XnView Software

Development everywhere
Currently, there's a lot going on with XnView, even if it doesn't look that much like it. There's improved XMP and IPTC support, and much more in the Windows version of XnView. And there's the development of XnView MP, the multi-platform version of XnView.

Core functionality
With all that development I wonder what is important and essential for most users. My feeling is that XnView (actually its programmer, namely Pierre) should not invest all the time in new features but also refine existing features and make them 100% usable.

Like millions of other people, I have a digital camera and want to get my daily things done with XnView, actually it's not too many functions: Browsing, copying&moving images, selecting (for paper images), cropping, de-skewing, rotating (to get orienation right), resizing, adjust brightness, adjust hue, and some few more. This basic core functionality should be supported 100% by XnView and 100% easy to use. Already, XnView is easy to use, but it should be even simpler and easier and safer.

Usability
For a good software it's not sufficient if all functions are supported. It's essential that these functions can be accessed in an intuitive and easy way. Workflows should be smooth and with little extra steps.

Formats
A strong area of XnView is the format support. In addition to improvements on the core functionality, the format support should be also enhanced and improved. Already, handling of transparency has improved a lot, which is very good and important. But there's still more to do and there are various formats waiting to be supported or better supported.

List of improvable core features/usability

Here's a "forum extract" of usabilty and core functions that I'd find useful:

- Tooltips with keyboard shortcuts
- Simplified & unified Toolbar (Only important functions, separators, same order and buttons in various modes).
- Waitcursor while processing (Copying, Drag & Drop, ...)
- Cropping with darkened background
- Selection: Dashed selection
- Selection: Square Resizing and horizontal/vertical moving
- Rotation dialog: Hide/Show Grid for manual de-skewing
- Zoom visible and settable in Combobox in toolbar
- Automatic Backup file when saving or applying lossless transformations
- Framewise next&Previous for video files
- Arbitrary Filelist for Create Webpage and Create Contact sheet
- "Create" menu in image view mode
- Wrong Crop Icon
- Rotate & Undo icons: Different colours to differentiate
- Create Webpage: Small preview of Design
- Automatic whitepoint
- Spin buttons in all dialogs
- Batch convert, Sequence convert, Batch rename... just 1?
- Favourites: Context menu


The wishlists for XnViewMP 'Most important features' are a also a good indicator what people want and how the journey of XnView should continue.

Comments, suggestions, and additions (links to existing topics) are welcome.

Thank you Helmut for expressing something I have written several drafts of but never posted.

One of my concerns is that MP will consume resources needed for "fine-tuning" XnView itself.

In addition, many of the things I want (er, need?) for XnView appear to require a new internal code architecture. At first I thought this meant XnView MP, which was exciting, but my impression now is that the MP internals have already traveled too far along in a direction that cannot support my ideas for XnView.

For one such example, consider MP's thumbs view. Though the ability to resize the MP thumbnail images "on the fly" (with the slider) is admirable, the actual thumbs themselves seem to be "same old same old" (as we say in my household). I'm not talking about appearance, here, but rather the core metaphors of interaction and presentation that lie behind the thumbs we see.

To complicate matters further, I personally don't care for the current MP interactivity metaphor. Why doesn't it work exactly like XnView? It took a lot of effort for the XnView "method of working" to evolve to the excellence it has today.

So, unless MP changes to be like XnView, I will continue to use the XnView we currently know and love.

This represents a dilemma (for me anyway) in how to influence the XnView process toward the enhancements and changes I think would be useful or are necessary, etc. If MP could have been architected to support some things valuable to users like me, but wasn't, and XnView itself can't be changed to do so, then...

What will the future hold?

I spent 12 hours in XnView on Friday. That could have been 8 hours if the Compare panel resided in a tab, if the Browser was dual pane, if the Adjustment dialogs were designed differently, if XnView supported versioning, if, if, if...

All this rambling is not meant as a criticism of XnView per se. Obviously I admire it and use it constantly in preference to a large palette of other applications available to me.

helmut wrote: Like millions of other people, I have a digital camera and want to get my daily things done with XnView, actually it's not too many functions: Browsing, copying&moving images, selecting (for paper images), cropping, de-skewing, rotating (to get orienation right), resizing, adjust brightness, adjust hue, and some few more. This basic core functionality should be supported 100% by XnView and 100% easy to use. Already, XnView is easy to use, but it should be even simpler and easier and safer.
ra steps.

