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  KuickShow for KDE 2.1
Graphics and Art Posted by Navindra Umanee on Thursday 15/Mar/2001, @19:52
from the time-has-come dept.
Many of you have been waiting for this one. Carsten Pfeiffer wrote in to tell us about the first release of KuickShow since KDE 1.1.2 in July 1999. KuickShow is a nice image viewer based on Rasterman's Imlib, and in case you don't remember, the killer feature of KuickShow was its blazing speed. You won't be disappointed by the latest release for KDE 2.1 -- I was blown away. It's even noticeably faster than the venerable XV (hint: command line geeks should use KDE Init for that extra speed boost, others benefit automatically). You can get KuickShow here, view a couple screenshots (1, 2, 3), or view the ChangeLog. Depending on your feedback, binary RPMs may soon be made available. Read on for the details from Carsten.

Carsten Pfeiffer writes:

Some of you might remember an ancient program called KuickShow, a nice and very fast imageviewer for KDE1, last released in July '99. Due to other projects, the significant changes from KDE 1.x to 2.x, and a rewrite of KuickShow internals, the new version has been delayed until now.

At least Imlib didn't change. :) Yes, KuickShow uses Imlib to load and display images, and that's one of the reasons for KuickShow being so fast. It also supports a lot of image formats, even some Photoshop *.psd files work.

The new KuickShow 0.8 works pretty much the same as the last version. You have a filebrowser to select the images to display. But IMHO, the best way to browse image galleries is to open an image, hit Return to toggle into fullscreen mode and then press PageUp/Down/Home/End to navigate between images. This is all amazingly fast, of course, have I mention that, yet? :) You say you won't download anything before you've seen a screenshot? I wouldn't either, so here they are.

Now if you want to view images kuickly, here's what you need:

Requirements:
  • kdelibs 2.1 (2.0 won't work)
  • Qt >= 2.2.3
  • Imlib (together with libjpeg, libpng, libgif/libungif, libtiff)

Oh and don't forget KuickShow! Currently there is only a tarball and source-rpm (use --prefix=/where/your/kde/is/installed unless your KDE lives in /opt/kde2) available.

I'd like to get some feedback about this version and will try to get some binary RPMs ready if nothing serious needs to be fixed.

If you used the old KuickShow for KDE1, you might stumble over a couple of things:
  • the ".." entry in the filebrowser that took you into the parent directory is no longer available. Just as in the filedialog or in Konqueror, use Alt+Up (or the toolbar button) to change into the parent dir.
  • the change-directory shortcut & menu entry was removed. Simply start typing a filename or a directory name in the fileview. A small editfield will pop up to assist you.
Of course this is all mentioned in the documentation, but I'm betting that nobody's going to read that ;)

Thanks,
Carsten


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Re: KuickShow for KDE 2.1
by sarang on Thursday 15/Mar/2001, @21:28
Cool.. but if Imlib is faster than Qt image loading, then why dosn't KDE use it everywhere? Even Qt can look at their code and make their code faster!

Also, wouldn't it be great if konqueror had an option "View the current directory using KuickShow" option! konqueror is pretty slow for directories with 100s of images IMHO.

good work!
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Re: KuickShow for KDE 2.1
by me on Friday 16/Mar/2001, @03:41
I think a tool like KuickShow is really a must-have for KDE, and honestly, I don't really care what lib it is build on, as long as it works nice & quickly.

I do think that unfortunately, the UI of kuickshow is a little flawed. Under windows, I've gotten to know & love ACDSee, IMHO the best image viewer available. Carsten, if you read this, please take a look at the attached screenshot, and if you'd like, let it inspire you ;)

Thank you very much for your work, it is highly appreciated!
Click to download attachment acdsee.jpg
35KB (35959 bytes)
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Re: KuickShow for KDE 2.1
by Marco94 on Friday 16/Mar/2001, @06:48
Yep, the Freshmeat entry shows Imlib2 to be at version 1.0.1. BTW when it comes to image viewing, I still find nothing better then PMView. An "old" OS/2 favorite.

Marco.
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Re: KuickShow for KDE 2.1
by jd on Friday 16/Mar/2001, @07:07
Oh, man! This rules! :)

Seriously, I think my quest is over. Finally a good imageviewer.

Thank you, Carsten!
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Re: KuickShow for KDE 2.1
by KDE User on Friday 16/Mar/2001, @09:42
KuickShow is great and very fast!

I've just noticed a small resizing bug.

Sometimes when I move from a very large picture (larger than my desktop) to a smaller picture, the smaller picture has a frame the size of the large picture. If I reclick the smaller picture, the frame is the correct size. The opposite happens sometimes when I move from a smaller picture to a very large picture. The window frame for the large picture is too small and the image is truncated. If I reclick the large picture the frame is the correct size. This doesn't always happen.

I use KuickShow in window mode and I use KWin. Maybe I need to update my KWin.
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Re: KuickShow for KDE 2.1
by anonymous on Saturday 17/Mar/2001, @06:31
So, wouldn't it be a good idea for the trolls to look at the imlib-source and see what makes it so fast? I mean, they don't need to copy the API, do they?

I think it would be of great benefit to KDE, seeing how many pixmaps & png's KDE has to load for icons, web browsing etc.

Why?
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New Window Decorations...
by APW on Sunday 18/Mar/2001, @16:58
http://master.kde.org/~pfeiffer/kuickshow/screenshots/kuickshow.png

It looks like Carsten has also given us a quick view of one of the next set of window decorations for KWIN.

Navindra, perhaps we should have a poll to see what window decorations people are actually using so that some of the lame ones can be left out of future KDE releases.

Cheers,

APW

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