[ViewVC] Annotation of: cvs/CV/README

NAME
    cv - a fast gtk+ image viewer loosely modeled after XV

SYNOPSIS
       cv

       cv directory

       cv path...

       cv -g <glob expression...>

       find .. -print0 | cv -0r

FEATURES
    CV is supposed to work similar to the venerable XV image viewer, just
    faster. Why faster?

    *   optimized directory scanning algorithm

        The directory scanning in CV uses some tricks that - on most modern
        filesystems - makes it possible to detect filetypes faster than
        stat()'ing every file. This makes CV suitable for directories with
        lots of files (10000+).

        This algorithm is quite unprecise - it doesn't make a difference
        between files, device nodes, symlinks and the like, and filetype
        detection is done using the file extension only.

        On the positive side, it is usually many orders of magnitude faster
        than traditional scanning techniques (good for directories with
        10000 or 100000+ files).

    *   queuing for all time-consuming background tasks

        All tasks, such as unlinking files or generating thumbnails, that
        can be done in the background will be done so - no waiting required,
        even when changing directories.

    *   use of asynchronous I/O

        CV tries to use asynchronous I/O whereever it makes sense, for
        example while scanning directories, waiting for stat data, unlinking
        files or generating thumbnails. This usually decreases scanning
        times for large directories a bit (especially on RAID devices and
        over NFS) and makes CV much more interactive.

    *   fast image loading

        The time span between the user issuing a command and displaying the
        new image should be as small as possible. CV uses optimized
        (especially for JPEG) loading functions and sacrifices some quality
        (e.g no gamma correction, although this might change) to achieve
        this speed.

    *   fast thumbnail creation

        Thumbnail creation uses both CPU and Disk-I/O. CV interleaves both,
        so on modern CPUs, thumbnailing is usually limited by I/O speed.
        Thumbnail creation for JPEGs has been specially optimized and can
        even take advantage of multiple CPUs.

    *   minimum optical clutter

        CV has no menus or other user interface elements that take up a lot
        of screen space (or are useful for beginning users). The schnauzer
        windows can also be somewhat crowded.

        The point of an image viewer is viewing images, not a nice GUI. This
        is similar to XV's behaviour.

    *   efficient (and hard to learn) user interface

        CV uses key combinations. A lot. If you are an experienced XV user,
        you will find most of these keys familiar. If not, CV might be hard
        to use at first, but will be an efficient tool later.

    *   multi-window GUI

        CV doesn't force you to use a specific layout, instead it relies on
        your window manager, thus enabling you to chose whatever layout that
        suits you most.

    *   i18n'ed filename handling throughout

        As long as glib can recognize your filename encoding (either UTF-8
        or locale-specific, depending on the setting of G_BROKEN_FILENAMES)
        and you have the relevant fonts, CV will display your filenames
        correctly.

    *   extensible through plug-ins

        I have weird plug-ins that access remote databases to find a
        directory. This is not likely to be of any use to other people.
        Likewise, others might have weird requirements I cannot dream of.

    *   filename clustering

        Among the standard plug-ins is a filename clustering plug-in, that
        (in case of tens of thousands images in one directory) might be able
        to cluster similar names together.

DESCRIPTION
  THE IMAGE WINDOW
    You can use the following keys in the image window:

     q            quit the program
     <            half the image size
     >            double the image size
     ,            shrink the image by 10%
     .            enlarge the image by 10%
     n            reset to normal size
     m            maximize to screensize
     M            maximize to screensize, respecting image aspect
     ctrl-m       toggle maxpect-always mode
     ctrl-sift-m  toggle using current image size as max image size
     u            uncrop
     r            set scaling mode to 'nearest' (fastest)
     s            set scaling mode to 'bilinear' (default)
     shift-s      set scaling mode to 'hyper' (slowest)
     t            rotate clockwise 90°
     T            rotate counterclockwise°
     a            apply all rotations loslessly to a jpeg file (using exiftran)
     ctrl-shift-t apply current rotation for future image loads
     ctrl-v       open a new visual schnauzer window for the current dir
     ctrl-c       clone the current image window
     ctrl-e       run an editor ($CV_EDITOR or "gimp") on the current image
     ctrl-p       fire up the print dialog
     ctrl-shift-p same as ctrl-p, but automatically selects "ok"
     escape       cancel a crop action

    And when playing movies, these additional keys are active:

     left         rewind by 10 seconds
     right        forward by 10 seconds
     down         rewind by 60 seconds
     up           forward by 60 seconds
     pg_up        rewind by 600 seconds
     pg_down      forward by 600 seconds
     o            toggle on-screen display
     p            pause/unpause
     escape       stop playing
     9            turn volume down
     0            turn volume up

    Any other keys will be sent to the default schnauzer window, which can
    be toggled on and off by right-clicking into the image window.

