This is !Executor, the playback only version of !Keystroke, it has been supplied as seen with no warrantly, etc. It has been supplied to ARCHIVE magazine subscribers to demonstrate some of the abilities of !Keystroke.
Not to be sold, altered in any way or given to non-ARCHIVE subscribers.
WHAT DOES IT DO?
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This application has the ability to produce from a directory of JPEG¹ or TIFF¹ files a multi-sprite file. In effect making a !Paint 'thumbnail' file!
These thumbnail sprite files are very useful for displaying your bit-map images quickly and whilst not being as good as professional thumbnail applications, those programs cost money and because !Paint and this copy of !Executor comes free this is an definite advantage!
WHAT IS REQUIRED?
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Risc OS 3.1 or higher.
A copy of !ChangeFSI (ideally v0.95, but v0.90 will also work. See note²).
Load !Executor onto the Icon bar and make sure !ChangeFSI has been seen by the Filer.
Display any Filer directory which should JUST contain JPEG¹ or TIFF¹ files.
See note¹ below.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN?
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When the process is started !Executor will make sure that !Paint and !ChangeFSI are loaded, if not then it will load them both. If !ChangeFSI can not be found you will have to locate a copy of it and display it in a Filer window and try again.
!Executor will then make sure that the Filer display is set to 'Large icons' and move the directory of your choice to the left hand side of the screen and resize it. It will also open up a empty !Paint window and attempt to load (one at a time) the various files into !ChangeFSI by double clicking on them.
It will then find out the current height & width of the loaded image and resize it to a small fixed width of 100 pixels, but keeping the same aspect ratio.
!Executor will then transfer the image to !Paint and rename it back to it's original filename.
!Executor will repeatingly do all this until every image within the directory is done.
Then it will save this multi-sprite file within the directory as 'ZQuicklook'.
A finished banner will pop up to let you know when it is finished.
HOW TO START IT OFF?
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Position the mouse pointer over a Filer directory containing the images and press 'Alt Q' to start!
HOW TO ABORT THE PROCESS
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The process may be aborted by holding the 'Escape' key down.
Note: If the hourglass is on, then the process can not be aborted until the hourglass has gone (This is !ChangeFSI working).
CAN I MAKE THE SPRITE IMAGES 16 OR 256 COLOURS?
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Simply choose 'Alt Q' for creating 256 colour sprites or 'Alt W' for 16 colour sprites.
('Alt E' will create 256 greyscale (monochrome) sprites and 'Alt R' will create 16 greyscale (monochrome) sprites if you are using v0.95 of !ChangeFSI.)
CAN I MAKE THE PROCESS WORK FASTER?
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Mmm... The limitation is the speed at which !ChangeFSI will convert the images.
Try putting on the 'FAST' option of !ChangeFSI, this will blank the screen, but it will speeds things up a little.
Colour cards or Risc PC owners need not bother as you will get very little speed increase.
Remember this utility did not cost you anything!
note¹
HOW DO I MAKE IT DO THE SAME FOR GIF OR BMP FILES?
In order for all this to work correctly, a double click on the image file must load into !ChangeFSI without it loading another copy of its self. !ChangeFSI v0.90 will only do this with TIFF files. v0.95 will only do JPEG or TIFF files.
If you want to improve things, a little 'painless' editing work is necessary to make it do better.
(Please do NOT use your master copy of !ChangeFSI in case you make a mistake, use a copy of !ChangeFSI)
Open up the !ChangeFSI application and you will see a blue BASIC file called 'ChangeFSI'. Load this into !Edit and look for a line starting:
(!ChangeFSI v0.90 line looks like this)
WHEN &ff0
or
(!ChangeFSI v0.95 line looks like this)
WHEN &ff0,&c85
change this one line so it reads:
WHEN &ff0,&C85,&695,&69C
ff0 is a TIFF file, c85 is a JPEG file, 695 is a GIF file, 69C is a BMP file.
Now resave this BASIC file.
Load !ChangeFSI's !Run file into !Edit and you will see a line:
Set File$Type_FF0 TIFF
just under this line type in the following three lines:
Set Alias$@RunType_C85 Run <Obey$Dir>.!Run %%*0
Set Alias$@RunType_695 Run <Obey$Dir>.!Run %%*0
Set Alias$@RunType_69C Run <Obey$Dir>.!Run %%*0
If you have v0.95 of !ChangeFSI then the first line will already be there!
Save the !Run file and that's it!!
(All you have done is to make !ChangeFSI load in a JPEG, GIF or BMP file automatically when one of these files are double clicked upon!)
Why Acorn did not do this themselves is a complete mystery!
If you want to do this for other image types, simply add their filetype to the above lines when you edit the 'ChangeFSI' and '!Run' files! (You can not do this with sprites files I'm afraid as Sprite files will always load into !Paint).
Additional notes:
note²
v0.90 is a lot slower than v0.95 and will not keep the correct aspect ratio as it lacks this ability. v0.95 does keep the aspect ratio correct. (v0.95 works perfectly well on Risc OS 3.10+ assuming you have the latest Colours module v0.52 or better).
KEYSTROKE V3 USERS
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Lucky v3 owners of !Keystroke will be interested to know that the first two actions of Alt Q are:
1)
*Command
Set viewsize 100
You may wish to make this number bigger so that the resultant sprites are larger, this means that the finished 'Quicklook' image file will be bigger, but more detail will be present when you view an individual sprite.
Making it smaller will not help much as a value of 90-100 makes for a maximum display size when viewing them all at once.
2)
*Command
Set finalname ZQuicklook
If you do not like the choosen saved name you may change it here.
If you want to change the START keys (I'm lefthanded!), feel free! A quick 'Cut Group' followed by the usual methods to select another key and pasting should be OK.
Do NOT press 'Alt Shift Keypad -', 'Alt Shift Keypad Enter' or 'Alt Shift Keypad +' as these perform the hard work!
