SUMMARY: A TIFF viewer

From: Chris Wozniak (KAW@wapet.com.au)
Date: Fri Oct 18 1996 - 17:58:00 CDT


My query:

> I'm looking for recommendations for a TIFF (and other formats)
> viewer/editor.
> I've tried the newest version of XV (3.10a) but it doesn't suit my users.
> They have very large files and need to zoom in a lot, XV doesn't give them
> the right resolution. If anyone out there knows of any product,
> freeware/shareware/commercial please let me know.

was answered by 9 people. They recommended 3 products:

     ImageMagick 6 recommendations
     gimp 2 recommendations
     xpaint 1 recommendation
     xv 1 recommendation

I already tried xv, but I'm including it here.

available from
ImageMagick - ftp://ftp.wizards.dupont.com/pub/ImageMagick
ImageMagick - http://www.wizards.dupont.com/cristy/ImageMagick.html
gimp - http://scam.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/~gimp/
xpaint -
     http://www2.dk-online.dk/users/Torsten_Martinsen/xpaint/index.html

I've pulled down all of them. For gimp I ftp-ed both source and binaries
for Solaris and SunOs. Here're my impressions:
ImageMagick
   for:
     Compiled and linked with minor difficulties on Solaris and SunOs.
     Runs very well, provides panning, good resolution, etc.
   against:
          Panning tool a bit clumsy. Slow in zooming in to double size.
     My users have very large TIFF files, megabytes in size and I can
     be wrong about speed, didn't really have much comparison,
     but it takes for ever and a while to zoom in on a 5 Mb tiff file.
gimp
   for:
     ????? I don't know, couldn't make it run.
   axgainst:
     SunOS Binary version doesn't run, bombs out with the "Invalid
     arguments to smhget" message while reading in tiff file. Solaris
     binary has no tiff.
     Source is very difficult to compile, the supplied Imake and make
     files required a lot of tweaking. Compiled Solaris version exits
     on the sigsegv, in the end I gave up on gimp.
xpaint
   for:
     Easy to compile and link. Simple, pleasant GUI. Slide rules for
     quick, easy panning, nice resolution.
   against:
     X runs out of resources and crashes the program on large tiff
     files (5 Mb).
xv
   for:
     Easy to link and compile.
   against:
     Poor panning. Very poor resolution in zoomed in pictures.

Many thanks to those who replied:
Andre Saile saile@transtec.de
Martin martin@mednuc.hsr.it
Yaron Hemi yaron@trendline.co.il
Ann Rautenbach annr@ref.collins.co.uk
Tim Evans tkevans@eplrx7.es.dupont.com
Salvatore Saieva saieva@ppllc.com
George Menegakis menes@cc.uch.gr
Benjamin R. Cline benji@hnt.com
Mark Hershberger mah@eecs.tulane.edu

Chris Wozniak

System Administrator
WAPET Exploration
kaw@wapet.com.au



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