I'm using this now, but I'd like it better if it had these features:

• some way to open a folder from the command line ("open -a Xee ." doesn't work).
• some way to advance to the next image one-handed on a laptop keyboard, possibly with , and . (obvious joke goes here).

>>235

It's not a simple recompile, or I would have done it myself a long time ago. There are possible endianess issues in a lot of the image loading code, and I couldn't guarantee the Intel version would work right without doing some rather extensive testing and bugfixing.

is there a way for images to open actual size instead of fit to window? other than that i have no complaints.

running on a Macbook btw.

View -> Automatic Zoom

sweet.

this app is exactly what i have been looking for. i was actually planning to write one myself because i couldn't find one, but someone suggested this. i can say that it is exactly what i had in mind.

I really think FFArchive should be integrated into Xee, with recursion for archives within archives, ideally. I'll try to look into how to go about it.
I would like to request an Open Recent menu item. And some comments in the code.

>>241

Don't bother, I'm planning on doing that, but I won't be using FFArchive, I'll use XADMaster from The Unarchiver instead (http://wakaba.c3.cx/sup/kareha.pl/1125697859/).

this is really great!!!!!!!!!!!
but, How about nef files...?(RAW format for Nikon cameras)

>>243

There was some discussion about that in the support thread (http://wakaba.c3.cx/sup/kareha.pl/1132091963/). After some research, I've learned that there's some sort of bug in OS X that breaks NEF loading in most programs even though it should be supported. I'm working on working around this, but I can't say exactly when I'll have it fixed.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

I have spent hours looking for a app like xsee.

It is beyond belief that not one but you guys have written an image app for os x, that actually works.
I'm on my knees thanking you.

A word of advice; make an interface like the internal viewer, and start making some money on this app, it's worth it.

cheers

Xee is listed on the new community-based software tracking site, http://osx.iusethis.com/app/xee

Dan, you should log on to claim the Xee entry as your own and submit a proper icon for it.

Denis: interface like the internal viewer? Do you mean "Preview.app?" If so, that would defaul the whole point of Xee. It's the best viewer with the best interface available for Mac OS. Changing the interface would only lessen its sgrengths. Preview's interface is sub-par. BTW, I had spent years looking for Xee on the Mac.

Well, I found a bit of spare time to work on Xee again.

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/Xee2.0_alpha_1.zip

New in this version:

• Universal binary - this is completely untested!
• Internal rewrites to make it easier to get the endianness right, and to better support ImageIO.framwork - this has most likely introduced bugs!
• Now uses ImageIO.framework as a fallback loader instead of NSImage.
• Due to the above, NEF files should now load correctly.
• Now uses a custom JPEG loader - doesn't support YUV mode yet.
• Supports 32-bit integer and floating point data (HDR files like Radiance)
• Some things are still broken due to the rewrites, most notably viewing images in the clipboard, and saving.

I predict that the development cycle for 2.0 will be quite long. I'll try and get the things that are broken fixed along the way, but I don't think I'll release an intermediate 1.3 version with just the endianness fixes, unless there is a really big demand for a stable universal version quickly. The 2.0 alpha versions should be stable enough for normal use soon.

And remember, you can report bugs and suggest features at http://code.google.com/p/xee/, too!

If anyone is interested in different icon for Xee, I did an icon replacement including status bar icons.

http://www.artofadambetts.com/weblog/?p=119

Have fun :)

>>251

I like the program icon, but I miss the colour-coding of the format icons (this is something I liked with ACDSee back on Windows, and that I wanted to preserve in Xee).

Xee has a mechanism to easily replace its icons - you can pack them in a bundle named .xeeicons, like so: http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/Default.xeeicons.zip. However, that doesn't include the status icons. I could pretty easily add support for that too, though. I'll try to get that done for 2.0.

Here's something fun and experimental: Antialiasing, implemented entirely in OpenGL! It's fast, although at high levels it can mess with the colours a little (this may be dependent on the graphics card). Either way, it looks a lot better than what's been there before. Enjoy!

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/mac/Xee2.0_alpha_2.zip

Also: You can tweak it a bit in the View -> Antialias Quality menu. And it doesn't work on really old cards like the Rage 128.

alpha 2 does "crash" my intel 10.4.7,
i can move the mouse but it shows the rainbow-ball
and whatever key i hit (incl. ctrl-alt-esc)
or pixel i click, nothing happens. but the computer
still continues to run (e.g. thunderbird checks mails).
where can i get the sourcecode for alpha 2, so to
try to debug? (nothing at code.google.com :( )

sorry, forgot to mention, that this happens only
with certain jpgs (but a lot of them).
i was able to see two photoshop files.

