
                                                 11 February 1995




                     SHOWER - The pictureviewer
                  
                            written by
		
                        Blade of New Core

                           version 1.0






WHAT IS SHOWER?
---------------

Shower is a simple, fast and easy to use Pictureviewer. It supports
18 different fileformats (12 if you count all the six Degas-formats
as one) including popular formats as GIF, IFF and IMG.


LEGAL STUFF
-----------

Shower is freeware. You may spread it as much as you want as long as
this textfile is included with the program. The entire program except
for the GIF-depacker is written by Blade of New Core. The GIF-depacker
is taken from Sascha Springer's TurboGIF and is copyright Sascha Springer.
I didn't ask Sascha for permission to use his routine in Shower, but
hope (and think) that he doesn't mind. New Core takes no responsibility
whatsoever for this product, you are entirely on your own if you intend
to use it. However, we have taken precautions in order to make it as 
reliable, stable and harmless as possible and find it really hard to
belive that this piece of software would be able to destroy or mess
something up.


HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS
---------------------

Shower needs a Falcon 030 to run. It works on both RGB and VGA-monitors.
It should work without problems on accelerated Falcons, but will probably
get problems with graphics-cards. Resolution enhancers like Blow Up should
work without a problem though.


HOW TO USE SHOWER
-----------------

Place the icon for Shower on your desktop and drag the picturefile you want
to view to it and drop it. Shower will now be started and the picturefile
loaded. If something goes wrong (not enough memory, corrupt picturefile,
unsuported fileformat etc.) Shower will (hopefully) quit back to the
desktop. If everything goes ok you will see the picture within som seconds
(or fractions of a second if its a small picture). If the picture is bigger
than the screen you can scroll around it using the mouse or cursor-keys.
Press left mousebutton to change resolution. A press on the right mouse-
button quits Shower.


FUNCTIONS
---------

Scroll around
-------------
Using the Cursor Keys or by moving the Mouse you can scroll around the 
picture if it is larger than the screen. You can't scroll around
properly when displaying 2-color pictures, since the Falcon-hardware
can't hardwarescroll properly in this resolution.

Change resolution
-----------------
With + and - on the numeric keypad you can change the resolution between
low- and hires. A press on the left mousekey will do the same.
You can't switch to hires if the picture is displayed in True-Color-Mode
and you are using a VGA-monitor.

Colormode/Black & White
-----------------------
Use F1 to switch between color and B/W-display. Does not work in True Color.

Bordercolor
-----------
If the picture is smaller than 640x480 you will get a border around it.
This border is normally drawn in the darkest color found in the palette
(normally black). By pressing F2 you can switch between a dark or bright
border.

Binary Dump
-----------
By pressing Control + Alternate + F10 you will save down a binary dump
of the picture. The picturedata will be called SAVEDPIC.BIN and placed
in the current directory (either Top Window or the directory of Shower,
depending on desktop settings). A file called SAVEDPIC.PAL is also created
and contains a binary dump of the palette (from address $ffff9800).
Finally a file called SAVEDPIC.TXT is created that describes the binary
dump (X-resolution, Y-resolution and amount of colors).


SUPPORTED FILEFORMATS
---------------------

Shower supports the following fileformats:

.ART		Art Director
.BMP		PC-Bitmap (still buggy and only 256-color pictures)
.DOO/.MUR	Doodle/Object Editor Mural (same fileformat)
.GIF		Compuserve Graphics Interchange Format
.IFF		IFF
.IMG		GEM Bit Image (including XIMG)
.MAC/.MPT	MacPaint
.NEO		Neochrome
.PC1		Degas Low-res compressed
.PC2		Degas Mid-res compressed
.PC3		Degas Hi-res compressed
.PI1		Degas Low-res
.PI2		Degas Mid-res
.PI3		Degas Hi-res
.PI9		Extended Degas (320*240 in 256 colors)
.RAG		RAG-D!
.RAW		Persistence of Vision (POV) Raytracer output.
.TRU            IndyPaint (only pictures with "Indy"-header, no blocks)


WHY USE SHOWER AND NOT GEM-VIEW?
--------------------------------

Well, there are many reasons:

1. Gem-View requires registration if you really want to use. Shower is
   public domain.
   
2. Gem-View is a slow program, it takes ages for it to display a picture.
   Shower is a very fast program, written entirely in assembly.
   
3. Gem-View displays the picture in a window in the resolution it was
   started in (nice if you have a good graphics card, though). Shower
   finds out what resolution is needed to display the picture correctly
   and switches to that and you don't have some stupid desktop-background
   and windows disturbing you.

