BBS in a Box 1/BBS in a box - Trilogy I.iso/Files/Art/Art Tools/Quickgif 1.0 Folder/QuickGIF™ Text

Text File | 1990-04-03 | 19.3 KB | 400 lines | [TEXT/MACA]

I. What is QuickGIF™?

QuickGIF™ is a shareware application that decode and display CompuServe's GIF
format graphics very fast on Macintosh computers with Color Quickdraw.  If you
find this program useful you are expected to register your copy for the amount
of $30 dollars in USA funds (residents of California should include your local
sales tax).  Registered users will receive by mail a receipt for the amount
paid, and a diskette containing a copy of QuickGIF™ Plus (which adds the ability
to do Slideshows of graphic and sound files).

This piece of software is fully copyrighted, and it's distribution should follow
the general idea of the shareware channel.  Nominal charges can be made for
distributing this program, but sale or license of this software by company or
individuals other than AmariliSoft representatives is prohibited. Please refer
to section VIII for the license agreement.


II. QuickGIF™ Hilites

This program can open and view GIF, PICT, and MacPaint type files.  It is also
able to play sound files produced by Macintosh sound digitizers.  Decodes GIF
images two to four times faster than existing utilities.  Can save in GIF or
PICT format, and let you copy graphic images into the clipboard.

The custom open dialog permit the user to select multiple files for opening at
once.  It also provide a way to play a sound file in loop mode, which let you
open graphics accompanied by digitized music or special sound effects.

You can also apply some transformations to the images, such as: spheric, conic,
mirroring, oil paint, and dithering to black and white.  A photo mode let you
display graphics using the whole screen, which is nice to take pictures directly
from the screen.

III. The Menus

Open...

This will invoke the custom opening dialog, from which you can open multiple
graphics within a folder,  or play sound files.  When selecting multiple files
use the shift key to select continuous group of files or the command key to
select and deselect arbitrary files.  To deselect all files just click in the
open area immediately to the right of the scroll bar.  Once you have selected
the files and click on the open button, all the selected files will be opened in
the order found.

If you have installed open dialog utilities such as Boomerang, by Hiroaki
Yamamoto, you may notice that it is not possible to open files directly from the
utility.  This is so because of the way the custom dialog operate to provide the
ability for multiple file selection.  Nevertheless, all other functions of these
utilities can be performed without problems (such as jumping among folders).

Graphic files with MS-DOS extensions such as ".GIF" or ".MAC" can be opened
easily, and the corresponding Macintosh file type will be set accordingly, when
successfully opened.  The application will correctly distinguish between
MacPaint files and READMAC files, correctly displaying the resulting Paint file.
When playing sounds, if you press the Shift key while clicking on the Play
button, the selected sound, or the first selected sound will be played
continuously in loop mode until another sound is played or interrupted.  PLEASE
NOTE: if you selected multiple sound files , only the first one will be looped
endlessly, and the only wait to interrupt is by pressing command period.  That
is, whenever you got a watch cursor while playing sounds, you can interrupt the
play by pressing command period.  If, on the other hand, the arrow cursor is
available, command period will not stop the sound, but will dismiss the open
dialog.  To stop any playing sound you can select the Stop entry in the rate
selection popup menu, or select the "Stop Sound" entry in the Misc menu.

Any sound that is playing, but not looping, will stop by itself and will release
the sound channel for other purposes.  Looping sounds must be stopped manually
by either menu entry as mentioned above.  When the application Quits it will
stop any active sound and release the sound channel.

Under MultiFinder, if you switch to another application there are two possible
scenarios.  If there were no opened windows in QuickGIF™, any active playing
sound will remain playing, and in control of the sound channel, while you work
on other applications.  Any sounds from other applications will not be played,
and beeps will result in flashes of the menu bar.  All this is normal behavior
and does not represent a problem to the system,  while QuickGIF™ maintain
control of the sound channel, no other application or the system can produce
sounds through the same channel. The second possibility when switching to
another application is when there were opened windows within QuickGIF™.  In this
latter case, the program will try to see if the next application window looks
different from our kind of windows, if a difference can be determined, the
currently playing sound will be stopped, and the sound channel released.