The new JPEG loader is still half-done. I haven't found any problems like that with it, but it certainly is possible that it has some horribl bugs. Upload one of the JPEG that it crashes on, and I can do some more testing.

Also, there's no source at Google Code becuase I haven't found the energy to figure out how to get Xcode and Google Code to cooperate. If someone can tell me how exactly to do this, I'll get it there.

>>252

If you're interested, I did a color-coding version for Document icons. You can download it here:

http://homepage.mac.com/adambetts/icons/XeeDocumentFiles.zip

>>259

Nice, but I think you need 48x48 versions. They're pretty much unreadable with the crappy resizing algorithm the Finder uses as it is now, and 48x48 is pretty much the default.

actually i believe it crashes with all jpegs.. :)
but one example is here.
the window pops up, but stays black,
status line says "no file loaded",
mouse and keyboard completely shut off,
but osx itself did not crash.
only reseting helps.

>>261

That's very strange, it loads with no problem at all here. Could you test some GIFs and PNGs and such to see if there's any other format that can cause the same crash? When it crashes, can you switch away to another app with command+tab?

And finally, I forget, is there some way to force an app to load using Rosetta on intel macs? If there is, could you try that and see if it works then?

Wait, one more idea: Maybe it's not JPEGs, but the antialiasing code? It only gets used if the image is scaled down. Try using View -> Antialiasing Quality to turn it off and see if that changes anything.

yes, that did it!
(though its strange, that one cannot turn off
antialias when viewing no picture, had to first
load an png).
there is a way to force an application to use
rosetta, just by turning rosetta on (if the
app is universal) in the "get info" window.
i'll now try xee in rosetta and antialias ON.
if it crash, this is my last message for today :)

thanks!

well, it really "crashed" even with rosetta!..
and cmd+tab doesnt work neither.

So then it's the OpenGL antialiaser that's broken. Sigh, it'll be a pain trying to debug it without the hardware to test it on...

sorry for finding a bug :p :p
if there is anything i can do, just write.
i'll try to check this forum regularly.

great app!
but why is no german localisation available? i could do the translation if you want. ichat: fajaekel

Once 2.0 is nearing completion, I'll probably request some translations. I'll try to keep you in mind for then.

I can make the spanish location

Ibane just beat me to offering help with Spanish localization. :)

I've been hunting for a real ACDSee replacement for years now, and I only found Xee today sigh. Thanks for this wonderfully useful application.

There is any way to change the scroll wheel behaviour? I have a mighty mouse and i like to use the mini ball to pan the image when zoomed. Using it for changing images it's a bit hard and I don't use it at all..

Thanks

wanted to try a universal version for my macbook and downloaded Xee2.0_alpha_2.zip
sadly, it crashes my macbook everytime :((

>>272

Read the earlier posts in the thread - the antialiaser breaks on Intel Macs for some reason. You have to turn it off either by opening a small image and using the menus.

hey i love this app been looking for something to replace preview for about two years this is amazing and fast even with large images.. i have been using iview media pro but i think this makes muchmore sense to me amazing software and thanks for making it freeware...
i have a couple of suggestions for usability
mabey make a drawer function like preview on the side or the bottom so you can click between images..

and mabey a control bar in full screen that you can hide

if ound a contextual image viewer thats pretty good but not as good as xee its called picturepoppro its worth alook for ideas

thanks again im telling everyone about this app..
also i saw someone mention side track for the scroll pad functionality I use iscroll wich is freeware and amazing as well

thanks again awesome

crispin

>>275

I'm not really very interested in having a thumbnail view, because the finder already shows thumbnails, and it'd just waste processing power for images that don't have built-in thumbnails.

A control bar in fullscreen would be nice, but I have a lot of other stuff I need done before that.

>>199

Automatic rotation actually modifies the file? That's really a bad idea. I don't expect a viewer to alter my files.

Hello again,
Is there a way to have xee open only the files i put on it's icon instead of making a list of files that there are in the same folder of the file i put on it?

I mean, the preview behaviour instead of the "Windows image viewer" behaviour..

Thanks

>>277

That's what lossless JPEG rotation does, in most image viewers that can do it.

>>278

No. I find the Preview behaviour pretty useless, so it's never interested me.

Maybe an option to get the dropped images or the image in the same folder? No?

>>259
Can you improve "Xee Document Files" icons? At 44px size I can hardly recognize BMP from EC and EXR from DR...
Maybe make file type letters bigger, or embed specific 48px, 32px and 16px size icons? I think each icon could have several sizes embedded.
Guntis

Quitting from fullscreen causes a crash in the latest beta.

>>282

Thanks, I think I was vaguely aware of that but had forgotten.

If you (and anyone else) want to be helpful, make a bug report at http://code.google.com/p/xee/issues/list, and I will be less likely to forget again.

