dbs@kodak.enet.dec.com (dan sears) (04/20/91)
I just posted xtiff 2.0 to comp.sources.x and put a copy on
export.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/xtiff.tar.Z. Here is the README
file.
--Dan
xtiff 2.0
xtiff is a tool for viewing a TIFF file in an X window. We wrote it to
handle as many different kinds of TIFF files as possible on as many different
kinds of displays as possible while remaining simple, portable and efficient.
xtiff requires X11 R4 and Sam Leffler's libtiff package (which can be found
on ucbvax.berkeley.edu).
This release of xtiff contains two versions: an Xlib version and an Athena
Widgets version. The Xlib version starts up faster than the Athena Widgets
version, but the latter has certain features that make it useful. These
include:
+ command buttons for browsing through multi-page TIFF files
+ panning with the mouse or arrow keys
In comparison, the Xlib version only displays a TIFF file in an X window
big enough to hold the image. If an X server doesn't support pixmaps
large enough for the image, xtiff will punt.
In writing both versions of xtiff, we paid close attention to what was
actually going across the network by using Greg McFarlane's xmon X11
protocol monitor. With the Xlib version we minimized the packets sent
over the network, but in the Athena Widgets version that was more difficult
since the toolkit has a fair amount of overhead. Both versions allow the
user to choose whether the image data is stored in the client or in the
server. This feature shows a dramatic tradeoff in performance versus
memory requirements for the server.
xtiff has two chief limitations: its handling of the colormap can only
be described as brutal and it does not attempt to display images that
are deeper than the available visuals through dithering or median cut
algorithms.