VIMAGE 0.9 Oct 29, 1991 -- Lee Iverson
This package can now be considered to be a full beta release of the
vimage application and widget set. It is a collection of Xt widgets
which create a cohesive image viewing tool. The user-interface is
still somewhat flexible but probably won't change much from now until
the 1.0 release. It works fine with X11R5 and should continue to work
with R4.
Why another one? The answers are of two types.
1) I wanted a widget that could be easily used either standalone or
embedded in a larger application. An earlier poll of
comp.windows.x searching for such a beast turned up nil.
2) I needed something that would allow arbitrary user-defined
extensibility to new image types and display variations. This
meant the adoption of an objected-oriented image type heirarchy (a
la Xt). Eventually such things as EdgeMap and ImageFlow can be
implemented and seamlessly integrated into the overall application.
INSTALLATION:
Should be straightforward. Configuration information is in Imakefile and
config.h. Edit those files appropriate to your system and you should be fine.
Pay special attention to compiler selection and VIMLIBDIR and VIMINCDIR
at the top of the Imakefile. Once this is done, then
xmkmf
make depend
make World
make install
If you don't have xmkmf and imake, you will have to deal with the raw Makefile
provided. Oh well...
RECOMMENDED TOOLS:
- JPEG: The free JPEG distribution is an excellent intro to JPEG file
compression. The latest release is available from
uunet.uu.net:graphics/jpeg/jpegsrc.v1.tar.Z.
- libXukc: This is a widget set which extends the functionality of the
Athena widgets considerably. They are available as part of the Dirt
interface builder system (export.lcs.mit.edu:contrib/dirt.A1.10.tar.Z).
Currently, the three components of this system I depend on are
included with this package.
- ad2c. This is an extremely useful way of providing a consistent
set of fallback application defaults. It essentially compiles the .ad
file for an application into a set of strings which should be loaded
into the application context at startup. Actually, ad2c is only required
if you change VImage.ad and want the new defaults compiled in as
fallback resources.
- ezMenu. This is a nice, simple Menu interface which gives a clean
and simple interface to the Athena SimpleMenu structure. I've
modified it slightly, but only to make it a little more robust.
- dld-3.2.3. Dynamic loading facilities. This is an excellent
package for dynamically loading code into a running applications. I
use it to deal with user-defined (and identified) file types.
Available from aeneas.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/dld-3.2.3.tar.Z
- Xpm-3.0. Facility for handling Xpm files etc. This is an X pixmap
external data format analogous to the XBM format. Available from
export.lcs.mit.edu:/contrib/xpm-3.0.tar.Z
FEATURES:
- ImageViewport widget. A viewport widget which manages and
with arbitrary resizing of the child widget. It is clearly derived
from the Xaw Viewport widget, and includes both it's copyright and
my own. Supports a popup menu bar and a large number of actions for
display and manipulation of the image.
- Image widget. A general purpose image viewing, zooming, and
examining base. This is the part of the system which is the most
volatile at the moment, since I have plans to extend this to an
ImageStack widget (mostly done) (i.e. a number of images overlayed
on on another!). A set of interaction primitives enable arbitrary
image zooming.
- FileDialog widget. A Mac-like modal File dialog widget. Needs some
work, but is quite functional and has a nice interface for only
selectively seeing certain files. Depends on the regexp(3) library
functions (included).
- CMManage. A set of routines for managing a consistent colormap
within an application in which there are a potentially broad variety
of different areas of the program which are trying to allocate
colors. This overrides the standard Xt StringToColor translations,
so that resource manager color definitions will work properly even
when this color manager is being used.
- notifier. A simple application which takes input from its stdin and
pops up an AsciiText widget to display them. A utility function
(provided) will pipe stderr fromm your X application to the
notifier!
- An Xt-like class heirarchy of Image types. The analog for Core is
the GenericImage type. Three standard Image types are currently
provided: BitImage, ByteImage and RGBImage, all rectangular bitmaps.
ByteImage has a colormap associated with it. The image reading
functions (currently supporting only PBM, PGM, PPM and GIF) create
one of these types. The Image widget interfaces to a set of generic
object-oriented calls which are redefined (as necessary for the image
types).