>>259
Looks like this dude did some more artwork tweaks of Xee. http://www.artofadambetts.com/weblog/?p=119

Mention of this made it into a TUAW article (how I found out about it). http://www.tuaw.com/2006/08/22/betts-mods-your-mac/

>>285

Uh... Look a little bit closer.

I'm sorry, look a little bit closer at what?

The "dude" you're talking about is the same who posted the icons here :)

I'm aware of that. Should I have written "Looks like you did some more artwork?" That would have been confusing.

Anyway, uh, on topic… Is Google Code's hosting thinger any good?

It can't be any worse than free hosting on sourceforge.

It had a shaky start but it's apparently working better now. Their bug tracker is actually kind of usable, as opposed to every other bug tracker in existence. The design of it is pleasantly minimalist. The project's headed by the usual kind of thin-skinned and arrogant open-source developers.

Short, declarative sentences.

Really good software ! I was looking for that for a very long long time ! it was the last thing my PC friends was laughing at me...
A few improvment idea :

• a preference option to go directly to full screen mode on opening
• arrows to navigate
• double-clic on the image to swich full screen/window
• selection-clic to zoom

Anyway, thanks a lot, it's really a big step forward for mac users :+)

Problems displaying huge tiff files. I have 2 screenshots to see the differences, where can i send them?

>>294 this board has an upload feature, just below the comment box.

this is the first picture is viewed with Mac os internal Preview. It looks good, attached.

this is the same picture, is viewed with Xee, there is major differences from Preview. look for yourself. print screen with details about the picture included.

>>297

How does it look if you open it with Quicktime.app?

With Quicktime the same file looks the same as Xee. Meening bad. Here is the screen shot.

>>299

Well, that explains the problem - Xee first tries to load images it can't load itself with Quicktime, and apparently Quicktime gets it wrong.

Ideally, you'd report this to Apple and they would fix it. Realistically, I'm not sure they would do much about it for a long time.

Alternatively, I'd have to force Xee to load TIFFs with NSImage or ImageIO.framework, but I am not sure how well that handles other features like multi-layer TIFF. So basically, it's a tricky problem to solve.

Even more ideally, I would write my own TIFF loader that would always do the right thing, but practically, I don't have the time to do this, since TIFF is a horribly complex format. Although maybe LibTIFF could do it...

So sorry, I don't have a simple solution. I'll think about it. In the meanwhile, you could try reporting the bug in Quicktime to Apple, and see if they bother doing anything about it.

Thank you for your answers. I will try to get to Apple with Quicktime problem but also i hope to see Xee doing the right job.

Thanks again.

Thank you for this great application, I remapped the keys to my likings and always use it to browse through photos just downloaded from my camera. I like the possibility to set zoom to 1:1 pixel with a keypress, and then scroll around with the mouse. And it's fast!

I'd like to try 2.0 alpha, but I have a question: will it overwrite my current Xee preferences and/or make them unusable with 1.x versions? In other words, can I have both versions installed at the same time without them interferring with each other?

I'd also like to be able to see current image's exif data (e.g. in a popup window when in full screen) by pressing a key... would it be hard to add such a feature?

Thanks.

>>302

You can use them both side by side - 2.0 adds some new preferences, but doesn't break the old ones. And I am actually working on EXIF right now.

Small interface bug report:
Tested with version 2.0 alpha 2 on PPC
On the Copy/Move drawer, when dragging an item off the list and pressing escape while still dragging, the item is removed from the list. The expected behavior would be for that element to snap back in place (it's that way everywhere else and I think it's mentioned in the HIG).

Anyway, I really like the direction Xee is taking. With all those feature requests, it's nice to see that you don't intend to go all ACDSee on it in the next versions.

I asked people in Apple forum about those TIFF files. Quicktime can't display CYMK images, only RGB ones. This is it: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=623165&tstart=15

Vow,

implement simple thumbnail mode and simple folder bar and you created the best image browser ever!

Thumbs up!

Ta.

>>304

I'll try to get that fixed.

>>306

Since the Finder already has a thumbnail mode, I don't see why an image viewer would also need it.

I checked the new beta on my intel-macbook
Looks good..., but it crashes when I try to rotate a picture (rainbow-ball and I need to restart)

PS: I don't want/need a thumbnail mode - there are enough picture viewers with this feature and that's why I like Xee ;)

>>308

Probably the same problem as everyone else, turn off antialiasing in View -> Antialiasing.

Next version will have it off by default unless I can find an intel mac to debug it on. I really don't think it should even be possible to cause a bug like that, though, so I'm going to put some blame for that on Apple and buggy drivers.