The appropriate action when switching to another application in MultiFinder, is
to stop any playing sounds and release the sound channel so that other
applications can also make noises.  QuickGIF™ does this when windows are opened
but don't if no program window is active.  The purpose of this is to provide a
way that the user can exploit to loop a sound file while being in another
application.  This is useful for doing simple presentations with a looped sound
with programs that do not provide sound support.

When opening sound files, any information, regarding how  to play the sound,
found in resources will be used to setup the environment for the selected sound.
Farallon's SoundEdit™ (bundled with MacRecorder®) provide this information when
saving digitized sounds.  This application lets you edit the digitized sound,
and specify starting and ending positions for looping sounds.  When this
information is available in the sound file, it will be used; otherwise, the loop
points will be assumed to be the first and last sampled point.

The sound rate popup have a dual function.  When in default mode (as indicated
by the title "Def"), it will define the rate for playing sounds that do not
contain the information on how to play the sound.  For sounds that do contain
this information, the rate value will be meaningless.  To change from the
default rate mode to the force rate mode, just click on the popup menu without
selecting another entry.  The current entry will be check marked and the title
of the popup will change to "Use".  In this mode, any information found in the
file will be overridden, and the rate selected will be used to play the sound.
Changing the rate in the force rate mode will have immediate effect upon playing
sounds.

To stop a playing sound you may use the Stop entry in the rate popup menu, or
the Stop Sounds menu item within the Misc menu.  When a sound finishes or is
stopped, the sound channel is released. There exist an extra feature in
QuickGIF™ which is only available to users with the extended keyboard.  If you
press Control when clicking on the Open button, the Creator of the files being
opened will be changed to QuickGIF™ (type 'QGif').  Remember that the program
automatically changes the filetype and creator of text files with MS-DOS
extensions.  The Control-Open feature will change the Creator of all openable
files to QuickGIF™.  This feature is not officially supported in this program,
and is only provided for the convenience of those users that have an extended
keyboard and want to be able to double click on some graphic files to
automatically startup this application.


Close

This menu entry close the frontmost window in the application.  If the frontmost
window is a transformed window, no warning will be made to the effect of saving
the window.  In fact, the program never warn the user about unsaved windows.
This was defined in this way because this program was never intended to modify
or produce files.  But rather, to present existing files.


Close All

All application's windows will be closed.


Keep Only

This will close all windows except the frontmost window.


SaveAs...

This will open the Save dialog for saving the contents of the frontmost window.
Graphic files can be saved as GIF (sequential or interlaced) and PICT types.
Interlaced GIF are mainly used when uploading or downloading files because it
gives an early hint of the file content while viewing a download.  It is
recommended that you always save GIF files as sequential, since these are easier
and faster to decode and display.  The advantage of GIF is the compression
scheme used to reduce the file size when saving.  Although it takes longer to
encode in GIF format, the decoding is relatively fast in comparison.

Quit

This close any open sound channel, dispose of the memory used by the
application, and quits to the operating system or calling program.  All opened
windows are closed at once, and the color environment is restored to the state
previously found when the application was launched.


Edit Menu

Only the Copy entry is supported in this menu, the others are provided for the
convenience of desk accessories that could make use of them.  When issuing a
copy, the frontmost graphic will be copied into the Clipboard in PICT format.


Transform Menu

The transformations will work with all graphics up to 8-bits per pixel.  Each
transform will produce a new window document without affecting the content of
the graphic being transformed.


Dither

There are three error dispersion dither filters provided: SierraLite, Sierra2
and Sierra3.  These are the result of an ongoing research in this area.  Error
dispersion generally provides a better looking display when transforming color
images into black and white.  The three filters provide different levels of
graininess when dithering.  The Contrast entry will toggle between Lo, Medium,
or High contrast, which is used when dithering images.  The All Above entry will
let you dither using all the filters, which is useful for visual comparisons.
Dithering is only meaningful for color graphics.  There is no visible change
when applied to black and white graphics.