Reading the above posts, I'd just like to add something of uttermost importance (IMHO) for a professional image viewer: full ICC support. Without it there is no exact color handling = even with a calibrated screen you can not trust what you see.

JohnFredC

Hi John !

• The whole content of you epistle above matches my own feeling…
- Especially about the MP version, I don't see what to do with it under Windows,
while the current XnView is much more convenient for my use…
…and should be even better with important changes I'm waiting desperately for ages (language, menus…).

(BIG SIGH…)

KR
Claude
Clo

Hello all,
-> JohnFredC and Clo Yes of course, I love the current efficiency of XnView Windows version too (even under Wine and linux).
But in another hand, this Windows version has also some lacunas:
The standardization for all plateforms OS.
The unicode support.
The high quality zoom (accuracy,efficiency and textures).
...
Then I think the MP version will be a good candidate for the replacement of the XnView Windows version.
Steps by steps the alfa MP version becomes closer and closer similar to it.
But Pierre is alone, and the MP is a good opportunity for him to make easier the development and to spend less time i guess (because it is almost the same code for all plateforms OS ).
My concern: i hope than the efficiency of the MP (by the QT4 core) will be the same or better than the current Windows version !

My feeling is that XnView (actually its programmer, namely Pierre) should not invest all the time in new features but also refine existing features and make them 100% usable.

100% agree with that.

In short here is why I keep on trying to use xnview as a replacement for my current image viewer:
. better format support than anything else. (.exr, .hdr, .rpf being the most important ones for me and anyone in the cgi industry)

and here is why I keep on uninstalling it after a while:
. display speed (seems well below the competition.)
. overall stability
. Lack of attention to important details. (example: are we really suppose to install a third party software to simply configure the input device behavior - where most image viewer share more or less the same keyboard commands and mouse behavior, xnview has an absolutely unique and unergonomic default input configuration with no way to change it natively)

Thank you for your input so far. It's very interesting to read the various point of views.

Just to make sure: From my point of view the main users that should be supported best are beginners and standard users, not so much professional users. This is why I focus on simplifying things.

thibaud wrote:... and here is why I keep on uninstalling it after a while:
. display speed (seems well below the competition.)
. overall stability
. Lack of attention to important details. (example: are we really suppose to install a third party software to simply configure the input device behavior - where most image viewer share more or less the same keyboard commands and mouse behavior, xnview has an absolutely unique and unergonomic default input configuration with no way to change it natively)

I'm surprised to read these arguments, thibaud. Some comments:

display speed
If you mean zooming and scrolling then you are right. If you mean display of thumbnails, then I think you are wrong: In the past there have been discussions regarding speed, the result and outcome is that with same quality level XnView is at the speed level of other image viewers. And with XnView's caching and using embedded thumbnails it's high above simple image viewers.

overall stability
XnView has been very stable in the past but from what I hear it's not 100% stable anymore. The problematic areas that are probably: Files with unknown format, damaged files and videos. Currently this is rumours, Pierre should try to track down each single GPF if possible. One GPF is one GPF too much.

Lack of attention to important details
I think the keyboard handling of most image viewers differ a lot and there's no real standard. Which shortcuts do you find missing or wrong?

display speed
If you mean zooming and scrolling then you are right. If you mean display of thumbnails, then I think you are wrong: In the past there have been discussions regarding speed, the result and outcome is that with same quality level XnView is at the same level with other image viewer. And with its caching and using embedded thumbnails it's high above simple viewers.

thumbnail speed is fine, and yes zooming and panning could be improved, but the main issue is certainly the lack of a read ahead scheme for the viewer.

Which shortcuts do you find missing or wrong?

the very basic next / previous on page up/page down seems very wrong to me.
I 'd expect them to be on the mouse (scrollwheel) and/or on left hand accessible keys (so the right hand can stay on the mouse)

To resume my hopes:
I'd rather have an extremely basic and highly optimized image viewer with extensive image support and exemplar usability.
unfortunately most image viewer tend to transform into editing/organizing tools long before they get the viewing part right.

thibaud wrote:thumbnail speed is fine, and yes zooming and panning could be improved, but the main issue is certainly the lack of a read ahead scheme for the viewer.