    Left-clicking into the image window will let you crop the image (usually
    to zoom into large images that CV scales down).

  THE VISUAL SCHNAUZER
    Any image-loading action in a schnauzer window acts on the
    "last-recently-activated" imagewindow, which currently is simply the
    last image window that received a keypress.

    You can use the following keys in the schnauzer window:

     ctrl-space,
     space        move to and display next image
     ctrl-backspace,
     backspace    move to and display previous image
     ctrl-return,
     return       display selected picture, or enter directory

     cursor keys  move selection
     page-up      move one page up
     page-down    move one page down
     home         move to first file
     end          move to last file

     ctrl-a       select all files
     ctrl-shift-a select all files currently displayed in the schnauzer window
     ctrl-d       delete selected files WITHOUT ASKING AGAIN
     ctrl-g       force generation of thumbnails for the selected files
     ctrl-shift-g remove thumbnails for the selected files
     ctrl-s       rescan current direcory or files updates/deletes etc.
     ctrl-u       update selected (or all) icons if neccessary
     ctrl--       unselected thumbnailed images
     ctrl-+       keep only thumbnailed images, deselect others

     ^            go to parent directory (caret).

     0-9,
     a-z          find the first filename beginning with this letter

    Right-clicking into the schnauzer window displays a pop-up menu with
    additional actions.

   SELECTION
    You can select entries in the Schnauzer in a variety of ways:

    Keyboard
        Moving the cursor with the keyboard will first deselect all files
        and then select the file you moved to.

    Clicking
        Clicking on an entry will select the one you clicked and deselect
        all others.

    Shift-Clicking
        Shift-clicking will toggle the selection on the entry under the
        mouse.

    Dragging
        Dragging will select all entries between the one selected when
        pushing the button and the one selected when releasing the button.
        If you move above or below the schnauzer area while drag-selecting,
        the schnauzer will move up/down one row twice per second. In
        addition, horizontal mouse movement acts as a kind of invisible
        horizontal scrollbar.

    Hint: double-click works while click-selecting
        You can double-click any image while click-selecting to display it
        without stopping the selection process. This will act as if you
        normally double-clicked the image to display it, and will toggle the
        selection twice, resulting in no change.

FILES
    When starting, CV runs the .cvrc file in your $HOME directory as if it
    were a perl script. in that, you will mostly load plug-ins.

    Example:

       system "fping -q -t 10 ether"
         or require "/fs/cv/cvplugin.pl";

    This will load a plug-in, but only if the machine *ether* is reachable
    (supposedly the plug-in is networked in some way :).

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
    CV_EDITOR
        The program that gets executed when the user presses "CTRL-e" in the
        Schnauzer or image window. The default is "gimp".

    CV_AUDIO_PLAYER
        EXPERIMENTAL: audio playback is now via mpv, this variable is
        currently ignored.

        Program used to play all sorts of audio (wav, aif, mp3, ogg...),
        default "play". Will be called like "$CV_AUDIO_PLAYER -- <path>".

    CV_MPLAYER
        Program used to play all sorts of video files. Unlike
        "CV_AUDIO_PLAYER", this really must be one of the "mplayer",
        "mplayer2" or "mpv" programs, or something that is very command-line
        compatible to them.

        Currently, if this string contains the substring "mpv", then it is
        assumed to be mpv-compatible, otherwise it is assumed to be
        mplayer-compatible.

        Note: for video-thumbnailing, mplayer is still used (and hardcoded).

    CV_PRINT_DESTINATION
        The default (perl-style) destination to use in the print dialog.

    CV_TRASHCAN
        When set, must point to a directory where all files that are deleted
        by the "Delete Physically" (ctrl-d) action are moved to (other
        deletion actions still delete!). If unset, files that are deleted
        are really being deleted.

