This program is free. It may not be sold, nor offered as an inducement as part of an other product. It may not be distributed on shareware volumes without explicit permission of the author. The copyright to the program and all its (re)sources resides, and stays, with the author. The program may be distributed freely, except in the cases indicated above, provided it is always accompanied by this ReadMe file. The program is offered to you as is. I take no responsibility for any data loss or corruption or any other damage caused directly or indirectly by this product.
Do you have trouble organizing your hundreds of digital images? Do filenames like anml0573.jpg mean nothing to you? Do you often lose your images, not by a disk crash but by simply not being able to remember where you've left them or what they were called? Do you find the Finder icons too small to see what a picture is like? Then this program is for you!
This program allows you to manage sets of previews (otherwise known as 'thumbnails') in a way very much like what one would do with slides on a backlit table. The previews are taken or created from original image files that you have located somewhere on your file system. Show! can read and display previews of images if the previews are saved along with the original image in a PICT resource. Many programs are now able to save previews along with their image files. Once imported in a Show! document, you can arrange them, move or copy them between documents, or pass the corresponding originals to a separate viewer program to view the original images in full size. You can save a sequence of previews in a document file. You can pass this sequence to JPEGView for a slide show. The preview pictures can be extracted from the original images and saved separately in the Show! document file. If there are no previews present, they can be created with Show!, provided the image format is JPEG or PICT, or if the file is accompanied with a full-size preview picture, like EPSF (Encapsulated PostScript) files created with Adobe Illustrator. Show! allows you to attach a title to every preview with an easy point-click-and-edit method. The titles are saved with the previews sequence in the document file.
The program is of not much use without a viewer program. This can be JPEGView 3.x, or any other application that can handle the filetypes of the images included in the Show! document. In any case, Show! can instruct the application that created the image to open the file.
This program requires 32-bit QuickDraw and System 7 or later (it uses AppleEvents). It does not explicitly rely on QuickTime being present, but many preview pictures that are around are compressed with QuickTime, and you won't be able to see or create them without QuickTime installed. In fact, without QuickTime, they may appear garbled. Although the program will work on a B/W display, 8 bit/pixel (color or greyscale) or better is preferred. For good-quality viewing of 24-bit images and previews, a 16 or 24 bit display is a must. For viewing images, a separate program is needed. This can be JPEGView 3.x (postcard-ware) or any other program that can open image files (e.g. Photoshop or GraphicConverter).
Opening image files
Show! can 'open' (or rather, import) many different file types (GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PICT, startup screens, PhotoCD etc.). Either from the 'Open...' dialog or by dropping them onto the Show! application icon (dropping folders is also allowed), Show! will scan all files for preview pictures and display them in a document window. A new document will be opened if no document window is currently open.
Show! examines files whose file type do not match any of the known image formats and tries to resolve an image file signature. This allows you to add files located on volumes that do not support file types, like mounted MS-DOS or ISO9660 CD-ROMs.
The appearance of the filenames in the document window reflects the status of the preview:
Ñ If the filename is dimmed (dark grey), the original image file could not be located on the file system. You can still see and arrange the previews if these were saved in the Show! document, but you can not view the originals.
Ñ If a JPEG file contains a JFIF preview, its file name is displayed in light blue.
Ñ If the file was found on the file system, the file name appears in white.
Ñ If the filename is drawn in italic typeface, the preview picture shown is taken directly from the original image file.
Ñ If a preview picture is available in the document file, the filename appears in normal typeface.
Ñ If no preview picture can be found (neither in the document file, nor in the orginal image file), a crossed grey box will appear as a picture placeholder.
Saving Show! documents
A set of previews is saved in a Show! document with 'Save' or 'Save As...' from the File menu. The order of the previews (which is the order of a composed slide show) is saved for later use, as well as the titles and filenames plus access path of the corresponding original image files. If the previews were extracted from the originals, these are saved in the document file as well. This is especially useful if the previews are to remain available for viewing/rearranging once the originals have come off-line (not on a mounted volume or archived). When the preview pictures are contained within the document file, window redraws are also slightly faster. Furthermore, a set of previews take up less disk space if they are saved in one and the same (document) file, rather than in each of the individual resource forks of all original image files.
