POWERPACKER SHOW (PPSHOW) Typed in by ???. Edited by PARASITE. USAGE PPShow can be used in four different ways. - First of all via the CLI: If you enter PPShow without arguments you will get a usage template. You use PPShow like this: PPShow [-h] [] The program will then load the 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. If you enter PPShow without options, you will be presented with either a file prompt or the ARP filerequester (if arp.library or asl.library is available). 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 is only one option in this version: '-h'. This option is used to force HAM mode when no CAMG chunk is found. If you don't specify this option PPShow will assume a 6 plane screen is extra half brite. (Note that it is wrong for an Amiga IFF ILBM file not to have a CAMG chunk, especially when there can be doubt about what display mode to pick !) PPShow can be made resident so it doesn't have to be loaded every time you use it, use the ARP ARes command or 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 :-D) Example: '1> PPShow -h dh0:pics/HAMpicWithoutCAMG.pic' - 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 double click the picture icon or you can double-click the PPShow icon and enter the filename in the string gadget you will be presented with. You set the default tool by single clicking the icon of the picture and selecting 'Info' from the workbench 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. NOTE: - 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 !) FEATURES - PPShow uses the filerequester of the asl.library or arp.library if available. - Abort PPShow by pressing any key (except or 'P') or the right mouse button. The screen can be dragged by an invisible drag bar at the top. - The pesky little mouse will be removed while displaying. - PPShow offers full overscan support, PAL or NTSC. As far as I know this is the first ILBM viewing program to do so, looks like PAL Amiga owners still get forgotten. All Amiga display modes (like HAM, EHB) are of course also supported. - Deluxe Paint cycling is supported, press to (de)activate. Up to 8 cycles are supported (DPaint III currently only supports 6). - PPShow has the ability to print the screen it is displaying, all you have to do is press 'P' on the keyboard and wait. The mouse pointer will be visible while printing. Please note that the printer.device has to be in the 'devs:' directory for PPShow to be able to print, you should also have a correct system-configuration for your printer. - Press 'L' to load another picture, you will be prompted for a filename. 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. 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. Filerequester 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 Rewritten 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 filerequester). 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 :( ) End.