- A dynamic loading interface for image formats and associated support
functions. One of the really essential things for supporting an
experimental image-processing environment is the ability to define
special image types (e.g. EdgeMap or OpticalFlow) and allow the user
to use them in as transparent a manner as possible. This depends on
dld-3.2.3 (and the patches below).
- Adoption of a generic image format that supports cross-platform
portable images with arbitrary data formats (also using dynamic
loading). I'm not sure whether something out there already will work
(maybe CGM), but if nothing really fits what I need, then (sigh!)
another image format.
- Automatically uncompresses, unbtoa's and translates from any PBMPLUS
recognized format to something that it can read! This is a Wow!
BUGS:
- Currently the relationship between Image files and ImageDisplays is not
as well put-together as it should be. As a result, the attempt to reread
a file from the StackEditor causes a core dump.
CAVEATS:
- There is currently NO DOCUMENTATION (except this file). A little
bit of application default browsing and source code reading should
elucidiate things for now, but real docs will come along soon.
- I've only really tested this on a Sun4 OS 4.1 with mono and 8bit
color displays and on VAX/Ultrix, but my ability to get close
to other hardware is limited, so no guarantees. Sigh!
- If you are using the MIT X11R4 Xt library (patchlevel 15+), there is
a bug in XtDestroyWidget that bites pretty big. The R5 work has
forced an end to official patches for R4, so you will need to apply
the following patch in lib/Xt.
*** Destroy.c.~1~ Mon May 6 12:25:26 1991
--- Destroy.c Mon May 6 12:26:45 1991
***************
*** 225,233 ****
while (i < app->destroy_count) {
if (dr->dispatch_level >= dispatch_level) {
Widget w = dr->widget;
! if (--app->destroy_count)
bcopy( (char*)(dr+1), (char*)dr,
! app->destroy_count*sizeof(DestroyRec)
);
XtPhase2Destroy(w);
}
--- 225,234 ----
while (i < app->destroy_count) {
if (dr->dispatch_level >= dispatch_level) {
Widget w = dr->widget;
! /* This was writing well past the end of the list! -- leei */
! if (--app->destroy_count > i)
bcopy( (char*)(dr+1), (char*)dr,
! (app->destroy_count - i)*sizeof(DestroyRec)
);
XtPhase2Destroy(w);
}
- If you are using dld-3.2.3, there are two bugs which I've tickled
that should be fixed. They've been reported and will be in the
next release. Patches follow:
*** dld.c.~1~ Thu May 30 03:13:31 1991
--- dld.c Wed Jul 10 04:02:39 1991
***************
*** 2015,2021 ****
if (_dld_latest_entry->library_flag && _dld_latest_entry->subfiles == 0) {
free (_dld_latest_entry->local_sym_name);
if (_dld_latest_entry->filename != _dld_latest_entry->local_sym_name)
! free (_dld_latest_entry->filename);
_dld_latest_entry = kill_entry (_dld_latest_entry);
file_close ();
--- 2015,2024 ----
if (_dld_latest_entry->library_flag && _dld_latest_entry->subfiles == 0) {
free (_dld_latest_entry->local_sym_name);
if (_dld_latest_entry->filename != _dld_latest_entry->local_sym_name)
! free (_dld_latest_entry->filename);
!
! _dld_latest_entry->local_sym_name = 0;
! _dld_latest_entry->filename = 0;
_dld_latest_entry = kill_entry (_dld_latest_entry);
file_close ();
*** dld.c.~1~ Wed Jul 10 04:02:39 1991
--- dld.c Sun Aug 25 12:13:18 1991
***************
*** 290,296 ****
int size;
{
register int result = malloc (size);
! if (!result)
fatal (DLD_ENOMEMORY);
return result;
} /* _dld_malloc */
--- 290,296 ----
int size;
{
register int result = malloc (size);
! if (size && !result)
fatal (DLD_ENOMEMORY);
return result;
} /* _dld_malloc */
Planned Extensions:
- Documentation. Some. Any...
- A shared memory image manager (probably a separate program) for fast
and efficient communication between image processing programs and
the viewer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lee Iverson McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines
leei@mcrcim.mcgill.edu Computer Vision and Robotics Lab
McGill University, Montreal