Opening Show! documents
A Show! document is opened by double-clicking it in the Finder or dragging it to the Show! icon. Show! will try to re-establish the access path to all the image files referenced from the document. As long as the folder containing the original image and the image itself is still around somewhere on one of the mounted volumes, and the folder name is unique, Show! will locate it with an efficient search method. This means that files are found even if they have been moved anywhere accross the file system. The seach method may appear slow to you when one or more server volumes are mounted through a LocalTalk network, or when a CD-ROM is mounted on the file system. If you move files or folders around in the Finder while the program is active, Show! may get confused.
Arranging previews
Previews may be arranged in the document window simply by dragging them around. When dragged a little outside the window, the window will auto-scroll if there are unexposed areas that can scroll into view. The cursor changes into four little arrows while scrolling.
When a second document window is open, previews may be moved to it. Remember, simply dragging previews always moves a preview. If you want it copied, hold the option key. The cursor appearance will reflect what you're doing.
By shift-clicking, several previews can be (de)selected. A group of previews can be moved together by dragging one of the selected. All previews are selected with 'Select All' (Edit menu or command-A). A group of previews may also be selected with a marquee rectangle ((shift-)click and drag a rectangle). Previews can be deleted by selecting them and pressing the BackSpace key or choosing 'Clear' from the Edit menu. All previews are deselected by choosing 'Select None' (Edit menu or command-D) or pressing Escape.
The selection box around the preview picture can be controlled with mouse clicks, but also with pressing the Tab-key. <Tab> advances the position of the selected preview; <shift-Tab> backs up one step. Pressing <Return> opens the title edit field of the selected preview (see next section).
In short, the program behaves much like the Finder in this respect, so you shouldn't have any problems to get going.
Editing titles
Note: You can only edit titles if the titles are currently visible. This is controlled by the check box in the 'Preview Options' dialog (see 'Options').
Below the file name of the preview, a little space is reserved to hold the title of the image. Clicking in this area or pressing <Return> if the preview is selected, will open an edit field, indicated by a blinking caret. You can type in a title. Pressing <Tab> will advance to the title of the next preview and open its edit field; pressing <shift-Tab> moves the edit field to the previous one. Pressing <Return> closes the edit field. You'll usually use the Tab-key to enter a sequence of titles. While editing, the clipboard commands Cut/Copy/Paste/SelectAll will work properly. The highlite colour for a text selection range is dark blue, to contrast the black window background color.
Viewing
Note: You can only view the original images if you have a proper viewing program installed on your system. JPEGView is a very good program in this respect, but you can specify any program in the 'Preferences╔' dialog. You should also have sufficient RAM to run Show! and the viewing program simultaneously. If necessary, you can adjust the allotted amount of memory with 'Get Info' in the Finder.
A set of selected previews (or all, if none are selected) can be passed to JPEGView for a continuous slide show by choosing 'JPEGView Slide Show' from the Previews menu. The slide show will appear in left-to-right/top-to-bottom order only if the 'display in random order' option in the JPEGView Preferences is turned off. This function requires AppleScript¬.
A (set of) selected preview(s) can be opened in JPEGView, GraphicConverter, Photoshop or the application it was created in by making the appropriate choice from 'Open Selected Items' in the Previews menu. Double clicking on a preview picture opens the image in the program that was specified in the 'Preferences╔' dialog.
Show! will search for a copy of the viewing program and launch it. If you want a particular copy of the program to handle your viewing (e.g. with different preferences settings), you should pre-launch it explicitly from the Finder, before passing any requests from Show!.
Creating previews
Note: Creating previews requires QuickTime to be installed.
Previews are created from the files selected in the current document (or all if none are selected) by choosing 'Create Preview PICTs' from the Previews menu. At the moment, only JPEG and PICT files can be processed with this command, although it also works for some image files that have a full-size PICT preview accompanied with it (like an Illustrator¬ EPS file).
In the Create Previews dialog box, you can specify whether the algorithm should not overwrite any existing previews (which allows you to quickly fill in the non-available previews), where they should be saved and what size they should be. The standard-size QuickTime thumbnail is 80x80 pixels, is very compact (about 2 kb) and displays quickly in Show! document windows. Larger sized previews (next standard size is 112x112) are slightly better in quality, but a little larger in disk space (about 5 kb) and display slower.
Along with the thumbnail previews, Show! can save custom icons in the original image file. Note that the Finder may not be immediately aware of these newly-created custom icons.
