GDS - Graphics Display System Imaging Software by Tangent On-Line Systems Distribution by Phase II Electronics Inc. Copyright (c) 1990,1991 Paul Schmidt Copyright (c) 1990,1991 Tangent On-Line All rights reserved. CONTENTS Legal Notices I GDS Features And Requirements II GDS Limitations III Notes About Use IV Getting Started 1 The GDS Screen 2 Viewing Commands 3 Slide Shows 4 Arrays 5 Antialiasing 6 Dithering 7 Command Line Parameters 8 Configuration File Details 9 Common Problems And Solutions 10 Additional Customer Support 11 Introduction & Revision History GDSINFO.DOC GDS is available in 3 flavors: 1. This "Demo" (shareware distribution version). 2. The "Registered ShareWare" version for $35.00 Includes AUTOMATIC UPDATES FOR ONE YEAR. (That's right, you don't even have to call us!) (Commands found only in the registered version are marked with **) 3. The Full Blown "Commercial" version. (Still in creation stage. Most likely this will cost several hundred dollars as it will contain a full scanner package.) Distribution and support services provided by: Phase II Electronics Inc. 19 Sands Point Drive Toms River New Jersey 08755-5167 Phone (908) 286-0080, Fax (908) 349-3842 Compuserve 76667,1522 Bob Holland I. Legal Notices --------------------------------------------------------------------------- /////////////////////////////// W A R N I N G ! /////////////////////////// --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The AUTHOR and/or DISTRIBUTORS of GDS DO NOT ASSUME ANY RESPONSIBILITY OR ANY LIABILITY FOR ANY LOSS OR ANY OTHER EXPENSE OR INCONVENIENCE CAUSED BY ANY BETA VERSIONS OF GDS. This includes ALL versions. NOTE: GDS103.ZIP (marked as version "1.03") which circulated unintentionally contains several known (and potentially damaging) bugs removed from later versions. If you have a version before version 1.04, ERASE IT; DO NOT USE IT. The original file containing GDS may be distributed and used freely without ANY modifications to the program and/or included documentation. Any changes to the original distribution files will be considered an infringement on the rights of the author, and may be subject to criminal and/or civil prosecution. Any attempt to disassemble and/or extract code from this product will be considered copyright infringement punishable by law. Users may not derive financial benefit from this software in any manner. They may not sell it or bundle it with any combination of products sold for profit. (This does not include shipping charges for shareware distributors). Phase II and associates hereby disclaim all warranties relating to this software, whether express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Phase II will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of data/damage to hardware or any other reason, even if Phase II or an agent of Phase II has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall Phase II's liability for any damages ever exceed the price paid for the license to use the software, regardless of the form of the claim. The person or persons using the software bear all risk as to the quality and performance of the software. II. GDS FEATURES AND REQUIREMENTS 1) GRAPHICS VIEWER GDS is a graphics file viewer with a very intuitive user interface. 2) FILE FORMATS GDS reads GIF87a, GIF89a (including comments), BBM, LBM, PCX, RIX, and MAC files. It can write GIF87a, **LBM, **PCX, and **RIX files directly from the screen. Other formats may be added in future versions. If you need a read or write format supported, FAX or write to Phase II Electronics Inc. **Registered version only 3) SLIDE SHOWS GDS will queue up to 2800 images to show in a repeated sequence. GDS reads successive images ahead of time into EMS or system RAM to minimize draw time, increasing the appearance of the slide show. 4) IMAGE PROCESSING GDS can lock a screen mode, reduce and enlarge images to fit, or scale and zoom to almost any dimensions. GDS quickly converts 256-color images to 16-color images with antialiasing and dithering to ensure spatial color consistency. GDS can scale images to almost any size. It will reduce, enlarge, or correct image scaling. 5) ARRAYS GDS has an image cataloging section which reduces and labels arrays of images on the screen. It creates spatially optimized palettes, uses **two levels of dithering and **two dimensional antialiasing to reduce color distortion, and can reduce up to 2304 images onto a single 1024x768 graphics screen. If you are a system operator of a BBS, this is a great way to provide previews of many images in a single, downloadable file. **Registered version only (1 level in shareware distribution version) 6) MOUSE SUPPORT Although ALMOST everything can be done with the keyboard, a mouse is highly recommended. 7) HARDWARE SUPPORT GDS takes great pains to support video hardware, and supports most SVGA boards. A few chipsets still remain questionable, but GDS covers the majority of display hardware. GDS can also be adapted to work with OEM cards using unrecognized manufacturer markings, so if you have an unsupported card, there is a good possibility that it can function completely. GDS is capable of supporting extended 24-bit DAC circuitry which can provide 16,777,216 colors, rather than 262,144. 8) MEMORY REQUIREMENTS AND USAGE GDS can make use lots of memory, using EMS to increase the speed of slide shows. If your machine has less than 450K of available system RAM, GDS will probably not perform as well as it can (colors choices in array generation will be severely degraded and GDS may kick you out to DOS completely). GDS makes good use of EMS 3.2 and available high DOS memory. We strongly recommend a 640K system with at least 64K of EMS. XMS is not supported as it does not provide tolerably fast memory swapping. III. GDS LIMITATIONS 1. GDS makes no attempt to read or write TIFF files. See FILE FORMATS in part II above. 