The popular "Freeware" application, PickAPic, has again been upgraded.
The main purpose of the program is, as it always has been, to allow you to view the pictures in your collections of ClipArt, to make it easier to use pictures in your documents by dragging thumbnail copies of the actual pictures rather than files with cryptic names, and to create illustrated catalogues of your pictures for storing on disc or for printing out. The program has always been noted for its ease of use and its flexibility: it handles the standard Acorn picture types: sprites, drawfiles, Artworks and Poster files stored in any standard filing system, including SparkFS and ArcFS archives and files compressed with Cfs or Squash.
The main changes in the new release, version 1.15, (which is for use with RISC OS 3.10 upwards) are:
• to allow pictures to be displayed much more quickly (often up to 20 times as fast) by storing thumbnail sprites in a "ThumStore" directory; this will be especially valuable for anyone with large collections of ClipArt since pictures can be viewed almost instantly without you having to access the floppy discs on which they are stored.
• to allow textual descriptions and category names to be stored along with the picture, so that you no longer have to rely on cryptic file names.
In addition, there have been numerous lesser enhancements designed to make it even more user-friendly.
PickAPic is available from leading PD libraries or (free of charge, unless you wish to make a voluntary payment) from the author: Hugh Eagle, 48 Smithbarn, Horsham, Sussex, RH13 6DX.
... and you can still have it free of charge!
Notes on version 1.15 of PickAPic:
The ThumStore
I have included on the disc a blank !ThumStore directory (blank in the sense that it has no picture data in it) plus an identical spare copy in the Blank sub-directory of the ThumStores directory. The AW_Demo sub-directory contains a copy with the data for the pictures on discs 3 to 7 (the sample pictures discs) supplied with ArtWorks. As I have commented in the !Help file the compression ratio for more complex picture files is much better than for simple drawfiles: the Count of the data files (squashed mode 20 sprites) for the 5 ArtWorks discs is 117,131 bytes.
I strongly recommend copying a !ThumStore directory to a hard disc before you use it, because PickAPic refers to it frequently. To change the active !ThumStore simply double-click on the one you want to use either before you run the program or while it is running. If you want to use the program without a ThumStore either arrange for the Filer not to "see" a !ThumStore before you use PickAPic or *UnSet the system variable Sore$Thum before running the program.
Please see the !Help file and/or run the interactive !Help application for more information.
Incompatibility with RISC OS 2
Because it relies on operating system features not available before RISC OS 3 it will no longer work under RISC OS 2 (or indeed under any version before 3.10).
RISC PC compatibility
It has so far been tested mainly on a RISC OS 3.10 machine. Limited testing on a RISC PC indicates that the program works satisfactorily in most respects. There are two exceptions that I have found.
Firstly, PickAPic can't create sprites (whether thumbnails for display on the screen or in drawfile catalogues, or "big pictures") in modes with more than 256 colours; I have therefore changed the program so that when an attempt is made to create a sprite in a 32000 colour mode or higher it defaults to making a mode 28 sprite. The first time it does this (in each session) it displays a brief report.
This means that there is a problem with ArtWorks files, since PickAPic can only create a sprite from an ArtWorks file if the sprite has the same number of colours as the current screen mode. You will therefore need to change to a 256 colour mode (or less) to process ArtWorks.
The second exception is that when the source file is a sprite with more than 256 colours its colours are displayed incorrectly.
I hope to be able to make the program more compatible with the RISC PC, but can make no promises!
Another ArtWorks problem
PickAPic can't render some recent ArtWorks pictures. ArtWorks files which contain deep sprites (i.e. those with 32000 colours or more) are saved in a new file type which cannot yet be rendered by this program (or, for that matter, by Impression or AWViewer!)
The Future
Although the program incorporates a facility for saving of textual descriptions and category names along with the thumbnail pictures in the ThumStore, it does not yet include a Search facility. This will be top priority for the next version, if there is sufficient interest. Another much-requested feature is handling of JPEG pictures, but I'm afraid I've got nowhere with my attempts to understand how to use djpeg. Can anyone help?
