly larger area of the screen. It has also some enhancements on the overall functions of the Control Panel, making it more reliable. My intention is to prepare other versions of the "ALBUMtemplate" to work with Low-res and Hi-res screens. Not having a hard disk drive myself I was unable to test the program on one, so I cannot say whether it actually works on a hard disk as it should. In this version the "Driver" file only recognizes the official device names of the internal and external drives (that is, "df0:", "df1:" and "df2:"). I intend to change this so that the "Driver" program and SSM itself will be able to recognize particular disk names. In this way SSM will not be limited to the number of devices connected, and an Album could thus be distributed across more than the present maximum of three disks. ============================================================================ **************************************************************************** Document completed: 31st December 1991 Norman C. Borg Mayfair Flat 1, Upper St. Albert Street, Gzira GZR 04 MALTA EUROPE ============================================================================ ****************************************************************************