4. Gem-View have loads of features that normally aren't used and thus
   only takes a lot of memory that could be used for something else.

5. If you want to save down your pictures for use in your own programs
   it can easily be done with Shower since it can create a binary dump
   of the picture and palette (without any headers or packing) that
   easily can be included in your own program.


WHY USE SHOWER AND NOT TURBOGIF?
--------------------------------

Well if your picturelibrary only consists of GIF-files and you are using
Turbogif, you're probably only interested in knowing what Shower's 
advantages over Turbogif are, so here they come:

1. Turbogif is very buggy, it freezes my computer about every fifth time
   I use it. This have never happened with Shower (unless I have loaded
   a corrupt picturefile).

2. Turbogif needs about 3 MEGs of free memory in order to run, independently
   of the size of the picture you want to watch. This is because it uses
   fixed buffers for its operations. Shower dynamically allocates the
   amount of memory it needs.
   
3. Turbogif is limited to a fixed maximum size when it comes to pictures.
   Pictures bigger than 1280 x 960 might crash the computer. I haven't
   been able to test Shower with such big pictures, but it should work
   with pictures of almost unlimited size (available memory is the only
   limit). Even when watching a picture of a greater size than 1280 x 960
   it shouldn't take the 3 MEGs that Turbogif requires since Shower uses
   its memorybuffers more efficiently.
     
4. Shower is a bit faster (up to 2 seconds on the biggest GIF-file I have),
   since I use a faster chunkypixel > bitplane-conversion-routine. Still
   some people might find Shower to be a bit slower since it doesn't
   display the picture until its totally drawn.

5. Shower can view the picture in both hi-res and low-res.

6. Shower is a bit less bugy, I managed to display a picture with Shower
   that Turbogif messed up a bit.

7. Shower works both on VGA & RGB (PAL & NTSC).

8. TurboGif can't be started from 4-colormodes or ST-compatibility-modes.   

9. Shower is not limited to GIF-files.   
   

WHY THIS STUPID NAME?
---------------------

By simply combining normal Swedish gramatical rules with English words,
you get that a utility for showing a picture is a "Picture Shower".
This is pure, simple gramatics. Don't blame me because the Englishspeaking
population on this earth can't keep their gramatics straight!
This is why I call this program "Shower" and not "Viewer".


KNOWN BUGS
----------

- Shower doesn't display BMP-files correctly all the time. The colors in
  the palette are mixed up and I still can only display 256-color BMP's.
  I need more information about the BMP-format in order to fix this.
  
- No support for IMG-files with "STTT"-palette since I haven't found an
  IMG-file with this feature yet and been able to test it out.
  
- The sidescrolling of a 2-color picture doesn't work properly, this since
  it isn't possible for the Falcon to hardwarescroll a 2-color picture
  correctly. I'm planning to patch this by using a second screen in
  2-color mode in the future.
  
- I guess there are some extensions to the IFF-format that I still don't
  support.


HOW TO SUPPORT DEVELOPMENT OF THIS PRODUCT:
-------------------------------------------

You can support the further development of this product by writing me
and tell me what you thought about Shower. Tell me about all (if any)
bugs you have found and what you would like me to include. If you have
any information about an unsuported fileformat you can always send it
to me along with some examplefiles and I might include it in a future
version. Don't bother to send me docs about TGA, TNY, SPC, SPU, SPC or
any other fileformat that I probably already have. Don't send me any
info about JPEG either, I won't write my own JPEG-depacker (but might
use Brainstorms decoder if I can get hold of the needed documentation).
If you have any well-detailed info about TIFF, PCX or BMP then please
send it to me. I really would like to include these formats.
  

THANKS AND GREETINGS:
---------------------

 Dead Hackers Society (thanks for the betatesting)
 H†kan Bratt (Sysop at Toxic BBS, containing New Core & UDS supportareas)
 All other members of New Core (Lightlord, Shrimp, Marko & The Gambler)
 All my friends at Unique Development Sweden
 Exellence In Art
 Zeal
 TSCC (thanks for all the letters!)
 Lazer
 Code of TBL (the creator of Octalyser STE)
 Lance (anything going on nowadays?)
 Techwave of ICE (are you still coding?)
 Dune
 Impact Software (good luck with your game)
 Aggression (the same to you...)
 CGD ST in Hungary (Hi Daniel!)
 

HOW TO CONTACT THE AUTHOR
-------------------------

     Tord Jansson
     Sk„ggetorp Centrum 8
     582 38  LINK™PING
     SWEDEN

   Phone:    +46-13-179123
   E-mail:   tord.jansson@pointless.ct.se
   FidoNet:  2:204/428.16

