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PPShow 2.3 User Manual Oct 31, 1992 Preface ======= The programs and files in this distribution are freely distributable, but are also copyright (c) Nico François. They may be freely distributed as long as no more than a nominal fee is charged to cover time and copying costs. No commercial usage is permitted without written permission from the author. Everything in this distribution must be kept together, in original unmodified form. The above is generally known as freeware. If you have suggestions or remarks about this program, or if you find any bugs, please let me know. Contacting the author: Fido: 2:292/603.10 (Nico Francois) UUCP: Nico.Francois@p10.f603.n292.z2.FidoNet.Org Mail: Nico François Corbielaan 13 B-3060 Bertem BELGIUM If you can please use e-mail. That way you'll stand a much better chance of getting a reply quickly. PPShow 2.3 requires AmigaDOS Release 2 (Kickstart & Workbench 2.0) or higher to run. Contents ======== 1. An introduction 2. Usage 3. Features 4. Note on crunching 1. An introduction ================== PPShow was written to complement one of my other utilities, PowerPacker (a command and data cruncher). It is used to show normal IFF ILBM files or ILBM files crunched with PowerPacker. The decrunching is done automatically so the user doesn't have to know if a file is crunched or not. PPShow uses 'powerpacker.library' and 'reqtools.library', so make sure these are present in your Libs: directory. Double-click 'Install_libs' for an automatic installation. If you haven't got PowerPacker you are of course missing one of the main features of this program. PowerPacker is available as shareware (up to version 2.3b) or as a commercial program (version 4.0a). Order a copy from UGA, P.O.Box 881, 3700 AW Zeist, The Netherlands or from JumpDisk, 1493 Mt. View Ave., Chico CA 95926, USA. The commercial version offers several enhancements like 40 to 50 times faster crunching, overlay support, an ARexx port, and much more. 2. Usage ======== PPShow can be used in several different ways. - First of all via the CLI: If you enter 'PPShow ?' you will get a standard AmigaDOS usage template, enter 'PPShow ??' for more information. You use PPShow like this: PPShow {{file}|<dir>|-c} [LO] [HI] [SHI] [PROD] [L=LACE] [NL=NOLACE] [HAM] [TIME s] [NOCYCLE] [NO=NOOVERSCAN] [A2024 [15Hz]] [PAL] [NTSC] [VGA] [LOOP] [NOFLICKER] The program will by default load the specified ILBM file and display it. If the file was crunched using PowerPacker 2.0 or higher PPShow will first decrunch it for you. If the file was encrypted you will be prompted for the password. You may specify more than one file on the command line and you may even use wildcards, PPShow will show all files one at a time, double buffering the display. If you specify "-c" as a filename ('PPShow -c') PPShow will show you the contents of the clipboard (if it contains an ILBM). When PPShow encounters a GIF file (common on MS-DOS systems) it will try to execute a GIF viewer to show this picture. Default GIF viewer that is run is the very fast TurboGIF, but any viewer can be selected by setting the environment variable GIFVIEWER. You can include options in this variable. For example: ' SetEnv GIFVIEWER "TurboGIF -k7" '. Make sure the GIF viewer is in your path. If you enter PPShow without options, you will be presented with a file requester. Entering PPShow with a directory instead of a file as an argument will also get you a requester, but it will be positioned in the directory you specified. There are several command line options: LO : Force screen to open in LORES mode. HI : '' '' '' '' HIRES '' SHI : '' '' '' '' SUPERHIRES '' PROD : '' '' '' '' PRODUCTIVITY '' LACE : Force interlace on. NOLACE : Force interlace off. HAM : This switch is used to select HAM mode when no CAMG chunk is found. If you don't specify this switch PPShow will assume a 6 plane screen is extra-halfbrite. Note that this switch does not force HAM mode, it merely instruct PPShow to use HAM mode in case of doubt. TIME s : Display pictures for 's' seconds. NOCYCLE : Do not start cycling automatically. NOOVERSCAN : Disable overscan. LOOP : Display all pictures in a loop, press CTRL-D to abort. PAL : Use 'pal.monitor'. NTSC : Use 'ntsc.monitor'. VGA : Use 'multiscan.monitor'. Please note that when using VGA, LO puts the screen in EXTRALORES, HI in LORES and SHI in PRODUCTIVITY (same as PROD). A2024 : Use 'a2024.monitor'. 15Hz : Put A2024 monitor into 15Hz, rather than 10Hz. NOFLICKER : Kickstart 3.0 only. If possible use a non-interlaced monitor mode ('DoublePAL.monitor' or 'DoubleNTSC.monitor'). PPShow can be made resident so it doesn't have to be loaded every time you use it, use the c: Resident command for this. You can't make PPShow resident when it is crunched!! The file is supplied as an uncrunched command file with the pure bit set. PPShow is reentrant as well, so you can run it from several CLI's at the same time. (Not that this is very useful, but it's possible :-) Examples: o PPShow dh0:pics/HAMpicWithoutCAMG.pic HAM o PPShow dir/#?.pic TIME 5 LOOP Show all files in directory 'dir' with a '.pic' suffix for 5 seconds and loop until user presses CTRL-D. o PPShow PICS:~(#?.info) NOOVERSCAN Show all