SIGNALS
    Sending CV a SIGUSR1 signal will cause all image viewers to reload the
    currently loaded image. This is useful if you use CV as a viewer for
    changing data - just run it in the background with some path and each
    time the image changes, send it a SIGUSR1.

SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
    CV uses Pixbuf to load non-JPEG images. Pixbuf is not considered safe
    for this purpose, though (from the gtk-2.2 release notes):

    "While efforts have been made to make gdk-pixbuf robust against invalid
    images, using gdk-pixbuf to load untrusted data is not recommended, due
    to the likelyhood that there are additional problems where an invalid
    image could cause gdk-pixbuf to crash or worse."

BUGS/TODO
     Lots of functionality is missing.

     Pixbuf doesn't always honor G_BROKEN_FILENAMES, so accessing files with
     names incompatible with utf-8 might fail.

     rotate on disk
     lots of ui issues
     save(?)
     preferences

AUTHOR
    Marc Lehmann <cv@plan9.de>.

Revision:	1.12
Committed:	Wed Dec 27 17:48:16 2017 UTC (6 years, 4 months ago) by root
Branch:	MAIN
CVS Tags:	rel-1_9, rel-1_8, rel-1_71, rel-1_7
Changes since 1.11:	+15 -0 lines
Log Message:	1.7
#	User	Rev	Content
1	root	1.1	NAME
2	root	1.3	cv - a fast gtk+ image viewer loosely modeled after XV
3	root	1.1
4			SYNOPSIS
5	root	1.11	cv
6
7			cv directory
8
9			cv path...
10
11			cv -g <glob expression...>
12
13			find .. -print0 \| cv -0r
14	root	1.1
15	root	1.3	FEATURES
16			CV is supposed to work similar to the venerable XV image viewer, just
17			faster. Why faster?
18
19	root	1.7	* optimized directory scanning algorithm
20
21	root	1.3	The directory scanning in CV uses some tricks that - on most modern
22			filesystems - makes it possible to detect filetypes faster than
23			stat()'ing every file. This makes CV suitable for directories with
24			lots of files (10000+).
25
26			This algorithm is quite unprecise - it doesn't make a difference
27			between files, device nodes, symlinks and the like, and filetype
28			detection is done using the file extension only.
29
30			On the positive side, it is usually many orders of magnitude faster
31			than traditional scanning techniques (good for directories with
32			10000 or 100000+ files).
33
34	root	1.7	* queuing for all time-consuming background tasks
35
36	root	1.3	All tasks, such as unlinking files or generating thumbnails, that
37			can be done in the background will be done so - no waiting required,
38			even when changing directories.
39
40	root	1.7	* use of asynchronous I/O
41
42	root	1.3	CV tries to use asynchronous I/O whereever it makes sense, for
43			example while scanning directories, waiting for stat data, unlinking
44			files or generating thumbnails. This usually decreases scanning
45			times for large directories a bit (especially on RAID devices and
46			over NFS) and makes CV much more interactive.
47
48	root	1.7	* fast image loading
49
50	root	1.3	The time span between the user issuing a command and displaying the
51			new image should be as small as possible. CV uses optimized
52			(especially for JPEG) loading functions and sacrifices some quality
53			(e.g no gamma correction, although this might change) to achieve
54			this speed.
55
56	root	1.7	* fast thumbnail creation
57
58	root	1.3	Thumbnail creation uses both CPU and Disk-I/O. CV interleaves both,
59			so on modern CPUs, thumbnailing is usually limited by I/O speed.
60			Thumbnail creation for JPEGs has been specially optimized and can
61			even take advantage of multiple CPUs.
62
63	root	1.7	* minimum optical clutter
64
65	root	1.3	CV has no menus or other user interface elements that take up a lot
66			of screen space (or are useful for beginning users). The schnauzer
67			windows can also be somewhat crowded.
68
69			The point of an image viewer is viewing images, not a nice GUI. This
70			is similar to XV's behaviour.
71
72	root	1.7	* efficient (and hard to learn) user interface
73
74	root	1.3	CV uses key combinations. A lot. If you are an experienced XV user,
75			you will find most of these keys familiar. If not, CV might be hard
76			to use at first, but will be an efficient tool later.
77
78	root	1.7	* multi-window GUI
79
