---------------------- 3]PPSHOW 1.0 USER MANUAL 3]By Nico Francois ---------------------- 3]CONTENTS 1. An introduction - 2. Usage - 3. Features - 4. Note on crunching 3]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. (JUMPDISK NOTES: 1. PowerPacker, last published by JUMPDISK in the November 1989 issue, is reprised in this issue in the PPack drawer. It has only brief documentation by JUMPDISK staff, to explain how to crunch a data file. For full docs, refer to the November 1989 issue or Fish disk 253. 2. In this issue, PPSHOW is in a drawer also named PPSHOW. As example, the Shell or CLI command to show a picture from this disk would have this usage: j:ppshow/ppshow j:cover/cover The documentation assumes you are using PPSHOW from the root directory.) 3]2. Usage PPShow can be used in three 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 [] 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. 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 six-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 choose. 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 WB1.3 Resident command for this. You can't make PPShow resident when it is crunched, as it is in this issue of JUMPDISK. To decrunch, use the DECRUNCH program in this issue. PPShow is reentrant as well, so you can run it from several CLIs at the same time. Not that this is very useful, but it's possible. 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. 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 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 is not found. This is very useful in the WorkBench environment: 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 double-click it, "house.pic.pp" will be displayed, so long as there is no "house.pic" file in the directory. 3]3. Features -- 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 pointer 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. It appears PAL Amiga users still get forgotten. All Amiga display modes, such as HAM and EHB, are also supported. -- Deluxe Paint cycling is supported. Press the TAB to start it and to stop it. Up to eight cycles are supported. DPaint III currently only supports six. -- PPShow has the ability to print the screen it is displaying. Press "P" on the keyboard and wait. The mouse pointer will be visible while printing. Please note the printer.device must be in the devs: directory for PPShow to be able to print. You should also have a correct system-configuration for your printer. 3]4. Note on crunching Many 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 (with PixMate, for example) before crunching them. This will lead to the best crunching results. As always, I hope you find this program useful. 3]PROGRAM HISTORY Version 1.0, first release. (c) 1989 Nico François / PowerPeak // Thanks to \X/ Amiga for being the best computer ever. If you have suggestions or remarks about this program, or if you find any bugs, please let me know. Write to the following address: Nico Francois, Corbielaan 13, 3060 Bertem BELGIUM. 4]END