OS/2 Shareware BBS: Graphics/Graphics.zip/pmvw210.zip/whatsnew.txt

Text File | 2000-05-10 | 11KB | 183 lines

NEW FEATURES in PMView 2000 version 2.10

The following features are new in PMView 2000 v2.10:

 1. WBMP (WAP Bitmap) file support (read/write)
 2. PIC (Softimage Picture) file support (read/write)
 3. Threshold control for Black/White conversion
 4. PMView's System Info dialog now includes the version and internal build
    number of PMView.

The following bugs and problems are fixed in PMView 2000 v2.10:

 1. Loading, JPEG: Some recovered JPEG (non-JFIF) files do not load because
    they are mistaken for FAX G3 files. The detection of FAX G3 is too
    lenient. The requirement is incresed from a 10 line minimum to a 100 line
    minimum for G3 files.
 2. Loading, Windows BMP: Loading a Win32 BI_BITFILEDS type bitmap file
    results in incorrect colors (interchanged red/blue color compontents).
 3. Loading, TIFF: Some TIFF files using Packbits compression cannot be read.
    PMView refuses to read files that are incorrectly stored with scanlines
    that decode into too many bytes. This is now fixed so that PMView is more
    lenient in its error checking and accepts such TIFF files.
 4. Saving, Windows BMP: Windows BMP files saved with PMView has an error in
    the file header.
 5. Saving, EPS: PMView generates an incorrect BoundingBox and scale factor.
 6. Zooming: Zooming to the minimum or maximum limit causes the zoom to get
    stuck at either limit.
 7. Zooming: Zooming intermittently crashes PMView.
 8. Slideshow: Closing a slideshow disables the file sequencer
    (File->Next/Previous).
 9. Slideshow: The color and the font are not saved.
10. Slideshow: The background of the progress bar is not painted correctly.
11. Printing: Printing on a printer that uses different horizontal and
    vertical resolution results in a stretched image.
12. Brightness/Contrast/Color dialog: Contrast adjustment algorithm improved.
13. Tool bar: The tool bar icons remain grayed-out after applying a transform
    to an image.
14. File Save dialog: When saving a new image (not existing on disk yet),
    PMView correctly opens the save dialog with the last folder saved to
    highlited in the directory tree. However, the container does not show
    the contents of this directory.
15. File Open/Save dialogs: Conversion status is not correctly displayed.
16. File Open/Save dialogs: Files in use (locked) by other applications will
    not appear.
17. General performance: The minimum thread priority delta for threads is
    changed from 0 to 1. This lets other applications in the system be even
    "more idle" than any of PMView's background tasks.
18. Installation: Installation instructions updated.
19. Installation: The REXX script for manual installation updated.

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PMView 2000 is the first multi-platform version of PMView. This version
is available for OS/2 Warp v3/v4/SMP and Windows 95/98/NT4/2000. The user
interface code has been rewritten and a lot of changes and improvements have
been made. Here's a list of changes and improvements in PMView 2000. Because
of the large number of changes only major changes and new features are listed.

The following features are new in 2000 :