80	root	1.3	CV doesn't force you to use a specific layout, instead it relies on
81			your window manager, thus enabling you to chose whatever layout that
82			suits you most.
83
84	root	1.7	* i18n'ed filename handling throughout
85
86	root	1.3	As long as glib can recognize your filename encoding (either UTF-8
87			or locale-specific, depending on the setting of G_BROKEN_FILENAMES)
88			and you have the relevant fonts, CV will display your filenames
89			correctly.
90
91	root	1.7	* extensible through plug-ins
92
93	root	1.3	I have weird plug-ins that access remote databases to find a
94			directory. This is not likely to be of any use to other people.
95			Likewise, others might have weird requirements I cannot dream of.
96
97	root	1.7	* filename clustering
98
99	root	1.3	Among the standard plug-ins is a filename clustering plug-in, that
100			(in case of tens of thousands images in one directory) might be able
101			to cluster similar names together.
102
103	root	1.1	DESCRIPTION
104			THE IMAGE WINDOW
105			You can use the following keys in the image window:
106
107	root	1.3	q quit the program
108			< half the image size
109			> double the image size
110			, shrink the image by 10%
111			. enlarge the image by 10%
112			n reset to normal size
113			m maximize to screensize
114			M maximize to screensize, respecting image aspect
115			ctrl-m toggle maxpect-always mode
116	root	1.4	ctrl-sift-m toggle using current image size as max image size
117	root	1.3	u uncrop
118			r set scaling mode to 'nearest' (fastest)
119			s set scaling mode to 'bilinear' (default)
120			shift-s set scaling mode to 'hyper' (slowest)
121	root	1.10	t rotate clockwise 90°
122			T rotate counterclockwise°
123	root	1.5	a apply all rotations loslessly to a jpeg file (using exiftran)
124	root	1.11	ctrl-shift-t apply current rotation for future image loads
125	root	1.3	ctrl-v open a new visual schnauzer window for the current dir
126	root	1.4	ctrl-c clone the current image window
127	root	1.3	ctrl-e run an editor ($CV_EDITOR or "gimp") on the current image
128	root	1.4	ctrl-p fire up the print dialog
129	root	1.11	ctrl-shift-p same as ctrl-p, but automatically selects "ok"
130	root	1.3	escape cancel a crop action
131	root	1.1
132	root	1.2	And when playing movies, these additional keys are active:
133
134	root	1.3	left rewind by 10 seconds
135			right forward by 10 seconds
136			down rewind by 60 seconds
137			up forward by 60 seconds
138			pg_up rewind by 600 seconds
139			pg_down forward by 600 seconds
140			o toggle on-screen display
141			p pause/unpause
142			escape stop playing
143			9 turn volume down
144			0 turn volume up
145	root	1.2
146	root	1.3	Any other keys will be sent to the default schnauzer window, which can
147			be toggled on and off by right-clicking into the image window.
148	root	1.1
149	root	1.3	Left-clicking into the image window will let you crop the image (usually
150			to zoom into large images that CV scales down).
151	root	1.1
152			THE VISUAL SCHNAUZER
153	root	1.4	Any image-loading action in a schnauzer window acts on the
154			"last-recently-activated" imagewindow, which currently is simply the
155			last image window that received a keypress.
156
157	root	1.1	You can use the following keys in the schnauzer window:
158
159	root	1.3	ctrl-space,
160			space move to and display next image
161			ctrl-backspace,
162			backspace move to and display previous image
163			ctrl-return,
164			return display selected picture, or enter directory
165
166			cursor keys move selection
167			page-up move one page up
168			page-down move one page down
169			home move to first file
170			end move to last file
171
172			ctrl-a select all files
173			ctrl-shift-a select all files currently displayed in the schnauzer window
174			ctrl-d delete selected files WITHOUT ASKING AGAIN
175	root	1.11	ctrl-g force generation of thumbnails for the selected files
176			ctrl-shift-g remove thumbnails for the selected files
177	root	1.3	ctrl-s rescan current direcory or files updates/deletes etc.
178			ctrl-u update selected (or all) icons if neccessary
179	root	1.8	ctrl-- unselected thumbnailed images
180			ctrl-+ keep only thumbnailed images, deselect others
181	root	1.3
182			^ go to parent directory (caret).
183
184			0-9,
185			a-z find the first filename beginning with this letter