O.k. By default XnView does read ahead caching (Tools > Options > View > Misc > Read one image ahead"). Backward caching has been suggested here in the forum, too.

thibaud wrote:the very basic next / previous on page up/page down seems very wrong to me.
I 'd expect them to be on the mouse (scrollwheel) and/or on left hand accessible keys (so the right hand can stay on the mouse)

You can change the behaviour of the keyboard and mouse wheel in Tools > Options > General > Keyboard/Mouse.

thibaud wrote:To resume my hopes:
I'd rather have an extremely basic and highly optimized image viewer with extensive image support and exemplar usability.
unfortunately most image viewer tend to transform into editing/organizing tools long before they get the viewing part right.

Basically I have the same opinion. I've started a kind of "usability offensive" and suggest possible improvements for the user interface. If you find a specific feature in XnView cumbersome or long winded please give support in existing topics or start a new topic if this hasn't been posted before.

Thanks for the answer Helmut.
My apologies for stating things without checking enough.
(to be honest I had xnview uninstalled)

I really wonder how I could miss that Keyboard /mouse section, somehow I think I got confused between xnviewMP and xnview.

As for the caching, there is certainly room for improvement there, quick navigation through picture does feel really sluggish, and even slower navigation exhibit an incompressible display delay (+/- 150ms) between each images. (I don't know how acdsee handle this but it does feel way faster)

backward caching would also certainly be welcome.

thibaud wrote:Thanks for the answer Helmut.
My apologies for stating things without checking enough.
(to be honest I had xnview uninstalled)

I really wonder how I could miss that Keyboard /mouse section, somehow I think I got confused between xnviewMP and xnview.

No problem, thibaud. If a tool doesn't work 100% as expected I also tend to uninstall it rather than fiddling around in options. But XnView is worth a second installation.

thibaud wrote:As for the caching, there is certainly room for improvement there, quick navigation through picture does feel really sluggish, and even slower navigation exhibit an incompressible display delay (+/- 150ms) between each images. (I don't know how acdsee handle this but it does feel way faster)

Typically, XnView does not waste valuable time. Perhaps the problem is the High quality zoom. Please try out disabling high quality zoom in "Tools > Options > View > High Quality Zoom > Reduce" (it's just a test to find out about the problem). Or the problem might be related to Freeze when navigating to next image.

thibaud wrote:backward caching would also certainly be welcome.

Yes, a possible improvement. There are various topics & suggesstions covering this matter, already.

oops66 wrote:...
Then I think the MP version will be a good candidate for the replacement of the XnView Windows version.
Steps by steps the alfa MP version becomes closer and closer similar to it.
But Pierre is alone, and the MP is a good opportunity for him to make easier the development and to spend less time i guess (because it is almost the same code for all plateforms OS ).
My concern: i hope than the efficiency of the MP (by the QT4 core) will be the same or better than the current Windows version !

Yes, a possible development and evolution which would make sense. I share your concern regarding efficency, hopefully speed is at about the same level.

Hello Helmut,
Same efficiency level, maybe under Windows-XP but not under Linux-Ubuntu.
Right now, it's not exactly the case for me.
The MP core efficiency is not very good under my Linux system (Ubuntu hardy) because I sometimes have some system freezes (5 seconds each) when I try to browse a directory with many thumbnails (about 150) inside, for example.
For the moment and for me, the efficiency is better with the Windows version v1.93 (even with Wine under Ubuntu), except for the hight quality zoom function and the thumbnails cache speed.
And I think the problem comes from the QT4 core system management under Linux, not from the XnView-MP-unix-alpha.015 binary , because I have not this kind of problem with XnView-MP-Windows-alfa.015 under Wine & Ubuntu ...
http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?t=15437
http://www.winehq.org/site/myths

Perhaps the problem is the High quality zoom. Please try out disabling high quality zoom in "Tools > Options > View > High Quality Zoom

Thanks again Helmut, that got rid of the delay.
(now, maybe that something that could get a multithreading cure - or a job for the gpu)

yet fast navigation isn't smooth.
(something going on with the way i/o are initiated)

But XnView is worth a second installation.

for the last 6 years, I gave xnview a chance about each 6 months (that's about 12 uninstall ) I'd really love xnview to come to a point where it could replace what I'm using now

thibaud wrote:I'd really love xnview to come to a point where it could replace what I'm using now

That is?