ViewME 1.1 Readme File.
By A.J. Venter (ddt@vukanet.co.za)
(C) 2001 - You may change or redistribute this file freely provided that
A> All changes are clearly indicated as such (I do not wish to be blamed for other peoples changes)
B> This header is kept entirely as is.
What is ViewME ?
ViewMe is a program for opening files that need to be viewed with other viewers.
It was largely inspired by LHA but it has far more features.
You can just use viewme to shorten some command-lines, set it up as the image viewer in your mail client, use it as the command-line for the IceWM address bar (or similiar in any window manager) and if your using KDE/Gnome you can even go so far as to modify the mime-types so all files are by default opened with viewme (it is likely to work better anyway).
If you are in X ViewME uses a graphical interface otherwize, it uses a text Interface.
Instalation.
This package contains both the source and the binary versions of ViewMe. You can simply copy the viewme to some directory in your path or
you can recompile the sources using FreePascal (www.freepascal.org).
To compile the source you will also need the PTK unit available from (http://rain.prohosting.com/~ajventer)
ViewMe has NO other library requirements except TCL/TK 8.0 or newer which should be installed. Note: If you don't run it under X you don't need TCL/TK as it will never be called.
How do I use it ?
ViewMe was designed to be as simple as possible to use. If your wish executable is in /usr/bin (where most distributions put it) you
can just fire it up in an Xterm by typing viewme.
When ViewMe is invoked without any arguments it automatically opens the configuration dialogues so that you can (re)configure it if you
want.
If your wish binary is NOT in /usr/bin/ then don't panic, simply switch to a console and type viewme there. The program will then
go into it's configuration in text mode, and you will have the chance to specify the true path to wish.
(Wish is the TK graphical interpreter used to draw the graphical interface for ViewMe)
Note: If you need to determine the actuall path to wish do this:
which wish
:-)
NOTE: In graphical mode ViewMe will not ask you for the path to wish since it obviously couldn't have been in graphical mode if it didn't have the right path allready.
There are three other important things to note when you are configuring ViewMe. Firstly it will ask you for the path to your java executable. The reason this is done here and not at runtime like for other files is because java virtual machines won't run if the file has it's extension included. Therefore a different algorythm is used to open java files and the commandline you enter here is considdered to be your virtual machine.
Next you will need to decide how ViewME should handle files without extensions. The default behaviour for wish is to try and run the file as a command. If you turn that off then wish will ask you at run time which viewer to use for the file, but you will not be able to save your entry for files without extensions.
The one exception to that is files with no extension but there names made up entirely out of capital letters. This readme is an example of such a file. Such files are almost always plain text the last bit of configuration to ViewMe gives you the option to treat files like that as if they had a .txt extension.
To actually use ViewMe simply add the filename or pathname you want to add as a commandline argument to it.
(This is what will happen in most progams if you specify it as a viewer anyway).
For example:
viewme somefile.txt
If ViewMe has never encountered such a file before it will give you the option to specify a viewer to use for it. In this case you can also save the viewer(default) that way the next time you try to open such a file it will happen cleanly and easilly.
Now try the following:
viewme http://www.freshmeat.net
ViewMe will ask you how to open an HTML file.
ViewME treats all URL's as if they we're html, that way we can leave it to the browser to figure out how to open URLs. Other
programs like mail and ftp clients can't handle URL's for their protocoll's anyway.
What if I want to change the viewer for some kind of file ?
I have not yet added the functionality to edit viewers inside the program, but you can still do it by editing the config file: your_home_directory/.vieme/viewers.conf
The file is in plain text.
Blank lines and lines that have # as the FIRST character are ignored by the program so you can add comments.
You can also add new viewers this way - usefull if you want to set up most of you file-types at once.
The only catch is that the very last line of the config file must end on a newline character.
In other words, if you modify the last line, hit enter at the end.
Inside the file you will see entries such as this txt=xterm -e vim
The extention is on the left hand side of the equals sign, the viewer on the right. Notice that the extension must be written without the dot (.) in front.
That's all there is to using ViewMe, simple, easy and powerfull.
Cool, when does the shareware run out though ?
This is not shareware. It's open-source. That means:
You get the source code.
The program costs you nothing, zilch, nada, gratis...need I continue.
You can give it to your friends.
You can wallpaper you house with printouts of the sources.
There is only two things you cannot do with ViewME, you cannot:
A> Claim that you wrote it.
B> Sell it without likewize including the sources. (I gave them to you, don't try to keep them from others)
See the file COPYING for the full and exact General Public License under which ViewMe falls.
I think I found a bug - what do I do ?
If you are a pascal programmer, try to fix it and mail me a patch. Either way, do let me know if you find bug's in ViewMe so I can at least look at it.
Ciao
A.J. Venter.