*-------------*
			| BigAnim 2.0 |
			*=============*


	What is BigAnim?
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BigAnim is an animation player (you guessed it!), and it's called
"BigAnim" because it is able to display animations that are too large
to be loaded into memory directly.

The two most important features of BigAnim are:

o BigAnim loads the animation asynchronously, 100 KByte at a time,
  which means that while it displays one 100 KByte part of the
  animation, it is loading the next 100 KByte.

o For speed, BigAnim takes over the display from intuition, but
  only when BigAnim's screen is the frontmost one, and if it
  hasn't been dragged down. This means that you can flip screens
  or pull down BigAnim's screen, but if you do this, BigAnim will
  be forced to use an intuition-friendly method of displaying the
  animation. This method is, of course, slower.


	Usage
	~~~~~
BigAnim can only be run from a CLI or shell, and the usage is:

	Usage: BigAnim filename [LOADALL]

where "filename" should refer to an ANIM type 5 animation.
If you use the switch "LOADALL", BigAnim tries to load the
entire animation into memory.


	Keys
	~~~~
While the animation is being played, you can press the following keys:

ESC   - Quits BigAnim (also the right mouse button)
Space - Pauses the animation, or restarts if already paused
N     - If paused, displays the next frame
TAB   - Toggles color cycling


	Additional info
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
o BigAnim supports CMAP chunks inside the animation, and changes the
  screen colors accordingly. 

o BigAnim uses the RelTime field of the ANHD chunk to decide how much
  delay to put between frames.

o BigAnim uses an optimized version of the official ANIM type 5
  decompression routines; Run on a 68000, the optimization led to
  a 1.9 second improvement in the "Juggler" test mentioned below.


	Test results
	~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have compared BigAnim against the following programs:
RTAP 1.0, PPAnim 1.0b, DPaint 4.0 and ShowANIM v4.30.

The tests were performed on an Amiga 500 (1 MB Chip + 2 MB Fast memory),
with an A590 (Quantum LP105S), running Kickstart 2.04.

The two test animations are Eric Graham's The Juggler, converted
to ANIM5, and Silencio8.anim, by Alejandro Garza. These two animations
are radically different, Juggler is a ray-traced HAM animation with only
24 frames while Silencio is a hand-drawn 32 color animation with 365
frames. The DLTA chunks in Juggler are quite large, about 8 KB each,
and the DLTAs in Silencio are small; the mean size is about 1400 bytes.

Juggler, 10 loops: (time in seconds)

Method           | BigAnim  RTAP   DPaint  PPAnim ShowANIM
-----------------+----------------------------------------
Load-while-play  |  11.1    14.0     N/A     N/A     N/A
Load all         |   9.9    13.2    14.4    14.8    16.1

Silencio:

Method           | BigAnim  RTAP   DPaint  PPAnim ShowANIM
-----------------+----------------------------------------
Load-while-play  |   8.2     8.6     N/A     N/A     N/A
Load all         |   7.7     8.4    14.7    14.8    15.0


	Future versions
	~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am currently working on BigAnim 3.0. It will be rewritten in C, except
for the decompression routines and other time-critical code. This will
mean that I can very easily add more features and options, and it will be
easier for me to find bugs and memory leaks. BigAnim 3.0 will require
Kickstart 2.04, and have support for Kickstart 3.0 and ANIM type 7.
Hopefully I can include support for the AGA chipset as well.


	Disclaimer
	~~~~~~~~~~
#include <std/disclaimer.h>


	Distribution
	~~~~~~~~~~~~
BigAnim is freely distributable, as long as it is distributed unaltered
and together with this doc file.


	Feedback
	~~~~~~~~
If you want to send me suggestions, bug reports, etc, I can
be reached at:

Internet:	d8sunch@dtek.chalmers.se

Snail-mail:	Christer Sundin
		7321 Bollestad
		S-442 93 Kungälv
		Sweden