files on 'PICS:' NOT ending in '.info'. Disable overscan. - Via the WorkBench: There are three different ways of using PPShow via the workbench: you can set the default tool of the (crunched) ILBM file to 'PPShow', you can single click the PPShow icon and then extend-select one or more picture icons (use shift click, double-clicking the last one) or you can double-click the PPShow icon and specify a filename using the file requester. You set the default tool by single clicking the icon of the picture and selecting 'Information' from the 'Icons' menu. You will get a window with several gadgets in it, click in the string gadget where it says 'Default tool' and enter ':ppshow'. PPShow should be in the root directory of your disk for this to work, if e.g. it's in the system directory you should enter ':system/ppshow'. Last of all select the 'Save' gadget. Following tooltypes are recognized by PPShow (in the pictures' icon, not PPShow's icon): HAM : See CLI option. TIME=s : Display picture for 's' seconds. NOCYCLE : Do not start cycling automatically. NOOVERSCAN : Disable overscan. NOFLICKER : Kickstart 3.0 only. If possible use a non-interlaced monitor mode. NOTE: - Follow these steps to make a simple slideshow that runs by double- clicking an icon: Make a script file containing something like the following line: 'PPShow #?.pic TIME 10 LOOP'. Set this script's default tool to 'c:IconX' and enter 'WINDOW=CON://///AUTO' in its tooltypes. Put the script in a directory containing pictures (all ending in '.pic'!). If you now double-click this scripts icon the slideshow will start, press ESC or CTRL-D to end. - PPShow will add '.pp' to the filename when the file wasn't found. This is very useful in the Workbench enviroment: you can make an icon for 'house.pic' but name the file 'house.pic.pp'. Now the WorkBench will show an icon with 'house.pic' as name, but if you doubleclick it 'house.pic.pp' will be displayed. (As long as there is no 'house.pic' file in the directory!) - Drag as many monitor icons to the WbStartup or Monitors drawer as your monitor allows. For example: if you have a multiscan monitor drag pal, ntsc and multiscan.monitor to your Monitors drawer. If you do this you will have maximum ease of use of PPShow. 3. Features =========== - PPShow fully supports the 16.8 million colors and HAM8 mode of the AA (AGA) chips set of the Amiga 4000 and Amiga 1200. - Abort PPShow by pressing 'Q', CTRL-C or the right mouse button. Press CTRL-D to abort everything and to break a script. - PPShow offers full overscan and monitor support: PAL, NTSC, VGA, A2024. - You can scroll very big pictures by pressing and holding the left mouse button and dragging. While you are dragging the picture the pointer will become visible. Note that the screen itself can be dragged by pressing Left-Amiga, holding down the left mouse button and moving the mouse (you may have to press something else than Left-Amiga, depending on your 'IControl' preferences setting). - PPShow can be used as a simple slideshow tool. It supports wildcards to simplify this. - Deluxe Paint color cycling is supported, press <TAB> to (de)activate. Up to 8 cycles are supported (DPaint III currently only supports 6). - The pesky little mouse will be removed while displaying. Press 'M' to toggle the mouse pointer on/off. - Press 'L' to load another picture, you will be presented with the file requester. 4. Note on crunching ==================== A lot of IFF ILBM files are already crunched with the standard ByteRun1 compression. PowerPacker will crunch these files even further (most of the time) but will not crunch them as well as uncrunched ILBM files. So save IFF files uncrunched (if you can, e.g. with PixMate) before crunching them, this way you will get the best crunching results. As always, I hope you find this program useful! PROGRAM HISTORY: ***************************************************************************** VERSION 1.0 First release. ***************************************************************************** VERSION 1.1 Decrunching is about 40% faster (accidently used slow decruncher in 1.0) Screen now pops to front when picture is ready to be viewed, not before. File requester used when arp.library is available. 'L' command added to load other pictures without restarting PPShow. ***************************************************************************** VERSION 1.1a The Guru isn't with me lately, after using a slow decruncher in 1.0 by accident I now used a fast but faulty decruncher in 1.1. It sometimes didn't decrunch correctly, this has now been fixed. The decruncher is still 40% faster than the 1.0 one. (and it's 2 bytes shorter :^D ) ***************************************************************************** VERSION 1.2 Rewrote cycling routine in assembly, so less overhead when cycling. Uses the all new powerpacker.library => shorter code. Starting PPShow from the CLI with a directory as an argument now puts up the requester positioned in that directory. Extremely useful once you get used to this :^) If you are running Workbench 2.0 PPShow will use the asl.library instead of the arp.library (for the file requester). Fixed serious bug: memory wasn't freed when an IFF error occured. No longer tries to display