Mirror

Mirroring is performed by projecting half of the image into the other half.
This hierarchical menu let you project the lefts, right, top or bottom part of
the image. Spheric

This will produce a spherization of the frontmost window.  Due to the nature of
the process, the pixels near the center of the graphics are greatly magnified
and it may not look good.  Some antialiasing filtering is necessary to reduce
this problem (slated for a future enhancement).


Conic

The conic transform is the opposite of spherization.  It is specially
interesting when applied to people's faces.  This transformation, as well as the
Spheric transform requires the present of the Floating Point Processor (FPU) to
work.


Oil Paint

With this filtering, digitized images will resemble artistic oil paint
renderings.  This is the one that takes longer to complete, but the results are
quite interesting.


Flip and Rotate

These let you change the orientation of the image.


Misc Menu


Photo Mode

When going into photo mode the whole screen is drawn in black and the image is
centered within the screen boundaries.  If the image is bigger than the screen,
then the top left portion of it will be displayed.  In photo mode there is no
windows, menus, and no cursor.  To end this mode just press any key or click the
mouse.


Stop Sound

This entry let you stop any active sound currently playing.  Once stopped, the
sound channel is released. Windows Menu


NextWindow and PreviousWindow

Next and Previous window will change the frontmost picture in circular order.
When going to a previous window, the current one is sent to the back of all
windows.  Similarly, when going to the next window, the last one is moved in
front of the other ones.

Window Titles

There is no specific order for the titles of windows in this menu (except for
the order in which they were opened).  The frontmost window will contain a check
mark.  If you want to change the frontmost window just select it's name from the
menu.


IV. About GIF

GIF or Graphics Interchange Format is a hardware independent graphics format
designed by CompuServe, Inc. with the goal of interchanging raster based
graphics among different computers.  This format support various kinds of images
from black and white to 8 bits per pixel color images.  The format also provide
a mechanism to put multiple images within a graphic, which provide some level of
presentation and animation.

A very important point is the compression scheme used for this format.  Since
color files contain much more information, their size is usually much larger
than black and white images.  And since moving huge files through
telecommunication lines could take a lot of time, then the idea of graphic files
taking less space and time to transmit is appealing.

The compression ratio is highly dependent on the type of image, but usual saving
from 20% to 50% are achieved with GIF.  Even though compressing an image takes
some time, decompression is relatively fast in comparison.

There are thousands of digitized, and graphic images already in GIF format
available from several online services (including local BBS).  If you want to
get some GIF images you may go into the PICS forum in CompuServe for additional
information and pointers to additional Graphics forums where you can find
thousand of images to choose from.

It is important to remember that GIF images should be downloaded in binary
format.  There have been cases where the images were treated as TEXT files and
the graphic was destroyed when linefeeds gets stripped from the file.  When
downloading images, make sure that your telecommunications program treat the
graphics as binary data.  Specially look for information regarding options about
MacBinary header or stripping-linefeeds in your program's manual.

When uploading GIF images to non-Mac environments, please do not use the
MacBinary protocol since other computers have problems dealing with the header
attached to GIF files when using this protocol.  Refer to your program's manual
on how to turn off this option. V. What About QuickGIF™ Plus?

QuickGIF™ Plus is an enhanced version of QuickGIF™ that provides the ability to
do a slide show of graphics and files within a folder.  The show is presented in
photo mode and displaying one graphic at a time in the order found in the
folder.  Sounds are also played in the order found, and remain playing while
graphics are being decoded and displayed.  To order the files the user can put
numbers in front of the filenames within a folder.  The show is played
continuously until interrupted.

QuickGIF™ Plus is a Commercial application while QuickGIF™ is the shareware
version.  All registered users of QuickGIF™ will receive a copy of QuickGIF™
Plus.  However, the Plus version is not open for distribution.

