[gcmd-dev] Re: internal_viewer_ng, improved, but still in Alpha

[Magnus Stålnacke]

A. Gordon wrote:
> Hello guys,
>
> Here's a new version of the internal viewer.
>
> As before, the patch is against the latest CVS version, and the tarball 
> opens-up to a new directory called "gnome-commander-1.2.0-pre". 

OK.
It is quite a lot bigger and took longer time to compile.

> And three new features:
> 1. "External Tools" - This allows executing an external program and 
> displaying its output.
> Currently only two tools are hardcoded:
> HTML Parser - requires the program "html2text" (it is standard on almost 
> every distribution). 

This html2text i do not have.

> PS/PDF Parser - requires the program "ps2ascii" (from the standard 
> package "gs-common", found on almost every distribution). 

This one i have.

It kind of works..
I get text, but with linewrapping it is hard to read,
no paragraphs and the scrollwheel does not work. If i
turn off line wrapping, it could have been readable, but
now sidescrolling does not work.

> 2. Menu changes: 

Better.

> 3. (This is for you, Magnus) EXIF/IPTC viewer.

Super.

* Viewing exif and IPTC works fine but..
  * Cannot change exif/IPTC font size, i thought about linewrapping,
    but no, that does not work since it has to be on the on the same
    line in this simple text view (Caption/Abstract in IPTC have a
    max limit on 2000 characters).
  * It would be an improvement i you can separate exif and IPTC,
    maybe tabs or separate menu options (tabs would be great).

* Scrollwheel does not work in the meta info.


> About the zoom problem:
> I can't say I solved it, but I think you'll see some improvement:
> I still use GDK, but I use a different scaling algorithm, and allow only 
> nine zoom factors (0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, 1.5, 2,2.5.3). 

The zoom factors are better, but now there are some
strange things with the functions.

* Zoom in goes sometimes directly to 125%, sometimes
  200%, 250% and even 300%, this seemes to be dependent
  on what i did earlier, feels quite random.
* Zoom out works only 3 times, with image widths over
  3000 pixels, you want more times..  There is also
  some problems alike above. All of a sudden i can only
  zoom out one time and then no more.

But it feels a little faster on zooming.

> I hope this will make the viewer more usable - If not, I'll try to use a 
> different library than gdk. 

* The viewer cannot handle uncompressed images like tiff,
  pnm and ppm at all, i had to kill gcmd when trying those
  kind of images (froze at 100% load).

* A lot slower to view image (initial), now it takes about
  the same time to view a 6Mp image than it took to view a
  34Mp in 1.1.7. that is quite much slower - not good.
* I converted one of my 34Mpix pnm images to jpeg just to
  make some comparisons:
  * F3view now took 5 sec to open it.
  * F3view in 1.1.7 took only 2 sec! (this is truly impressive)
  * EOG about 6 sec.
  * GQview 8 sec.
  * gThumb 6 sec.

Open a 34Mpix jpeg in 2 sec (1.1.7 version), i doubt that
anything can beat that, but you said there where faster
libs around.. I wonder if this really is a library problem,
but i guess you know a lot more than i about that.


//Magnus S.

P.S
We are having some problems with the mailing lists
but i hope Savannah get things together, earlier
today not even i as list admin could post to them,
so i try to CC this mail to the list too - hope it
works now..