version 1.02, by Henk W. den Bok, Oktober 24, 1994
This program is free. It may not be sold, nor offered as an inducement as part of an other product. It may not be distributed on shareware volumes without explicit permission of the author. The copyright to the program and all its (re)sources resides, and stays, with the author. The program may be distributed freely, except in the cases indicated above, provided it is always accompanied by this ReadMe file. The program is offered to you as is. I take no responsibility for any data loss or corruption or any other damage caused directly or indirectly by this product. We all make backups, don't we?
Do you have trouble organizing your hundreds of digital images? Do filenames like anml0573.jpg mean nothing to you? Do you often lose your images, not by a disk crash but by simply not being able to remember where you've left them or what they were called? Do you find the Finder preview icons too small to see what a picture is about? Then this program is for you!
This program allows you to manage sets of previews (otherwise known as 'thumbnails') very much like what one would do with slides on a backlit table. The previews are taken or created from original image files that you have located somewhere on your file system. Show! can read and display previews of images if the previews are saved along with the original image in a PICT resource. Several programs, like JPEGView and PhotoShop now are able to save these previews along with their image files. Once imported in a Show! document, you can arrange them, move or copy them between documents, or pass the corresponding originals onto JPEGView for a slide show or to simply open the original images for full-scale viewing. You can save previews in a document file by extracting them from the original images. You can even create them with Show! provided the image file is a JPEG file. Show! allows you to attach a title to every preview with an easy point-click-and-edit method. The titles are saved with the previews sequence in the document file.
The program uses a PixMap cache to speed up screen redraws. In fact, the absence of such an algorithm in a commercial program that I've seen (no names mentioned) was the drive to write such a program myself. It also features interruptable screen redraws (or, background screen updates, if you like) to allow fast and interactive work, not hampered by waiting for screen updates (ever tried to scroll past a complex picture in Microsoft Word but forgot to turn 'Use Picture Placeholders' on?).
The program is of not much use without JPEGView 3.x. But together, they make a powerful slideshow composing and image library maintaining and viewing system. Similarly, if you don't have a large collection of digital images, there's not much to manage anyway.
This program requires 32-bit QuickDraw and System 7 or later (it uses AppleEvents). It does not explicitly rely on QuickTime being present, but many preview pictures that are around are compressed with QuickTime, and you won't be able to see them without QuickTime installed. In fact, without QuickTime, they may appear garbled. Although the program will work on a B/W display, 8 bit/pixel (color or greyscale) or better is preferred. For good-quality viewing of 24-bit images (e.g. JPEG/JFIF), 16 or 24 bit displays are a must (you don't know what you're missing). For viewing images, JPEGView 3.x is mandatory. This postcard-ware program is available from any of the popular ftp sites.
Opening image files
Show! can 'open' (or rather, inspect) the same types of image files as JPEGView can (GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PICT etc.). Either from the 'Open...' dialog or by dropping them onto the Show! application icon (dropping folders is also allowed), Show! will scan all files for preview pictures and display them in a document window. A new document will be opened if no document window is currently open. Image previews are always added to the current document (the frontmost document window in Show!).
The appearance of the filenames in the document window reflects the status of the preview: if the filename is dimmed (dark grey), the original image file could not be located on the file system. You can still see and arrange the previews, but you can not view the originals. If the filename is drawn in italic typeface, the preview picture shown is read in from the original image file. If a preview is included in the document file, the filename appears in normal typeface. If no preview picture can be found (neither in the document file, nor in the orginal image file), a crossed box will appear as picture placeholder.
Saving Show! documents
A set of previews is saved in a Show! document with 'Save' or 'Save As...' from the File menu. The order of the previews (which is the order of a composed slide show) is saved for later use, as well as the titles and filenames plus access path of the corresponding original image files. If the previews were extracted from the originals, these are saved in the document file as well. This is especially useful if the previews are to remain available for viewing/rearranging once the originals have come off-line (not on a mounted volume). When the preview pictures are contained within the document file, window redraws are also slightly faster. Furthermore, a set of previews take up less disk space if they are saved in one and the same (document) file, rather than in each of the individual data forks of all original image files.
Opening Show! documents
A Show! document is opened by double-clicking it in the finder. Show! will try to re-establish the access path to all the image files referenced from the document. As long as the folder containing the original image and the image itself is still around somewhere on one of the mounted volumes, Show! will locate it with an efficient search method. This means that files are found even if they have been moved accross the file system. (No, and I don't use file or directory IDs!). The seach method may appear slow to you when one or more server volumes are mounted through a LocalTalk network, or when a CD-ROM is mounted on the file system. If you move files or folders around in the Finder while the program is active, Show! may get confused.