2. GDS doesn't write BMP, BBM or MAC files. See FILE FORMATS in part II above. 3. GDS is not a PAINT/DRAW program. IV. NOTES ABOUT USE SYSOPS: GDS is an excellent method for cataloging your GIFs. A single 185k file can contain hundreds of images and their file names as a preview of your directory. Please inform Phase II of how you are currently using GDS and any suggestions for improvements. We encourage all users to distribute and use the demo version FREEly. If you would like the enhanced version and future updates or intend to use GDS for commercial purposes, you MUST register. 1. GETTING STARTED Start GDS by typing "GDS" followed by "ENTER." GDS can be run with or without command line options and can be started from any directory by specifying its path on the command line. It can also be run if it's in the DOS environment's PATH. GDS parses file/path specifications and runtime switches as command line parameters. Any number of paths/files may be specified to GDS. The following command line is typical: C> GDS i:\dp\*.lbm j:\GIFs myimage.gif The first path specifies all LBM files in the DP directory on drive I:. The second path specifies all readable files in the GIFS directory on drive J:. The third path specifies the single file MYIMAGE.GIF in the currently logged directory. If no path names are given, the current directory is used. If you have problems getting GDS to run, refer to the section entitled COMMON PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS. If you'd like to get going with GDS as fast as possible, given its very intuitive interface, after you've read the next four paragraphs, you've probably read enough to use most of what GDS does. Start and experiment, but come back and read the rest of the documentation. GDS does so much that it's impossible to explain it all in 100 or fewer words. 2. THE GDS SCREEN After configuration, GDS presents a screen containing a display consisting of file names, extensions, and file sizes in a columnar format. The top line shows the version number, registered user's name and phone number, and copyright message. To view images in "Single" mode (see "VIEW:" below), press "ENTER" or double click the mouse on a file name. Single clicking on a file will deselect all currently selected files and select the file under the mouse cursor. In single view mode, mouse users may toggle ranges of files by holding down the shift key and clicking/dragging. In "Slide Show" or "Array" mode, use the arrow keys to move to a filename, the spacebar to select or unselect it. Mouse users can drag the mouse from one file to another to select all files in between. In the slide show mode, the mouse always acts as though the shift key is held. Pressing the ENTER key starts a view in the current view mode (single or slides) without changing the selection state of ANY of the files in the file list. Double clicking the mouse on a file will display that file alone, regardless of the current view mode. Use the ENTER key or view button (see below) to initiate slide shows. It's usually easier to set up fragmented slide shows with the keyboard than with the mouse. Several buttons and menus are displayed in the second and bottom lines of the screen. These areas are referred to as "menu areas." The "file status area," between the file display and the bottom menu area, displays detailed information about the Current File. As the file cursor is moved through the file list, GDS displays information about each file. This information includes the complete path and file name of the file, its screen resolution, number of colors, and exact file size in bytes. The right side of the file status area displays the total number of files and number of files selected, if any. Directly to the right of the file status area is the "view button" which says "ENTER views current selection" in a rectangle. This button merely tells keyboard users what to do to display an image, but allows a mouse to click on it to start a slide show. If there is more than one file selected or NO files selected, the view button starts a slide show. If only one file is selected, the view button will do a single view. For mouse users, it's easier to use the "View:" menu to change the behavior of single clicks in the file list (see above) and use the view button to start slide shows. To use the menus, hold down the ALT key and then hit the key which matches the highlighted character in the menu or button you want to change, or click on it with a mouse. If the menu or button you have selected has two or fewer functions (like the MOUSE: button), the state of the button changes. If it has more than two choices, GDS presents a menu. When using the keyboard, the default menu selection will be highlighted. Use the arrow keys to navigate the menus and press ENTER to select your option. ESC will cancel a selection from a menu. With a mouse, just click (or drag and let go) on your choice; to cancel a selection, just click (or let go) outside of the menu area. When any alphanumeric key (not associated with special CTRL or ALT commands) is pressed, GDS looks through the current list of files and moves the cursor to the first file starting with the same character as the key pressed. If GDS can't find a file that matches, it will put the cursor on the closest