Light version

[xnview]

ok to be active look at this program..
http://www.nyam.pe.kr/dev/imagine/downl ... 040828.zip
it is compact.. with plugins and langs..

Oh yes, very compact. But very simple.
It's the subject of this thread
For DLL language, ok perhaps it's a good idea to use text file instead of DLL.

[helmut]

From what I read in the discussion, there are various aspects for a light version:

A light version that ...
1.) ...has a small footprint for fast downloading
2.) ...version that is small for fast loading / start-up
3.) ...version that is simple in usage.

My comments here:

re 1.)
Currently we have three different version for downloading. The smallest one, the minimal version has a download size of 1 MB. This is not very much and acceptable. What I often experience is that download portals like zdnet.com or similar offer the complete version for downloading. This is about 5-6 MB which is a lot for people with a small bandwith. The ideal and sufficient version for download portals is the standard version with about 2 MB. So whenever we/you see a download portal offering the full version, we should ask them to change this to the standard version.

Perhaps the problem with the large DLLs could be worked-around by simply offering each language for download?

re 2.)
If a light version really is faster when starting up (e.g. because of less plug-ins to load), the architecture of the application should be examined and change to avoid this. It's no good to truncate a version just because it's faster.

re 3.)
I still think that the idea of having a version with a simpler user interface can be good and helpful. Nowadays, many people have a digital camera. The functions they need is rotate, crop a specific area, correction of colour and lightness. No effects, no filters, no flipping, no multi-conversion, and so on. From my point of view, there should be no light version, but one complete version that 'knows' what the user needs and grows with the abilities and needs of the user.

That's just my 2 cents.

[helmut]

...For DLL language, ok perhaps it's a good idea to use text file instead of DLL.

Most of all text files would make the whole translation process much simpler. Translators could immediately verify their translation which would be excellent and avoid sending DLLs back and forth.

[Clo]

Hello Pierre !

…For DLL language, ok perhaps it's a good idea to use text file instead of DLL. …

- Oh yes ! It's that I told you already years ago… Much easier to update / change.
- Let think to the big amount of hours you could save, and use to improve more the program !
Kind regards,
Claude
Clo

[Aokromes]

...For DLL language, ok perhaps it's a good idea to use text file instead of DLL.

Most of all text files would make the whole translation process much simpler. Translators could immediately verify their translation which would be excellent and avoid sending DLLs back and forth.

With ResHacker/Restorator 2004 you can translate near any dll without the need of sending the text to the programer.

[ckit]

Resource Hacker is now Discontinued:
http://www.users.on.net/johnson/resourcehacker/

PE Resource Explorer is the new successor:
http://www.wilsonc.demon.co.uk/d7resourceexplorer.htm

[Clo]

>> Aokromes
Hello !

With ResHacker/Restorator 2004 you can translate near any dll without the need of sending the text to the programer.

- Indeed, you can do this too with any good resource editor. I have my own French DLL, so different of the original one; but only at home for my own use. And with an internal font containing all needed characters, instead the crappy "Ms Sans Serif" in which a lot of upper characters are missing…
But in anyway, this is hacking…
- With text files, even the antiquated NotePad of Win does the trick.
- Unicode / UTF8 can also solve some issues for languages in which the simple ANSI charset is insufficient…
- The total size of the languages pack could decrease by 70% or so. Indeed, the dialogs might be added in the EXE, but there is an obvious benefit globally.
- Just the opinion of an old guy who translates some programs for free and for some years

 Kind regards,
Claude
Clo

[deus-ex]

Just in short, i second Clo's point of view. I'm a translator for several programs, too.

Regards, deus-ex

[Lasse]

Yes, good Idea.
I would like that, for people, who only use the most common options,
for example:

- Resize (with only 1 or 2 resample-formats, like bilinear and ...
well by the way: it there a table where I can read the pres and cons
of these single formats?)

- one "Frost-Filter", to make things on screenshots kind of unreadable, like the blur-average-filter, where I can set how "unsharp" and unreadable I can mask the parts of the image. (3x3, 5x5, ...)

- Rotate and lossless-Rotate (custom is not needed, because most people will use xnview for rotating their digital-cam-images. So, 90, 180, 270° should be fine.

- Screenshot-Option

- Formats: BMP, TIFF, GIF, PNG. Maybe there are more digital-cam-formats.

- Multi-convert, as a light-version also. Not so many advanced-operations.


That would be *my* favourite features.
I'm using Windows.

[herr_k.]

Light mode feature / button - if enabled, only few image formats would be on, no plugins would be loaded (or just few), browser should be on too...

I think it would be better than light version, because...

- starting of xnview would be faster
- anyone could turn it on/off anytime
- it could be turned on at startup automatically (for faster start) and if needed (or automatically if going to browser) it could be turned off...

if it would be (even more) fast at startup leaving out not common plugins to load i would like this option also.

[Drahken]

The minimal version already serves most of the features that this hypothetical "light" version would, all except the interface. In fact, I never bother with the full or standard versions, because I don't need all the extra stuff like language files. I always grab the minimal version and the format plugins.

Frankly, reducing the available formats for a light version is just a dumb idea. There are alreay 10.2 million "basic" image viewers which can only handle 4 or 5 formats and have few features, do you really want to turn xnview into a clone of some low-end prog?? The fact that xnview can handle so many formats is one of the things that sets it apart from the crowd. (In fact, i think xnview handles more formats than any other program out there, with the possible exception of image magick (which is a bear to use).)

The interface is already pretty simple, the only thing that would be an improvement is to add more and/or different functions to the available toolbar buttons (perhaps also add some form of secondary toolbar. One toolbar could be for file operations, open, save, print, etc while the other is for filters, effects, resize, etc.)

With 1.82x caching the plugins instead of re-checking them on every startup, xnview loads extremely fast as-is, trying to speed it up more would be redundant.

For those who don't want a bunch of plugins, all they have to do is grab the minimal version and don't download any plugins. If they already have the plugins, and know some simple facts about using a computer, they can simply remove the plugins they don't want (either by renaming, deleting, or moving them). You say you never use JBIG images? Find the plugin within jbig in the name and delete it. You say you never use WMF images? Find the plugin with wmf in the name and delete it.

Another thing with the idea of limiting the available formats: Isn't that what the tools->options->filetypes option (which seems to have been removed in 1.8x) was for?



The only thing along these lines that I think could possibly be good would be to make xnview modular. Have the basic program with basic formats as the minimal version, have plugins to add all file formats to that version, (possibly have a plugin to change the interface. ie, The "plain"/minimal version would have a simple interface, then a plugin could be downloaded to turn it into the normal interface), etc. Then the standard and full packages would just be the same program, plugins, and other files but packaged together as a single download.

[Xyzzy]

Voted NO.
Another 'Windows image and fax viewer' when there's already one? What for?

X.