Note on memory usage: decompressing JPEG images requires large temporary offscreen buffers, which are allocated in the system heap. Don't worry if you don't have huge amounts of RAM: QuickTime is smart enough to decompress the image in strips. However, if you have huge amounts of Virtual memory, QuickTime actually thinks you're a rich person and blindly starts allocating large offscreen buffers. Unfortunately, this will cause lengthy swapping. There is a simple cure: open a dummy application (e.g. a copy of SimpleText with an enlarged partition) so that your total free RAM is no more than 2 or 3 MB.
Extracting previews
Important Note: this command does not delete any resources from your originals.
Preview pictures are extracted from the original images by choosing 'Save PICTs in Document' from the Previews menu. The preview pictures of the files selected in the document window (or all if none are selected), are copied into the document file. From that moment on, the preview pictures have become stand-alone and remain available to you, even if the originals become off-line (e.g. when you unmount the disk they were located on).
Preview pictures can be removed from the document file by choosing 'Remove PICTs from Document' from the Previews menu. This wil permanently delete the (selected) preview pictures in the document file (you can always 'Revert', of course). This action does not copy them back to the original files, nor modifies the original image file.
Options menu
'Wrap to Window Size' (command-Y) fills the horizontal extent of the window exactly with an integer number of previews. Useful after resizing the window. Note that previews do not have a fixed horizontal and vertical position; they merely wrap around when the number of previews on a row changes.
'View as Text' (command-T) displays the document as a list of referenced files. You can't arrange any previews here.
'Preview Options' (command-K) lets you customize the appearance of the frontmost Show! window. Its settings are saved with the document itself. With check boxes, the visibility of the preview pictures themselves, their associated file names and picture titles (if available) can be controlled (the 'comments' field has not yet been implemented). The Preview Box Size controls the size of the box in which the previews are drawn. Clicking 'Auto' will fill in the size of the largest preview found in the file. Other standard sizes can be selected with the radio buttons: 64x64 pixels (small), 80x80 pixels (QuickTime standard size) and 112x112 (large). An arbitrary number can be filled in in the input field. Note that a preview will never be scaled up - it will only be scaled down when the preview box is smaller than its actual size.
The Preview Options dialog window is modeless - i.e. it can be left open.
New! in version 1.03
Sorting
Show! can sort the previews in the current document by file name or by title (use the 'Previews-Sort by ...' menu).
JFIF previews
Show! can now import and display JFIF previews. These previews are, as apposed to the QuickTime preview thumbnails (which are PICT resources), embedded in the image data of a JPEG file. If you save a JPEG image in JPEGView with a thumbnail preview, this JFIF preview is attached to the image data. When such a file is imported in Show!, the JFIF preview will appear in the Show! document window. It is also possible to extract the JFIF preview from the image file and save it in the Show! document. Of course, you can always create new previews for these files since they are JPEG files, but the previews will only be saved in the Show! document ╤ Show! will not attach a thumbnail to the original file for the original would then have two previews (a JFIF preview and a QuickTime thumbnail), which does not make sense.
Preferences
Within the 'Preferences' dialog (Edit menu, command-J), an arbitrary program can be chosen to act as viewer program. Furthermore, a check box in the Preferences dialog can disable the directory search algorithm. Use this feature if you know the originals are not available on the file system and you have to open many or large Show! documents.
In most cases, the program now remembers the position and settings of the windows and dialogs it uses.
CD-ROM
Show! now graciously handles CD-ROMs, both Macintosh HFS and non-Mac disks. Show! will automatically generate full path names for files imported from CD-ROM or any other locked disk. This bypasses the search algorithm since pathnames on CD-ROM are not likely to change...
Limitations (may be solved in future versions)
A file name must be unique in a document. If a second preview with a particular name is added to a document, the first one is removed from the document, even if the original file resided in a different folder. However, the file title is preserved. This allows you to overwrite a file reference with a new one without disturbing the titles that you patiently typed in.
'Undo' is not supported. For now, you have to rely on 'Revert' file. The clipboard commands only work in text edit fields, not on the preview pictures themselves. The 'Show Clipboard' command does not show the clipboard yet.
This application is not scriptable.
This application does not run native on a PowerMac. I don't have access to a PPC cross-compiler.
Opening and modifying large Show! documents (>200 referenced files) takes quite a long time. Indeed, the Resource Manager is not so good a data base. I will try to work on that in future versions.
This program is not yet DragManager-aware.