In addition, the Plus version will be further refined and enhanced with new
features.  We welcome any suggestions you may have to this regard.


VI. Support

Questions, suggestions, and problem reports are welcome and can be made through
US Mail or electronic mail on CompuServe (id 76356,2254).  Our address is:

AmariliSoft
977 East Stanley Blvd. Suite 226
Livermore, California 94550
USA

We have made every effort to make this product as bug free as possible, however
if you found a problem, we would like to receive as much information as
possible, so as to diagnose the source of the problem and look for corrective
actions.  Among other things, we would like to know:  your system software
version number, you Macintosh model, which Inits are currently installed, how
much memory, any special hardware installed, how and when the problem occurs,
and if the problem is repeatable.  MugShot, a utility written by James K. Miles
is good for reporting your system configuration (this utility is available
through most online services).


VII.  How Do I Register?

To register your copy of QuickGIF™ we need to know your name, address, and
preferably a daytime phone number.  You may also include information about your
current machine configuration and how you got hold of a copy of QuickGIF™, which
will help us in targeting our products to our customers needs.  If you have any
comments or suggestion, please include them also.  We are always looking for
feedback from our users.

The registration fee is $30 dollars in USA funds.  If you are a California
resident, we are required by law to collect sales taxes (Regulation 1502), since
tangible property is being transacted (the diskette).  Once your registration
fee is received and collected, you'll receive a written receipt and a diskette
containing a copy of QuickGIF™ Plus.

Registered users will receive notification of future products and upgrades.  We
reserve the right to charge a nominal fee for processing upgrades. VIII.
Non-exclusive License

QuickGIF™ and QuickGIF™ Plus are licensed software to the end user.  The user
agree to use this software on a single CPU or machine at any given time.  Volume
licenses are available on request.  You may make additional copies only for
archival purposes.  If you decide to keep using QuickGIF™ after a trial period,
you should pay the registration fee of US $30 and agree to the terms of this
license.  QuickGIF™ Plus, on the other hand is licensed directly to registered
users and cannot be distributed, unless as approved by AmariliSoft.

The software is copyrighted material and remains property of AmariliSoft.  It
may not be modified, reverse engineered, disassembled, or create derivative work
from it.  Any special use of the software, not contemplated in this
documentation, requires a special license from AmariliSoft.

This license is effective until terminated.  You may terminate the license at
any time by destroying all copies of the software and documentation in your
possession.  AmariliSoft may terminate the license at any time by providing you
with notification.  The license is also terminated if you fail to comply with
any of its terms.


IX. Limited Warranty

We warrant the original diskette from defects in material or workmanship for a
period of 90 days after you obtained it.   If you find the diskette defective
during this period, send it to us with a copy of your receipt for a replacement.

NO OTHER WARRANTIES ARE MADE, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some states do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties
of limitation on the duration of warranty, so the above exclusion may not apply
to you.  This limited warranty gives you specific legal rights, and you may have
other rights which vary from state to state. IN NO EVENT SHALL AMARILISOFT BE
RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES IN CASE OF
LOST OF DATA OR PROFITS FOR THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE.  We have made every effort
to provide you with a product that performs as described, and we will take
reasonable steps to insure the product performs as advertised.  In any case, our
liability to the user of our product is limited to the amount of the
registration fee paid for the right to use such product.


X. More Legal Stuff

QuickGIF and QuickGIF Plus are trademarks of AmariliSoft. GIF and Graphics
Interchange Format are trademarks of CompuServe, Inc, and H&R Company. SoundEdit
is a trademark, and MacRecorder a registered trademark of Farallon Computing,
Inc. MacPaint is a trademark of Claris, Inc. PICT is a copyrighted file format
of Apple Computer, Inc. Boomerang is a shareware application by Hiroaki
Yamamoto. MugShot is a freeware utility by James K. Miles