Digital image viewer

Some time ago I was using gThumb as an image viewer, mainly because this was the default application for the distro I was using. Since then, shifts in distros and GUI’s, have led to an image viewer that is just a little too basic for my taste. So, it’s time to find a new digital image management system, and XnView MP seems to fit the bill.

One good thing about this program is that the “MP” stands for multi-platform. So, there are versions of the software for both Linux and Windows.

Another plus is that the program is multi-featured and highly customizable. Thus, I can change the window layout (View – Layout – Layout 3) to give my preferred views of a tree directory, thumbnail images, and an image preview pane. Also, since I prefer a relatively clean display, I can cut down the number of parameters displayed for the thumbnails to just the filename (Tools – Settings – Browser – Thumbnails – Labels).

The basic file display process is to select a folder and browse through the thumbnails. Clicking once on a thumbnail causes that image to be displayed in a larger format in the preview window. Double clicking on a thumbnail displays the image to completely fill XnView’s window. Alternatively, right clicking on a thumbnail, or on a previewed image, provides further options including displaying the image in full-screen mode. (Hit Esc to exit full-screen mode and go back to the file browser view.)

Many people like to run their photos as a slideshow; however, this option is somewhat hard to find since there is no icon, nor any menu entry, in the main program window. However, if you click on a thumbnail to load the image into the display window, you will find that one of the icons in the menu (a yellow and orange “projection screen”) will run a “quick slideshow”. Alternatively, launch an image in full-screen mode. At the bottom of the screen there are forward and back arrows to manually scroll though the slides in the selected folder. There is also a central “Play” icon (a white triangle) that launches the quick slideshow. The delay for the slide transitions can be changed in Tools – Settings – View – Misc – Quick slideshow – Delay (in ms).

In addition to having many way to view the stored images, XnView also provides multiple tools to help you manage and modify the files. One such function, available on the “Tools” menu, is the ability to rename files using a batch-processing mode. This allows you to change the default file name (e.g. DSC_1187.JPG) to something more meaningful (e.g. Canada_2017_001.jpg) and, by using a template, have the name contain consecutive numbers that are automatically indexed (i.e. 001, 002, etc.) Similarly, there is a batch resizing option that can readily be used to reduce file size for transmitting multiple photographs by E-mail, or for posting appropriately-sized images to a web site so that the associated page will load quickly.

So, if you find these features attractive for a digital image management system, XnView may well be worth a look!

References:

Bringing image management under one’s thumb
https://linuxnorth.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/bringing-image-management-under-ones-thumb/

XnView MP
http://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/

XnViewMP for Linux (Graphic Viewer)
http://my30daysoflinux.blogspot.ca/2014/10/xnviewmp-for-linux-graphic-viewer.html

Word 2007 under Wine crashes when changing a font

In my previous post I noted that “… Word, Excel and PowerPoint… ran more-or-less flawlessly…” in Office 2007 installed under Wine. The more-or-less qualifier was because I still had an issue trying to change the default Calibri font to Times New Roman. In particular, this caused Word to crash with the error message: “Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close”.

Office 2007 and Wine Revisited

As noted in the previous two posts, installing and running Microsoft Office 2007 in Linux can be fraught with difficulties. While the earlier posts attempt to resolve some of the problems, it turns out that there is a better mousetrap – PlayOnLinux.

PowerPoint 2007 fails to launch in 64-bit Linux Mint 18.1

As noted in the previous post, after installing Microsoft Office 2007 on a machine running Wine under 64-bit Linux Mint, Word and Excel ran fine, but PowerPoint failed to launch. Two further tweaks are necessary to get PowerPoint 2007 to run.

Installing Microsoft Office 2007 in 64-bit Linux Mint 18.1

I found it simple to install Office 2007 in Linux Mint under Wine. However, when I ran Word, intending to open an existing file, I immediately received the error message “Word cannot open this document template (C:\users\…\1033\Building Blocks.dotx)”. Ignoring this error, and continuing to try to open my file resulted in things going from bad to worse, with multiple messages about unreadable content, file errors, and features needing repair. I found this odd because I had previously installed and used the same package under Linux on an older laptop computer. It turned out that it was the new computer that was the problem!

Android Programming

Have you ever wondered how all those Android apps are produced? Would you like to be able to create one of your very own? If so, you need Android Studio, an integrated development environment (IDE) for Android programming, from Google.

Big Brother and Window Control Placement

Several years ago I found out how to switch the window controls from the left side to the right side of an active window. Now, it appears that the developers of the Unity desktop Ubuntu Linux have eliminated this option.