SHOWIZ 1.0 Written By J.L. White (C)1988 Merlin's Software ShoWiz combines the features of a display program with those of a slideshow program. This means you can show individual pictures or a whole disk full! ShoWiz has 23 different ways to display your pictures and it works with ALL resolutions, including Overscan. You can even display Text files, with your choice of colors for the background, text, and shadows. Type "ShoWiz ?" to see the various options you have. NO SCRIPTS ARE NEEDED to show a disk full of pictures and you can show as many disks as you like as many times as you like. It creates its own script files, but you can set the slideshow up any way you wish by entering the type of wipe, amount of time to display, and the filename on the command line. ShoWiz will work from Workbench or CLI. Is this the best slideshow program? ShoWiz! ShoWiz 1.0 Written By J.L. White (C)1988 Merlin's Software ShoWiz is released as Shareware. Donations of $10.00 are gladly accepted. Those who send $15.00 will receive a disk full of samples from all our sets of picture disks along with the latest version of ShoWiz. Read M-List for our latest listings and also where to mail your money. Thanks go to Athanassios Kartsatos (AKA Souli...AKA Hermes) for his help on displaying overscan and for answering a bunch of dumb questions. Thanks also go to Harold Walpert for releasing his excellent code to fade the colors on the screen. Thanks also to Andry Rachmat and Steve Morgan for just being a telephone call away. Ok, that's it for the plugs and the thanks. So now onto the juicy stuff. There are alot of programs that deal with IFF pictures. Some display single pictures. Others use scripts to display a whole bunch of pictures. All have their place. I just got tired of using one for this and another for that so I decided to make one that did it all. Yes, I know, it's larger than Ushow & most of the slideshows but there are 23 different wipes in this. That works out to only 1K per wipe. Plus the fact that it will display text files. I tried to make this as stupid proof as possible so if something goes wrong, you can't say I didn't try! ShoWiz allows you to display pictures from Workbench & CLI. Since Workbench doesn't allow as many options I will explain this first. You can use it 3 different ways. If you change the default tool of an icon to ShoWiz and then click on that icon, it will display the picture or text file (as long as the path is correct). If you click on the ShoWiz icon then on a picture icon, it will show the picture. If you just click on the ShoWiz icon it will display all the pictures in that directory and will loop through all the different wipes for 30 seconds each. The defaults are used when clicking on individual pictures. They are 30 seconds for time and `o' for display. ShoWiz really shines from CLI. Here you can make it do all kinds of things. First `ShoWiz ?' will show you your different options. You can display pics one by one or by directory. To show a picture you would type `ShoWiz Pic'. To show an entire directory you would type `ShoWiz Directory'. Now by doing it this way it uses its defaults of 30 seconds & `o' for display. You can vary this however. When showing directories you could type in the following: `ShoWiz +15 df0: df1: !'. Now this would show all the pictures in df0: and df1: for 15 seconds each. When showing directories you can't give it the type of display, it just loops through all of them. The `!' tells ShoWiz to keep showing these pictures over and over again until you hit `ESC' to exit the loop. When showing individual pics you could type `ShoWiz +15 -u Pic1 -f Pic2 +30 -c Pic3'. This would show Pic1 for 15 seconds using the UP display then show Pic2 for 15 seconds using the FADE display then show Pic3 for 30 seconds using the CHECKERBOARD display. If no option is given for the pic then the setting for the picture before it will be used. You can also use the `!' to loop through these pictures. Here is a listing of your different options: Time: Time is set in seconds. Any positive number is acceptable. If for example you typed `+30', it would display that pic for 30 seconds. If the number is less than 1, then 1 is used. Just put the `+' in front of the number to set the time. Option: This can be any of the following letters preceded by a `-' [abcdefg hijklmopqrstuvwx]. Now HAM & Overscan pictures just won't work with some of these. Don't worry though cause if you try to select one that can't be used, it will use the default. Below is a brief description of the different types of wipes that can be used. Just remember they have to be lowercase letters! ~~~~~~~~~ a-01 This will simply make the picture Appear on the screen. Nothing fancy. b-02 This will put the picture up in 5 Blocks in the following order: 15324. c-03 This will put the picture up using a Checkerboard effect. d-04 This will display the picture from the top Down to the bottom. e-05 This will display the picture then Enlarge it to 4 times its size. f-06 This will Fade the picture in from black. g-07 The picture will Grow from the middle out to the four corners. h-08 The picture will start in the middle. Half will go right and the other Half will go left. i-09 The picture will be displayed then Inverted (upside down). j-10 This is the opposite of h and will Join together in the middle. k-11 This will put 4 blocks up. One in each Korner.(Well you pick a better letter). l-12 This will display the picture from Left to right. m-13 This will Mix up the screen in a puzzle then straighten itself out. o-14 This is the default. It will Open from the middle. Half going up and the other half going down. p-15 This will Pull the picture down from the lefthand corner. q-16 This will display the picture then shrink it down to a Quarter of its original size. r-17 This will display the picture from Right to left. s-18 This will display the picture in Strips. t-19 This will make a Trail of the picture. Going to the right then the left then back to the right then back to the left. u-20 This will display the picture from the bottom Up to the top. v-21 This will reVerse the picture. w-22 I couldn't think of anything to call this but Weird! x-23 This will eXpand the picture from the center. Now to explain how to display text files. If you will notice at the top of each doc file is a header. The first line holds the information about the screen. ShoWiz reads a file to see if it has the string `Showiz.Textfile'. If it finds that it will load it on a screen. Best way to create your own is just to edit one of these files. At the end of the first line you will see a bunch of numbers. These are the RGB settings for the Background, then Text, then Shadow colors. For example white would be `15-15-15' and black would be `00-00-00'. Any number between 0 & 15 will work. Red would be `15-00-00' and so on. Try different ones to see which ones you like best. If you don't want a shadow on your text just set the shadow color to the same settings as your background. The text that appears on the screen is what is inside the border of 's. In 80 column mode, you should see an at both ends. Stay inside the border and overwrite the existing characters. The number of characters has to be correct. Try one and then load it up to see if you got it correct. Well that about does it. I think you are ready to play with it. I hope you get as much use out of this as I have. It is perfect for demos and such and as a handy utility to display all those pictures you download. Please read M-List and if I can be of service to you, just drop me a line (hopefully with a check enclosed... hint..hint..). Support Shareware Authors!!!