SQRview

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QLvsJAGUAR
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SQRview

Post by QLvsJAGUAR »

No doubt, SQRview from Bob Spelten is a great picture viewer!

It is now part of QL/E (added in v3.16 which was released end of February 2017)! Thanks to the work of Markus Dettwiler, SQRview is now one of the predefined picture viewers in QL/E with FileInfo2 support.

I see some room for improvement, mainly in a way to make the dialogs optional (and less annoying) and with this offer smooth picture by picture "browsing" without having the need answer dialogs all the time.

According to what I've seen in MenuConfig I assume there's no possibility to configure to not show dialogs before a picture is displayed and after a picture is closed.

I would like to see the software to be more self-deciding when it comes to resolutions and not ask the user for confirmation. Some examples:
- A file size of 32768 is almost 100% a 512x256 QL colour screen.
- If the 32KB QL bitmap has quite some flash-bits set, it's most likely MODE 4 because a) MODE 8 screens with flash are rather rare and do most of the time only have 1 or 2 flash-bits set per line, b) the flash-bit in MODE 4 is used as part of the high-res pixel information.
- There must be certain other file sizes which are >99% secure a certain resolution, e.g. 512x384, 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 and so forth, a file size per resolution and colour-depth. Because the dialogs in SQRview already propose a certain resolution/colour-depth, I assume such a table of common file sizes already exists in SQRview.

Today for each standard 32KB QL screen SQRview shows 3 dialogs. Then when a picture is on screen and you press ESC, you get 2 more dialogs. For a picture viewer this is quite annoying!

I would like to have new config options named something like this
- "Automatic resolution/colour usage per picture" Yes, No.
- "Default height of picture" Reduced 3/4, Reduced 2/3, Original, Stretched 3:2, Stretched 4:3
- "Fast exit on ESC" Yes, No

Maybe there's room for more fine-tuned config options regarding the dialogs.

Plus when dialogs are enabled, the mouse pointer should be positioned on the proposed item. Otherwise heavy mouse operation is needed to watch a slide-show of let's say 100 pictures.

My old Qtop-Desk has a picture viewer (no GD2 support because it was written years before GD2) which works kind of what I would like to see in SQRview. Try this:
Open QTop-Desk, select UTILITIES, then VIEW SCR, choose WIN1_, then folder dat, then folder QLSC, then select some screen (e.g. all the KIM ones) and press <ENTER>. Now 1st screen is show, use the cursor keys (right and left) to navigate through the stack of selected screens. Use F1 to call a menu on each screen to change/fix resolution or do another action on the screen. See, all dialogs are optional. Different concept I know, but a dialog free SQRview configuration option would be great!

@Bob: Please take this as a positive minded constructive feedback (you know how rare feedback is) and as a challenge. Looking forward for an even greater SQRview!

QL forever!

Urs :ugeek:
Attachments
Dialog no 1 before picture is showed. Software knows the size, why asking the user?!
Dialog no 1 before picture is showed. Software knows the size, why asking the user?!
QLE_SQRview_Dialog_1_pre_picture_show_size-PrtScr.png (2.08 KiB) Viewed 1468 times
Dialog no 2 before picture is showed, mouse pointer placed on wrong item. Software knows the mode, why asking the user?!
Dialog no 2 before picture is showed, mouse pointer placed on wrong item. Software knows the mode, why asking the user?!
QLE_SQRview_Dialog_2_pre_picture_show_mode_mouse_pointer_on_wrong_item-PrtScr.png (1.86 KiB) Viewed 1468 times
Dialog no 3 before picture is showed. User should be able to configure his prefered automatic choice.
Dialog no 3 before picture is showed. User should be able to configure his prefered automatic choice.
QLE_SQRview_Dialog_3_pre_picture_show_height-PrtScr.png (2.05 KiB) Viewed 1468 times
When pressing ESC on a picture showed, SQRview continues with more dialogs. First this one.
When pressing ESC on a picture showed, SQRview continues with more dialogs. First this one.
Finally this one. A lot of mouse operation, clicking or keyboard entries.
Finally this one. A lot of mouse operation, clicking or keyboard entries.
QLE_SQRview_Dialog_2_post_picture_show-PrtScr.png (2.99 KiB) Viewed 1468 times


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BSJR
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Re: SQRview

Post by BSJR »

QLvsJAGUAR wrote:No doubt, SQRview from Bob Spelten is a great picture viewer!

It is now part of QL/E (added in v3.16 which was released end of February 2017)! Thanks to the work of Markus Dettwiler, SQRview is now one of the predefined picture viewers in QL/E with FileInfo2 support.

I see some room for improvement, mainly in a way to make the dialogs optional (and less annoying) and with this offer smooth picture by picture "browsing" without having the need answer dialogs all the time.

According to what I've seen in MenuConfig I assume there's no possibility to configure to not show dialogs before a picture is displayed and after a picture is closed. (...)
Thanks for including it in QL/E.
Without going into all details of your comments I can only say that it is this way mostly as it was "grown" over time.
First as a test to explore the PIC viewing capabillaties of EasyPTR and then adding stuff.

As for mode 4/8, there is no way to read from the file which mode it is. Suggestions are made on the basis of size, length or name extension, so some dialog will be needed. We don't want the program to crash on the wrong guess.
While testing the latest BMP on the _dat_QLSC_ directory of your QL/E, I did find browsing SCRs there faster than with SQRview.
So there is room for improvement.

As far as the other dialogs go, using navigation to browse a directory of mixed image formats will skip most dialogs and defaults are used to speed the process. And in many cases the pointer is at the most logical option so only a few HITs or DOs are needed.

I will study the comments in detail later but for now SQRview is back at the bottom of the "to do" pile.

Bob


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