USING THE SSC, FOC, AND THUMBNAILS: A Tutorial on PMView 0.86
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This tutorial will help show off the power, flexibility, and ease of
use of the new File Open Container, Slideshow Container, and
thumbnails.

Start by entering PMVIEW at an OS/2 prompt. (Or, if you've made an 
icon, double-click the icon). Don't specify a filename. PMView will 
start up, with an empty black window.

The black window means that we are in Image mode. One major difference
between PMView 0.86 and earlier versions is that there are two main 
modes: image mode and slideshow mode. (Older versions only had image 
mode.)

Let's load an image. Select _File _Open from the menu bar, or type
Ctrl+O. This will bring up the File Open dialog. If there aren't any 
image files in your current directory, please change to a directory 
that has several image files.

PMView's file open dialog should look much like the standard OS/2
file open dialog, with one major exception -- the large white area in
the lower left corner shows icons and text, rather than just a list of
text. This large white area is the File Open Container, and it's one 
of the major new features of PMView 0.86.

The File Open Container (FOC) is a standard OS/2 container. It 
has its own settings that you reach in the standard way. Please try 
that now: Move the mouse to a part of the FOC that doesn't have any
icons, and right-click. A menu will pop up that will have "Views" as 
its top item. (If you get a menu that starts with "Open," you've got 
the menu for an icon. Move to an empty spot and try again. If you 
can't find an empty spot, try resizing the File Open dialog; when the 
FOC resizes, you'll probably find an empty spot.)

By default, PMView started with the FOC in icon view. Try switching to
text view (by clicking "Views" and then selecting "Text." This takes 
the icons away and gives you a single column of filenames: It looks 
almost exactly like the standard OS/2 file open dialog. Try some of 
the other views, picking the one you like best. (My preference is 
"Icon"; one of my friends prefers "Detail.")

While the standard-sized OS/2 icons are okay, PMView's new thumbnails 
are better. To see them, go into a FOC view mode other than text (or 
text, flowed ;-) and select "Views" from the FOC popup. Click 
_Thumbnails to turn it on (it's at the bottom of the menu). The small 
OS/2 icons will be replaced by larger, more legible thumbnails.

All the thumbnails currently say, "No Thumbnail Available," but we'll 
fix that now. Right-click on one of the images to bring up its popup 
menu. Click "_Thumbnail" (for now, *don't* click on the arrow). The 
thumbnail will turn blue, and it will say "Creating Thumbnail." After 
a few seconds (or minutes, depending on the size of the file), you 
will see a small version of the image. A thumbnail is attached to the 
file's extended attributes; it takes up 9540 bytes. Note that PMView 
also attaches a standard icon to the file; if you look at the file 
using a Drives object, you can see it. (Or, of course, you can toggle 
the Thumbnail view off for the FOC.) This icon behaves just like you'd
expect; for example, you can set a desktop object's icon by dragging 
the file from a Drives object to the icon on the _General page.

There are three other things you can pick off an icon's popup menu. If
you click on the arrow to the right of _Thumbnail, you can also choose
to delete the object's current thumbnail (thus freeing up the 9K the 
thumbnail takes). Or you can click Delete to delete the file. (PMView 
will ask for verification). Finally, you can click Open to load the 
image into PMView. Try that now (preferably with an image that won't 
take too long to load).

There's one other thing you can do to an icon, though not by clicking a
menu item: Just like on the OS/2 desktop, you can rename a file by
Alt+Left mouse click on the filename. You might want to try this now.

Let's get back to the FOC popup menu. Click "Thumbnails." You can
choose _Manual Create, _Automatic Create, or _Loading Creates. The
first means that thumbnails are created only if you right-click on the
icon and choose _Thumbnail Create. If you choose _Automatic Create,
then whenever you enter a directory, PMView will split off threads to
automatically create thumbnails for every image file in that directory.
This can be convenient, but it can also bog down your system! My
preference is to use _Loading Creates: This creates a thumbnail
automatically for each file you open and view in PMView.

The other option under _Thumbnails is Transparent _Fill. If it's on,
PMView creates square thumbnails with "transparent" areas where there's
no image. If it's off, these areas are created black.

The other two commands on the FOC's menu should be self-explanatory:
_Refresh rereads the files in the current directory (in case you've
added or deleted files from another OS/2 session). S_elect gives you a
quick way to select (or deselect) all the files in the current
directory.


			*	*	*

We've discussed thumbnails and the FOC; time to talk about the
SlideShow Container (SSC, with apologies to physicists). To open the
SSC, select _File _New _Slideshow from PMView's menu bar (or PMView's
RMB popup menu). PMView's main window will turn white, which shows that
you're in Slideshow mode. Now do Ctrl+O to get to the FOC. To add
images to your current slideshow, drag them from the FOC. To change
their ordering, drag them around. If you drop an icon on top of another
icon, it will go after that icon in the slideshow. Thus, moving an icon
to the beginning of the slideshow takes two operations: You should drop
it on the first icon, and then drop the first icon on top of it. (This
is easier done than said.)

I could say more about the SSC's popup menu but I'll leave it to you to
discover. The only item I'll point out is R_un, which runs the
slideshow. Click on the arrow to the right of R_un to set the slideshow
run options. (The slideshow run options are documented in detail in
PMVIEW.DOC.)

As with the FOC, each separate image has its own settings, and you
click the right mouse button to bring up the appropriate menu. Then
click Settings.... The three things you can do are change whether the
slideshow will wait for you to press a key before advancing to the next
image (this is "manual") or it will move forward automatically after a
time delay that you specify. You can also enter notes for each image.
Finally, you can check the "Display Notes" box if you want the notes to
appear onscreen during the slideshow.

Whew! There's more I could say but it's getting *really* late. The best
way to learn more about PMView's new slideshow/file open features is to
experiment. Hope you have fun!

Raja Thiagarajan / TUTORIAL.DOC / 10-26-93 release