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gView image viewer and browser - 0.1.14
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Introduction
gView is an image browser and viewer, using GTK+ and Imlib, that uses a style
similar to that of ACDSee for Windows. It is in a state of constant development,
so features may come and go.
Features
- List-based file browser with directory position stack.
- Support for many image types: JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG etc.
- External application launcher. See External Applications below.
- Gamma, brightness and contrast correction for image and RGB channels.
- Configurable slide show with full control.
- Navigation toolbar on browser window with full entry field.
- Drag-N-Drop support. See Drag-N-Drop below for details.
- If an image filename is given on the command line, the browser window
is not loaded on startup. -v forces the browser window open.
- Match-as-you-type facility. See Matching below for more information.
- Hotkey support for size, navigation and manipulation. See Key Bindings.
- Internet viewing support if curl or wget is available.
- Configurable rendering settings for 8 bit displays.
- Image preview if matching .xvpics entry found or if optional generated
preview code is enabled, --enable-preview for configure
- Support for all color depths.
- Simple file manipulation controls - rename and delete.
- Set image as desktop background
- Centered - single, unresized, border area filled with configurable color
if image smaller than desktop.
- Tiled - multiple, unresized, tiled across window if image smaller than
desktop
- Scaled - single, resized to root window size.
- IPC communications to tell a running gView to open a specific file/directory.
- International language support using the de facto standard of gettext.
- gvComment image comment support - New idea, hope it takes off. See below.
- GNOME desktop file and PNG icon for gView. This is as GNOME gets in. OKAY!
Directory Stack
This useful feature remembers the list entry that you used to get into the current
directory and restores the selection position when dropped back to the parent. It
has 64 slots, which should be enough for most systems.
Matching
This is a feature nicked from Windows, or from wherever Windows nicked it from.
Simply, in the browser window, as you type in characters, gView looks for a match
on the current file list and selects it. If you type C, it will find the first file
that starts with C. If you then type another character within a second, eg A, it
will now find the first file that starts with CA, and so on. If you leave it for
longer than a second, gView will clear the buffer and you will have to start again.
If you hit the wrong character, or overshoot, you can hit backspace and it will
remove the last character from the buffer. Let me know if you hate this.
Slideshow Operation
Since 0.1.8, the slideshow operates differently. Instead of using the currently
selected files in the browser window, the slideshow operates from a separate linked
list which stores the FQPN of the image file. At the moment, clicking on the
SlideShow button starts the slideshow with whatever is in the linked list. To add
files to the slideshow, select them, right click to bring up the popup menu and use
Slideshow->Add To Slideshow.
The slideshow can now also pause and resume from where it left off. These controls
are also located on the Slideshow popup menu on both the browser and the image windows.
The Clear Slide List items removes all items from the linked list.
In the Slide List Viewer, you can rearrange the order of the slides by dragging them
around.
Drag-N-Drop
Since 0.1.10, DND support has been present in gView. You can drag files from any XDND
compatible source and drop them onto the viewer window to view the image immediately.
You can also drag files onto the Slideshow List, SlideShow->View Slide List on the
popup menu, to add them to the slideshow. You can also drag files from the browser
list and drop them into any XDND compatible destination.
If you drop an http:// or ftp:// URL onto the viewer window, gView will download the
file from the site and display it.
Dropping non-image files onto any gView destination window will be ignored.
In the Slide List Viewer, you can rearrange the order of the slides by dragging them
around.
External Applications
From 1.1.14, gView supports user associations for file types not supported by gView
natively. This feature is enable automatically and does not affect normal usage if
you do not require it.
To use an external application, simply add a line to the file .gview_assoc in your
home directory as follows:
appname:ext1,ext2,ext3
Where appname is the full command line, sans filename, of the app you want to launch,
and ext1,2 & 3 are extensions you want associated. Look at the file gview_assoc.eg
for examples. Please note that external applications override the internal viewers.
Key Bindings
These are the key bindings for gView. Please note some have changed.
Browser Window:
Enter - Load the current file
Del - Delete the current file
Ctrl+H - Load the contents of the user's home directory
Ctrl+X - Exit gView
All numbers and letters - Autofind filename.
Viewer Window:
Arrow keys - Scroll image if bigger than viewport - Step
PageUp/PageDown - Scroll image vertically if bigger than viewport - Page
Shift Pageup/PageDown - Scroll image horizontally if bigger than viewport - Page
Q - Close viewer window
H - Flip image horizontally
V - Flip image vertically
P - Load previous file in list
N - Load next file in list
+ - Zoom in
- - Zoom out
IPC subsystem
The IPC system uses key 34, 0x22, and requires the command line switch -i to send an IPC call.
Only the first running gView will listen, all the others ignore the message. For example this
command will load the image image002231.jpg on an existing browser.
gview -i /vol1/archives/image002231.jpg
If you give it an IPC switch and no listening app exists, gView will load as normal.
gvComments
This is a new idea I came up with for image comments. Like XV with thumbnails, gView creates a
directory called .gvcomment in each directory and places the text comment in a file named the
same as the image file in that directory. When you load an image, it pops up a tooltip with the
comment displayed.
Note
This is constantly evolving software, it may not support the features you want, or it
may crash. This is normal. Please let the designers know of any problems you may run
across.
Thanks
The preview window code, using xvpics, has been borrowed from the GIMP. The authors of the GIMP
retain all copyright of the code and thanks is offered to them for the use thereof. Specifically
Adam D. Moss who wrote the code and gave permission to use it.
Bruce A. Smith <bruces@mail.petech.ac.za>