Arranging previews
Previews may be arranged in the document window simply by dragging them around. When dragged a little outside the window, the window will auto-scroll if there are unexposed areas that can scroll into view. The cursor changes into four little arrows while scrolling.
When a second document window is open, previews may be moved to it. Remember, simply dragging previews always moves a preview. If you want it copied, hold the option key. The cursor appearance will reflect what you're doing.
By shift-clicking, several previews can be (de)selected. A group of previews can be moved together by dragging one of the selected. All previews are selected with 'Select All' (Edit menu). A group of previews may also be selected with a marquee rectangle ((shift-)click and drag a rectangle on a non-selected preview). Previews can be deleted by selecting them and pressing the BackSpace key or choosing 'Clear' from the Edit menu.
The selection box around the preview picture can be controlled with mouse clicks, but also with pressing the Tab-key. <Tab> advances the position of the selected preview; <shift-Tab> backs up one step. Pressing <Return> opens the title edit field of the selected preview (see next section).
In short, the program behaves much like the Finder in this respect, so you shouldn't have any problems to get going.
Editing titles
Note: You can only edit titles if the titles are currently visible. This is controlled by the check box in the 'Preview Options' dialog (see 'Options').
Below the file name of the preview, a little space is reserved to hold the title of the image. Clicking in this area or pressing <Return> if the preview is selected, will open an edit field, indicated by a blinking caret. You can type in a title. Pressing <Tab> will advance to the title of the next preview and open its edit field; pressing <shift-Tab> moves the edit field to the previous one. Pressing <Return> closes the edit field. You'll usually use the Tab-key to enter a sequence of titles. While editing, the clipboard commands Cut/Copy/Paste/SelectAll will work properly. The highlite colour for a text selection range is dark blue, to contrast the black window background color.
Viewing
Note: You can only view the original images if you have a copy of JPEGView installed on your system. You should also have sufficient RAM to run Show! and JPEGView simultaneously. If necessary, you can adjust the allotted amount of memory with 'Get Info' in the Finder.
A set of selected previews (or all, if none are selected) can be passed to JPEGView for a continuous slide show by choosing 'JPEGView Slide Slow' from the Previews menu. The slide show will appear in left-to-right/top-to-bottom order only if the 'display in random order' option in the JPEGView Preferences is off.
A (set of) selected preview(s) can be opened in JPEGView (or Photoshop) by making the appropriate choice from 'Open Selected Items' in the Previews menu. Double clicking on a preview picture has the same effect.
Show! will search for a copy of JPEGView and launch it. If you want a particular copy of JPEGView to handle your viewing, you should launch it explicitly from the Finder, before passing any requests to JPEGView.
Creating previews
Note: Creating previews requires QuickTime to be installed.
Previews are created from the files selected in the current document (or all if none are selected) by choosing 'Create Preview PICTs' from the Previews menu. At the moment, only JPEG files can be processed with this command.
Note on memory usage: decompressing JPEG images requires large temporary offscreen buffers, which are allocated in the system heap. Don't worry if you don't have huge amounts of RAM: QuickTime is smart enough to decompress the image in bands. However, if you have huge amounts of Virtual memory, QuickTime actually thinks you're a rich person and blindly starts allocating large offscreen buffers. Unfortunately, this will cause lengthy swapping. There is a simple cure: open a dummy application (e.g. a copy of SimpleText with an enlarged partition) so that your total free RAM is no more than 2 MB.
Extracting previews
Important Note: this command does not delete any resources from your originals.
Preview pictures are extracted from the original images by choosing 'Save PICTs in Document' from the Previews menu. The PICT resources of the files selected in the document window (or all if none are selected), are copied into the document file. From that moment on, the preview pictures have become stand-alone and remain available to you, even if the originals become off-line.
Preview pictures can be removed from the document file by choosing 'Remove PICTs from Document' from the Previews menu. This wil permanently delete the (selected) preview pictures in the document file (you can always 'Revert', of course). This action does not copy them back to the original files.
Options menu
'Reset PixMap cache' clears the memory allocated for fast screen redraws. This is useful if you have just changed the screen pixel depth (e.g. with DepthCharge). The pixmap cache is always built up in the current screen pixel depth - choosing a lower value (e.g. 8 instead of 32 bits/pixel) directly saves memory. Show! will always display all of the previews, but more previews will fit in the cache if a lower pixel depth is chosen and the cache is reset.