 1. Enhanced File Open/Save windows with a drag&.drop enabled directory
    tree.
 2. New thumbnail option that lets you use "On-the-fly Thumbnails".
    On-the-fly Thumbnails are created on-the-fly and are not written to disk
    like Icon Thumbnails. On-the-fly Thumbnails have the advantage that they
    can be used on read-only media. There is also a "Mixed" mode option that
    loads an Icon Thumbnail if available or otherwise creates an On-the-fly
    Thumbnail.
 3. New print dialog. Three optional methods for mapping the image to the
    printer: pixelwise, image resolution, or fit page. Print preview and
    "drag"-style adjustment of print margins. There is now also a page
    orientation selector including an option for automatic selection of
    orientation.
 4. User configurable shortcut keys (hot keys). The keys can be configured
    on the new "Shortcut Keys" page in PMView's options notebook.
 5. Tool bar with Move, Zoom, Scroll, and Selection tools. The tool bar is
    optional and can be disabled.
 6. Status bar with progress bar and sizing grip. The status bar is optional
    and can be disabled. Note that the sizing grip has added functionality:
    Double-clicking on the grip does the same as View->Wrap Image.
 7. New menu option "File->New->Image" that lets you create a new empty
    canvas.
 8. New menu option "File->New->PMView Window" that lets you start a new
    PMView session.
 9. Progressive TWAIN support. The image appears in PMView's main window
    line-by-line as it is being scanned.
10. Screen Capture: Support for capturing by hot key.
11. Screen Capture: Support for including the mouse pointer in the capture.
12. The number of colors is reported for deep color images. (This is
    optional and is off by default).
13. File Sequencer: Background preloading (read ahead) of next file
14. File Sequencer: File caching (OS/2: optional, Windows: automatic)
15. BMP: Support for 15-, 16-, and 32-bit bitmaps.
16. BMP: Support for Win32 specific bitmaps (BI_BITFIELDS)
17. BMP: Support for top-down bitmaps (bitmaps with negative height).
18. EPS (Encapsulated Postscript) file support (write only)
19. PSD (Adobe Photoshop Document) file support (read/write)
20. G3 (CCITT Group 3 Facsimile) file support (read/write)
21. SFW (Seattle Filmworks) file support (read only)
22. TIFF: JPEG-in-TIFF file support (read/write)
23. TIFF: ZIP-in-TIFF file support (read/write)
24. TIFF: L*A*B* color support (read only)
25. TIFF: PMView will now read TIFFs even if the Orientation tag is invalid.
26. New command line option /ZOOm that lets you set the initial zoom
    percentage
27. New window sizing and positioning options: center window on screen,
    respect system task bar, and more.
28. New "Grid" view mode in the file open and slideshow container.
29. New zooming commands that let you zoom by factor.
30. New commands that delete the current image and automatically load the
    next or previous image. (These commands are only available via shortcut
    keys. The default keys are Ctrl-Del and Alt-Del.)
31. New options in the File Open and File Save windows that let you choose
    whether the window should always float on top of PMView's main window
    and whether the window should be hidden or not when you double-click
    on an image or press "Open".
32. New option to hide the title bar. (This option is located under
    View->Show->Title Bar).
33. New option to hide the scroll bars. (This option is located under
    View->Show->Scroll Bars).
34. New option that lets you select if the delete command should
    automatically load the next image after deleting the current image.
    (This option is located on the "Loading" page in PMView's options
    notebook).
35. Corrupt files in the File Open container are highlited with a red
    background. This feature is optional and can be disabled.
36. New Autostart option that will automatically start a loaded slideshow.
    This option can be found in PMView's options notebook on the "Slideshow"
    page.
37. New menu entry for creating a slideshow from a directory, or a directory
    including all subdirectories. This is located on the directory tree popup
    menu in the File Open window.
38. New menu entry for setting the desktop background.
39. Direct menu entries for selecting the most common filters. Many of these
    filters are new filters not previously available in PMView.

Here is a list of notable changes between 2000 and v1.0 for OS/2:

 1. All windows, dialogs, and controls now scale dynamically. This means
    that they look good regardless of system font differences (texts are
    not truncated nor is there excessive white space between controls).
 2. Hot keys have been changed to be compatible between platforms
 3. Some menus are rearranged (Selection Info - formerly called Track Info,
    Image Info, Show Menu, and Show Controller are now found under the
    View->Show-> menu.)
 4. Thumbnails are no longer kept in memory in the form of OS/2 bitmaps.
    This requires less memory and solves a bitmap resource problem that
    has been observed on some systems.
 5. The open/close state of the image info window is remembered. If the
    image info window is visible when closing PMView, it will automatically
    be shown when PMView is restarted.
 6. TWAIN memory handling is improved. When using a TWAIN source that
    supports transfer of data in small blocks (e.g. CFM) the memory need is
    only 50% compared to PMView v1.0.
 7. User configurations are now stored as version independent option keys in
    the OS/2 USER INI file.
 8. The "Mode" control is removed. Mode->Slideshow is replaced by
    File->New->Slideshow. Mode->View/Edit is replaced with File->New Image
    (alternatively you can use File->Close).

The following bugs and problems are fixed in PMView 2000:

 1. PMView is now able to correctly display images with a height and/or
    width larger than 65535 pixels.
 2. TWAIN: On some systems scanning with CFM Twain does not work correctly.
    The TWAIN code in 2000 is rewritten and now works correctly.
 3. Mouse Properties dialog in the System Setup Folder: Dragging from
    PMView's file open container or slideshow does not work when the OS/2
    "Dragging Objects" property is set to "Button 1".
 4. File sequencer: When keeping the '+' or '-' (alternatively Shift+
    PgUp/PgDn) key pressed, PMView will get stuck in a four image loop
    although there are more images in the current directory. This problem
    is fixed in PMView 2000 that has a completely new file sequencer with
    preloading (read-ahead) and optional directory caching.
 5. File Open Window: Scrolling the file open container does not work
    correctly if there is a large number of files in the container.
    This is an OS/2 bug. The problem no longer appears in PMView 2000,
    because it uses its own container control instead of the control
    provided by the system.
 6. File Open Window: No cursor is drawn in detail view mode. This means
    that the Shift+F8 method of selection cannot be used.