186
187			Right-clicking into the schnauzer window displays a pop-up menu with
188			additional actions.
189
190	root	1.4	SELECTION
191			You can select entries in the Schnauzer in a variety of ways:
192
193			Keyboard
194			Moving the cursor with the keyboard will first deselect all files
195			and then select the file you moved to.
196
197			Clicking
198			Clicking on an entry will select the one you clicked and deselect
199			all others.
200
201			Shift-Clicking
202			Shift-clicking will toggle the selection on the entry under the
203			mouse.
204
205			Dragging
206			Dragging will select all entries between the one selected when
207			pushing the button and the one selected when releasing the button.
208			If you move above or below the schnauzer area while drag-selecting,
209			the schnauzer will move up/down one row twice per second. In
210			addition, horizontal mouse movement acts as a kind of invisible
211			horizontal scrollbar.
212
213			Hint: double-click works while click-selecting
214			You can double-click any image while click-selecting to display it
215			without stopping the selection process. This will act as if you
216			normally double-clicked the image to display it, and will toggle the
217			selection twice, resulting in no change.
218
219	root	1.3	FILES
220			When starting, CV runs the .cvrc file in your $HOME directory as if it
221			were a perl script. in that, you will mostly load plug-ins.
222
223			Example:
224
225			system "fping -q -t 10 ether"
226			or require "/fs/cv/cvplugin.pl";
227
228			This will load a plug-in, but only if the machine ether is reachable
229			(supposedly the plug-in is networked in some way :).
230	root	1.1
231	root	1.9	ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
232	root	1.2	CV_EDITOR
233			The program that gets executed when the user presses "CTRL-e" in the
234			Schnauzer or image window. The default is "gimp".
235
236	root	1.6	CV_AUDIO_PLAYER
237	root	1.12	EXPERIMENTAL: audio playback is now via mpv, this variable is
238			currently ignored.
239
240	root	1.6	Program used to play all sorts of audio (wav, aif, mp3, ogg...),
241			default "play". Will be called like "$CV_AUDIO_PLAYER -- <path>".
242
243	root	1.12	CV_MPLAYER
244			Program used to play all sorts of video files. Unlike
245			"CV_AUDIO_PLAYER", this really must be one of the "mplayer",
246			"mplayer2" or "mpv" programs, or something that is very command-line
247			compatible to them.
248
249			Currently, if this string contains the substring "mpv", then it is
250			assumed to be mpv-compatible, otherwise it is assumed to be
251			mplayer-compatible.
252
253			Note: for video-thumbnailing, mplayer is still used (and hardcoded).
254
255	root	1.1	CV_PRINT_DESTINATION
256			The default (perl-style) destination to use in the print dialog.
257
258	root	1.2	CV_TRASHCAN
259			When set, must point to a directory where all files that are deleted
260	root	1.9	by the "Delete Physically" (ctrl-d) action are moved to (other
261			deletion actions still delete!). If unset, files that are deleted
262			are really being deleted.
263
264			SIGNALS
265			Sending CV a SIGUSR1 signal will cause all image viewers to reload the
266			currently loaded image. This is useful if you use CV as a viewer for
267			changing data - just run it in the background with some path and each
268			time the image changes, send it a SIGUSR1.
269	root	1.2
270	root	1.1	SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
271	root	1.3	CV uses Pixbuf to load non-JPEG images. Pixbuf is not considered safe
272			for this purpose, though (from the gtk-2.2 release notes):
273	root	1.1
274			"While efforts have been made to make gdk-pixbuf robust against invalid
275			images, using gdk-pixbuf to load untrusted data is not recommended, due
276			to the likelyhood that there are additional problems where an invalid
277			image could cause gdk-pixbuf to crash or worse."
278
279			BUGS/TODO
280	root	1.3	Lots of functionality is missing.
281
282			Pixbuf doesn't always honor G_BROKEN_FILENAMES, so accessing files with
283			names incompatible with utf-8 might fail.
284	root	1.1
285			rotate on disk
286			lots of ui issues
287			save(?)
288			preferences
289
290			AUTHOR
291			Marc Lehmann <cv@plan9.de>.
292