Misc Ideas

Ideas for improvements and requests for new features in XnView Classic

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Greg_DI
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Nov 01, 2007 12:57 pm

Misc Ideas

Post by Greg_DI »

Hi,

A great deal of us here at our company use XnView. We think it's great and so have bought some licences and now use it a lot. Pierre knows who I am as I pester him on Instant Messengers a bit too much!!

We think the new version's great. There's just a few things, in our opinion, that would really help:

(1) The entry for the status bar that previously read the palette of the image and said "256 Grey Scale" or "16 Grey Scale" has been taken out of the few recent versions presumably to make way for cursor co-ordinates.

Whilst the "8bpp", "24bpp" etc. is still there, it would be most helpful to have this returned. If you, for example, open up a 256 Grey Scale image and convert it to 16 Greys so it compresses better in many algorithms, XnView shows no change any more and just says "8bpp" for both 16 and 256 Grey, 256 Colour and a few others. Obviously this is correct, but only 16 colours of the palette are being used and XnView does not make this obvious to the user any more. Oddly, this is still present in the Browser, and there the status bar takes up a lot more room!

Perhaps simply readding it, or rearranging the status bar, or offering a checkbox to choose between cursor co-ords and number of greys is in theory pretty easy (and would be ideal), whereas adding a status bar customiser is probably overkill for such a small problem and would create Pierre a lot of work. Cursor co-ords is the most logical thing to swap using a checkbox, because average users don't really need cursor co-ords when working with large numbers of images, and words like "True Colours" look more friendly.

(2) In the Batch processing dialog, importing and exporting the ListView box to a textfile would be brilliant! Then you could create a list of the files you want to process and import them into XnView rather than use nConvert. The normal format for stuff like this every line being taken as a filename, disregarding double-quotes, and no column header (it's also the way another package works which we'd rather not use)! The Script frame in this window does not perform that task.

(3) Searching for bit depths in the find dialog would be superb -- but obviously isn't necessary as it's not been present up until now.

(4) When browsing across UNC paths in folders with over 3000 images (there are reasons for that!), if you open up an image then go forward or back there is a large lag whilst waiting for the second image, but after that it is okay. I think this is perhaps because it takes time for XnView to locate the previous/next logical image with the current sorting algorithm, but I do not know for sure.

I know, it sounds like I'm asking for a lot! From programming experience (1) and (2) should be exceptionally easy for Pierre, as he's got the framework in place. (3) and (4) are probably harder, *but* they're also not as necessary.

We're not expecting anything! It's just ideas I have come up with, and I think little things like that would help some other XnView users too!

- Greg
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foxyshadis
Posts: 394
Joined: Sat Nov 18, 2006 8:57 am

Re: Misc Ideas

Post by foxyshadis »

1. It does have count colors in the image menu, when in view mode, but if you mean the browser then yeah, it's unfortunate that no color count exists.

2. I find working with file lists as text files to be an incredibly powerful paradigm. I have no idea why it's not more common, I'm stuck with a buggy tool (Oscar's Renamer) for everything I do. I'm not sure how it would fit into xnview's UI (short of slamming it in regardless of discoverability) but I would vote a definite yes on it.
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XnTriq
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Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 3:00 am
Location: Ref Desk

Re: Misc Ideas

Post by XnTriq »

foxyshadis wrote:I find working with file lists as text files to be an incredibly powerful paradigm. I have no idea why it's not more common, I'm stuck with a buggy tool (Oscar's Renamer) for everything I do.
Ditto. I use (and recommend) these freeware utilities:
  • Scarabée Software: Siren
    Siren renames, moves, and copies files using an expression. A lot of information associated to a file can be used: name, extension, dates, selection number... Other information is extracted from it according to its type: audio, video, image (standard and raw), exif, iptc, office document, pdf, html, executable, dv avi, karaoke, torrent, and url. Many different operations can be performed on character strings. A complete directory tree can be processed. Images can be viewed. For example, to change a file name to uppercase with the mp3 extension, the expression can be: %ub.mp3. Languages: English and French.
  • Kjetil L. Nygård: Chgname
    Chgname is a fast, comprehensive and very flexible file management tool, which changes the file NAMES, all -DATES, all -TIMES and -ATTRIBUTES. The main task for Chgname is to enumerate large number of files with similar names (like name001.ext, name002.ext). Chgname also changes CHARACTER CASE of file names for easy transportation between operating systems. Further, Chgname shows a preview of all the changes. Chgname is made very flexible by a wildcard system and many other options for composing file names. In addition lists of filenames may be edited like text files for fast and efficient editing for all kinds of filenames. Chgname even has the capacity to set all file date- and time stamps progressivly (created, modified, accessed). Files are imported into a file list through an open dialogue box, drag-and-drop form the Explorer, through a search function which includes searching through subdirectories or through the command-line. Command-line parameters provide the means for full automation. The files are either moved into one directory, left where they are or copied into one single directory. Chgname is ideal for everyone who have demanding tasks which includes keeping order in large number of for example data files.
Greg_DI
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Nov 01, 2007 12:57 pm

Re: Misc Ideas

Post by Greg_DI »

Hey,
foxyshadis wrote:1. It does have count colors in the image menu, when in view mode, but if you mean the browser then yeah, it's unfortunate that no color count exists..
Sorry I wasn't very clear on (1)! If you open the XnView 1.91.6 browser then highlight an image, you'll see "Binary", "True Color", "256 Colors", "256 Grey Scale" on the status bar. This used to be present in the View window too. It appears to read the image's palette and was especially useful (and friendly to newbies) when it was present! The cursor location we don't find so handy...

Also regarding (2) again, we weren't so much after a file mangement tool, but simply a way to import a text file into the listbox in the batch window (like Ir*anView's Load TXT Button).

I really like the new estimated time when converting and the real image dimensions column in the browser, it saves doing calculations!

- Greg