small brushes (intuition doesn't like very small screens :( ) ***************************************************************************** VERSION 2.0 PPShow requires Kickstart 2.0 to run. Sorry to all the 1.2 and 1.3 users, just consider this program as another reason to upgrade :-) File requester from arp.library is no longer supported. PPShow now uses reqtools.library (also by moi) for its requesters. Among other things this means a much better file requester than before (with a buffer). Asl is no longer used, sorry Commodore :-) Printing of screen removed, has anybody ever used this ? :-) Improved command line format, follows AmigaDOS standard. (old option '-h' is no longer supported!). IFF decrunching rewritten in assembly: much faster and shorter. Shows pictures saved in DPaint with stencil on. In other words: supports IFF picture masking. No longer quits when you press any key, you have to press 'Q', CTRL-C, or right mouse button; CTRL-D aborts PPShow and breaks scripts. Color cycling is now automatically switched on (except for brushes). Mouse pointer visibility can be toggled. Possibility to automatically stop displaying after a specified number of seconds. Many new command line options: change display resolution, switch off overscan, disable auto-cycling, etc. Several options may be set using Workbench tooltypes. From Workbench, if you single-click PPShow and shift double-click a drawer icon, PPShow will open up the file requester in that drawer. If you use 'PPShow <file>' or extend-select <file> from Workbench and you invoke the file requester, it will be positioned in the directory <file> is in. The file requester will appear on the picture screen if possible. Canceling the file requester no longer quits PPShow. The file requester will filter out the .info files. Can be used as a simple slideshow program: supports wildcards and multiple files on command line, also possible to loop the slideshow. Picture switching is double buffered. Multiple extended selection from Workbench is also supported. Overscan now done using Kickstart 2.0 display clips. Supports all new ECS display modes (ECS Denise only) and all monitors. Will switch to PAL or NTSC monitor automatically (ECS Agnus only). PPShow will now show very large screens without problem, AUTOSCROLL is switched on so the screen automatically scrolls when you move the mouse pointer off the edge. Screen no longer has an invisible dragbar. Use meta-dragging (left Amiga key + mouse) to drag the screen. Directories are expanded to their full pathnames on startup. PPShow now returns a returncode of 20 in case of an error or if ended by CTRL-D. Error reporting improved: when started from CLI, errors are printed on the console; when started from Workbench, a requester is used. All these great new features and PPShow grew only about 1K in size :-) Release 12-Jan-92 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now distributed with release 1.0c of reqtools.library. Install script fixed. ***************************************************************************** VERSION 2.1 Uses Workbench 2.0's iffparse.library for best IFF support. Displays SHAM (Sliced HAM), DHAM (Dynamic HAM) and DRES (Dynamic Hires, DigiView 4.0 and MacroPaint) files. Executes TurboGIF (by Steve Borden) or any other GIF viewer (set by var ENV:GIFVIEWER) if it encounters a GIF file. Will hunt for ILBM pictures in all IFF files. E.g. shows first picture of animation files. Is able to show the contents of the clipboard (if filename is "-c"). Allows you to scroll big pictures by holding down the left mouse button and dragging. This also works for SHAM, DHAM and DRES pictures. PPShow will update the copper list these pictures require while scrolling. PPShow will no longer abort upon encountering a file that is not IFF, or not IFF ILBM. It will try to show the next file in the wildcard/list. When using a wildcard directories will be ignored, instead of bringing up the file requester. ***************************************************************************** VERSION 2.2 Version number skipped because of a fake 2.2 version of PPShow. ***************************************************************************** VERSION 2.3 Support added for Kickstart 3.0 and the new graphics modes of the AA chip set. PPShow fully supports palettes of up to 16.8 milion colors and the HAM8 mode. Color cycling in 16.8 million colors is not yet supported. On Kickstart 3.0 and pictures with enough colors PPShow will pick four colors for the GUI (file requester). If not enough colors are available or on Kickstart 2.0 the palette will be temporarily reset when needed. Maximum overscan used is now OSCAN_MAX instead of OSCAN_VIDEO. This is much more system friendly. New switch added for Kickstart 3.0 users: NOFLICKER. Will try to use a non-interlaced display mode to show the picture (DBLPAL or DBLNTSC). Release 2.0c of reqtools.library included. ***************************************************************************** PPShow 2.3 written by Nico François (Yes, Nico is my first name :-) thanks to Ives Aerst for all the suggestions and beta-testing. "Sometimes people can be oh so dense" - Pixies (c) 1991/1992 Nico François // Thanks to \X/ Amiga for being the best computer ever!