Known Bugs
This program contains bugs (of course). The bugs reported for version 1.02 have been fixed. However, the fixes doubtlessly introduced new bugs; so did the new features. Still, I've tested the program - and so have half a dozen beta testers - and found it quite stable. If you find any, please let me know.
When a preview is dragged to the edge of the screen and the window is auto-scrolling at the same time, some garbage leftovers of the dragging outline is left in the window's content. This is not my fault; the DragGreyRgn call in the Macintosh toolbox hides the dragging outline when it is postioned within 4 pixels of the screen edge. This actually makes DragGreyRgn quite a useless call. One day I'll write my own version.
Features?
When you expose a window that was partly hidden (e.g. by activating your mac after the screen saver took over), some previews will appear black and the program will gradually fill in their empty spaces. The pattern of black previews changes each time. This is not a bug. It's a feature. It simply means that there is not enough memory available keep all previews in memory. If you find this a nuisance, you may want to increase the application size with the 'Get Info' command in the Finder. Depending on your screen size and depth, you may want to adjust the allocated amount of RAM for Show! such that at least one screenfull of previews can be kept in memory (that is, so they will be redrawn almost instantly when an update of the entire screen is requested). For a 24-bit deep display of size 832x624 pixels, you'll need about 2 MB.
The Show! document is a simple text file. You can open it in any text editor (DON'T use STvi - this program resets the resource fork and changes both file type and creator!). Be careful not to rename the filenames; you will misplace your preview PICTs that way. Don't spend too much time trying to hack around with the file format - it is liable to change in future versions.
Common Problems
Q: When I open a Show! document, the file names all appear dark grey and I can't open any of the originals. The program tells me it can not locate the originals, although I know that the images are present on my disk. What's up?
A: 1) You checked the 'don't locate originals' option in the 'Preferences╔' dialog.
2) Your images are located in a folder with the wrong name. To check this, make sure that the folder names match the ones used in the Show! document (which you can visualize with 'Options-View as Text'.
3) You have a folder with the same name located somewhere else on your file system. Use File Find to locate the duplicates and rename them.
Q: I can only import one image file at a time with the Open╔ command.
A: You can drag multiple files and folders to the Show! application icon, or its alias, in the Finder. Multiple-file selection dialog boxes are out-of-date since System 7. The Drag Manager, standard in System 7.5, will make them obsolete.
Q: I can not drag my image files or folders to the Show! application icon, or its alias.
A: Your Finder got confused when it saw the Show! program for the first time or when you re-installed the program. Make sure you have only one version of Show! installed and rebuild your desktop database files by holding command-option when the Finder starts up after (re)booting.
Q: I can drag my files to the icon but they don't show up in the Show! document window.
A: The file is not an image file, it is corrupt, or has an unrecognized file type. If you know the file must have a QuickTime thumbnail, report the file creator and file type to me so I can include it in the list of supported file types. Currently, the following file types are supported:
'PICT' Macintosh PICTure file
'JPEG' JFIF image file
'GIFf' Compuserve Graphics Interchange Format
'TIFF' Aldus Tagged Image File Format
'SCRN' Macintosh Startup Screen
'EPSF' Encapsulated PostScript File
'PCDI' Kodak PhotoCD Image file
Photoshop 2.0 and 3.0 files
Canvas 2.0 drawings.
Credits
I'd like to thank Aaron Giles for that fantastic program JPEGView, the source code for the JPEGUtilities and JFIF Preview drawing routines, and the positive feedback.
Troy Gaul is credited for his Infinity Windoid (check out the clipboard! (for demonstration purposes only)). The splash screen picture is taken from the Corel Sample PhotoCD-ROM (SA06.PCD) and depicts the Sacred Place "Stonehenge", in Britain. I seem to recall that the Corel images are free from copyright. Wayne Cohoe is thanked for providing the originals to the 'nature sampler', which are all from the Perfect Vision image library (pvxxxxxx.gif).
Furthermore I'd like to thank all of you who helped me to find bugs in the previous versions, the suggestions (some of which have been incorporated in this release) and feedback. It is an essential part of programming and helps to establish the signature of the (potential) user group.
If you have suggestions or comments. Don't hesitate to contact me (until May╩1, 1995: H.W.denBok@fys.ruu.nl or denbok@fys.ruu.nl; after that date: unknown at this moment). Flames are ignored. Criticism not!