'Wrap to Window Size' fills the horizontal extent of the window exactly with an integer number of previews. Useful after resizing the window. Note that previews do not have a fixed horizontal and vertical position; they merely wrap around when the number of previews on a row changes.
'View as Text' displays the document as a list of referenced files. You can't arrange any previews here.
'Preview Options': see for yourself.
Limitations (may be solved in future versions)
Show! can not (yet) import or create JFIF previews. These previews are, as apposed to the QuickTime preview thumbnails (which are PICT resources), embedded in the data fork of a JFIF file. If you save a JPEG image in JPEGView with preview, this type of preview is attached to the image data and will not show up in the Show! document.
A file name must be unique in a document. If a second preview with a particular name is added to a document, the first one is removed from the document, even if the original file resided in a different folder.
'Undo' is not supported. For now, you have to rely on 'Revert' file. The clipboard commands only work in text edit fields, not on the preview pictures themselves. The 'Show Clipboard' command does not show the clipboard yet.
This application is not scriptable.
This application does not run native on a PowerMac. I don't have access to a PPC cross-compiler.
The number of open documents and attached previews is only limited by the amount of RAM allocated to the application. Most of the used memory, however, is consumed by the pixmap cache to allow fast screen redraws. The documents and previews themselves do not take up much space. The program is equipped with a fancy clean-up algorithm that can free up memory by reducing the amount of space occupied by the pixmap cache. So don't be alarmed to see the memory indicator almost full in the 'About this Macintosh' window in the Finder. This is the usual situation and does not mean that you have to increase the amount of RAM for Show! nor does it imply that you would not be able to open any more documents. I've tested the program by moving/copying hundreds of previews, all in the same 1024k application heap zone. No problemos.
With this version of the program, you will be able to scan your entire image library and check each preview picture for double occurences. By using neural networks, the algorithm is quite insensitive to differences in size, colour balance and garish borders. Optionally, an extensive search scan for color images against their black-and-white versions can be performed in your image library. The only problem is that the algorithm heavily relies on external resources (namely your brain) :-) I'm only kidding, but really, putting two Show! windows side-by-side can help tracking double or related images. You just have to cache them yourself (gives quite a headache after an hour or so).
Known Bugs
This program contains bugs (of course).
The algorithm to relocate an image file that is referenced from a saved Show! document occasionally fails when a non-Macintosh HFS disk is mounted on the desktop (e.g. an MS-DOS CD-ROM). For now, you can quit the program, unmount the disk and reopen the Show! document.
When a preview is dragged to the edge of the screen and the window is auto-scrolling at the same time, some garbage leftovers of the dragging outline is left in the window's content. This is not my fault; the DragGreyRgn call in the Macintosh toolbox hides the dragging outline when it is postioned within 4 pixels of the screen edge. This actually makes DragGreyRgn quite a useless call. One day I'll write my own version.
Features?
When you expose a window that was partly hidden (e.g. by activating your mac after the screen saver took over), some previews will appear black and the program will gradually fill in their empty spaces. The pattern of black previews changes each time. This is not a bug. It's a feature. It simply means that there is not enough memory available to cache all pixmaps. The program will try to keep an optimimum set of previews in the cache. If you find this a nuisance, you may want to increase the application size with the 'Get Info' command in the finder, or reduce the screen pixel depth and reset the pixmap cache.
The Show! document is a simple text file. You can open it in any text editor. If you want to rename the source folder of a set of files without wanting to re-import them in Show!, you can edit the list directly. Be careful not to rename the filenames themselves; you will misplace your previews that way.
Future versions
If I can find the time, I'd like to make the program DragManager-aware. Then you'll be allowed to add a file to a Show! document by dragging it directly from the Finder into a Show! document window.
File references to read-only media (like CD-ROM) are best in put in full pathnames. This eliminates the volume search for these files.
More file types will be supported for creation of previews.
other ideas?
Credits
I'd like to thank Aaron Giles for that fantastic program JPEGView, the source code for the JPEGUtilities and the positive feedback. Troy Gaul is credited for his Infinity Windoid (check out the clipboard! - it's a floater! (only there for demonstration purposes)). The splash screen picture is taken from the Corel Sample PhotoCD-ROM (SA06.PCD) and depicts the Sacred Place "Stonehenge", in Britain. I seem to recall that the Corel images are free from copyright. Wayne Cohoe is thanked for providing the originals to the 'nature sampler', which are all from the Perfect Vision image library (pvxxxxxx.gif).
If you have suggestions or comments. Don't hesitate to contact me (H.W.denBok@fys.ruu.nl or denbok@fys.ruu.nl). Flames are ignored. Criticism not!