match it can find. GDS supports CTRL key commands allowing the user a great deal of flexibility of file control. When the CTRL key is pressed, GDS pops up a green window at the bottom of the screen showing which control keys do what. These options are as follows: ** Ctrl-C Copy File duplicates a file in another drive/path Ctrl-D Delete File deletes a file forever ** Ctrl-F New File List specifies a new path/file list ** Ctrl-H Hide file removes a file from file list Ctrl-L List Comments list comments in a GIF89A file ** Ctrl-R Rename file changes the name of file ** Ctrl-S System Status displays free space on disk ** Ctrl-T Transfer file moves a file to another drive/path ** Registered version only GDS COMMANDS Quit (or ESC) This button exits the program. AutO/LOck This button shows the state of screen mode locking. The default graphics mode (set with "RES:") is meaningless when viewing in AutO mode. Locking the screen mode forces images to be displayed in the graphics mode selected in the "RES:" menu. This is handy when reducing large images to fit in smaller screen modes, or reducing 256-color images to dithered 16-color images. Res:???x???x? This menu allows the selection of the default graphics and text modes. The default graphics mode has no effect on viewing unless the "AutO/LOck" button is in the "LOck" state. It does, however, determine the resolution of files written with the ALT-keys. View: This menu allows the user to choose between "Single" images, "Slides" (slide shows) and "Arrays." In "Single" mode, any selection of a file will deselect all other files first (unless the SHIFT key is held). In "Slides" mode, mouse clicks are never globally destructive to selections; they always add to the selected files. Double clicking the mouse always produces a single view regardless of the state of this menu. "Arrays" mode creates (and can write) arrays of multiple images. Alias: This menu allows the user to select the level of antialiasing performed for reduced images (see ANTIALIASING below). HINT: The default antialiasing (horizontal only) is almost as fast as no antialiasing at all. **High quality image reduction can take in excess of 5 times longer depending on the level of reduction. In general, considering the increase in image quality, it's always worth using horizontal antialiasing. **Registered version only AboUt: This menu displays information about GDS. It has no viewing function. SORT: This menu allows the user to select the sort order for the file display. Selecting a new sort order immediately rearranges the file display. Selecting sort orders which require the resolution or number of bits per pixel will force GDS to read this information before a sort can be done. This is time consuming, but GDS can't sort information it doesn't have. Fortunately, GDS buffers the resolution and number of bits per pixel so that it reads them only once. MOUSE: This button toggles the mouse between a bitmapped text cursor and a character cursor. Some video displays do not conform to the VGA hardware standard for text character sets and may cause GDS to display a garbled mouse cursor. If this happens, click on the "MOUSE:" button. The state of the mouse can be set in the configuration file so you don't have click the "MOUSE:" button every time you run GDS. DITHER: This menu allows the user to specify the level of dithering to be used when generating array images. No dithering means that GDS will not try to increase color consistency. Two-color dithering generates checker-board patterns which are imperceptible except in low resolution graphics modes. **Uneven dithering is more obvious than two-color dithering, but greatly enhances the general look of 16-color renditions of images which start out with many more colors. There is almost no speed difference in using dithering. The biggest delay is the delay just before the image is read where GDS generates its conversion table. There is almost no speed difference in putting up raw pixels vs. dithered pixels. In short, dithering doesn't slow GDS down perceptibly. **Registered version only FILESHOW: This menu allows the user to toggle elements (Resolution, Extension, Size, Bits) of the file display on and off. These elements can be set in the configuration file so you don't have to set it every time you run GDS. 3. VIEWING COMMANDS Single images can be viewed alone by pressing ENTER or by double clicking a file with a mouse. When viewing, you can adjust the palette manually (see F-key description below). Every time a level is changed, the entire palette is recalculated from the original to prevent eventual palette degradation. Esc Always exits view mode. Enter Exits single view mode; advances to next image in slide shows. Spacebar: When viewing a single image, pressing the spacebar exits back to the file screen unless the scale of the image is not exactly the same as the original image (Note: If image is auto scaled by setting the /E switch, the spacebar will return the scaled images to their original scale). In array generation mode, the spacebar will stop the display of any images in progress and skip directly to the next image in the list. The spacebar also toggles the selection state of the file under the file cursor. Combining the arrow keys and the spacebar allows selection of images for slide shows and arrays. Alt-W: Immediately starts writing a GIF file titled GDS###.GIF. The number used in place of "###" is either 000 or whatever number was specified with the "/W###" **command line parameter. This function will not overwrite existing files. You can use the "/N