Testing v2 beta on OS 10.4.7 PPC (iBook G4 1GHz), seems ok but it looks slower than 1.x when browsing pictures: I usually drag a photo folder on the application icon and then browse through photos one at a time, and with v2 very often I see a black area at the bottom of the screen immediately after advancing to the next photo, which is then filled up with the corresponding photo part; looks as if the photo still has to be completely drawn (or loaded?) when I'm already viewing it.
This didn't happen with v1.x. I tried deactivating antialiasing but it made no difference.

>>310

With 1.x, you'd just have seen a completely black screen for about the same amount of time. I'm trying to get progressive loading working properly so you can see the picture as it loads.

>>311

Well yes with 1.2.1 sometimes I see a black screen for a brief moment, but I can assure you that, globally, browsing the same folder with 1.2.1 is clearly much faster than it is with 2.0 alpha 2 (without antialiasing).
Maybe the 2.0 code is not optimized yet?

Ah, I turned off antialiasing and now it works (rotating images)!
Thank you very much ;)))

>>312

Some quick testing on just the JPEG loading code I did earlier showed that it is slightly faster than that in 1.2. However, I think that was testing code from later than alpha 2. Whenever I finally finish the next version, try again and see how it seems.

The alpha 2 causes my whole system to freeze and I need to reboot.
hope you get a intelmac to develop on soon.

great little tool. would love to have a simple slideshow-function like irfanview. zooming pictures looks quite bad compared to other tools. any way to improve that by some s-spline code or something like that?

>>315

Read the earlier posts about how to work around that.

>>316

No, it's not that easy, since the drawing is done with OpenGL. The 2.0 alpha has some trickery to produce prettier zoomed out pictures, though.

If you're referring to the zoomed in pictures, those are intentionally left pixelized, because I, at least, want to actually see the pixels in a picture when I zoom it.

How do we keep the "auto rotate" setting? There is no point in having to do that for every picture. It should remain the setting!

Just thought I'd upload a universal version of Xee 1.2.1. I couldn't find one and I can't stand the Rosetta load time. YUV decoding doesn't seem to work so go into prefs > advanced and set it to use RGB.

Here's a link:

http://rapidshare.de/files/35040937/Xee.app.zip.html

Can't wait for the anti-aliasing build, though I checked out preview and it doesn't seem to anti-alias either. It only seems to do that for PDF documents. Xee alpha 2 crashed my Intel Mac too as soon as it launched. You'd have thought there would be some way that the system would auto-recover from a graphics driver crash.

Sorry about using Rapidshare. For those of you who don't know how to use it, you have to click the button that says free and then wait for the timer to count down and then input a code. It should download the zipped program that is about 1MB in size.

--please forgive my poor english--
hi, i really like your app, it's great.
i have some suggestions. i noticed xee when i was searching an qiv alternative for the mac. so i would be really happy with some shell support like qiv. for example something like xee find . -name "*.jpg" to function would be great. (i found an workaround with open but it doesn't open all the pics given on the command line - just one and you can then browse the folder). another interesting feature would be an open dialog like the "go to folder" (don't know exactly the english local.) in the finder with path completion. i could think of much more... ;-)
thanks for the app! keep on coding.

>>319

There's a lot more than YUV that doesn't work. I'm pretty sure 32-bit PNGs won't work right either, and probably a bunch of other stuff.

To make alpha 2 work, run this in Terminal:
defaults write cx.c3.xee antialiasQuality 0

>>321

Xee won't open several windows for files in the same directory by default. You can change this in the preferences if you prefer it to always open new windows.

I just tested some 32-bit PNGs and they work ok. So far, I haven't found any problems compared to the PPC versionapart from YUV but I'll post if I find anything. I'd like to use alpha 2 but I don't want to rely on a preference to prevent my system crashing.

On the subject of the anti-aliasing, are you using the same techinques that games designers use for FSAA? Surely there must be a way to prevent it from crashing the system in order to debug it.

I also found this about OpenGL antialiasing:

http://homepage.mac.com/arekkusu/bugs/invariance/FSAA.html
http://homepage.mac.com/arekkusu/bugs/invariance/TexAA.html

Texture AA would work since you are dealing with quads.

Here's some Apple documentation on FSAA. You probably know about this stuff already but I thought I'd post it just in case:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/GraphicsImaging/Conceptual/OpenGL-MacProgGuide/opengl_fsaa/chapter_11_section_1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001987-CH405-SW7

No, FSAA is pretty weak for antialiasing, and it's not supported on older cards anyway. I use other trickery, but there isn't really anything in there that should be able to crash the system, except maybe that I use all texture units. Of course, nothing should be able to crash the system in the first place, so something is definitely strange.

you misunderstood me, sorry.
the behaviour not to open many windows is good. what i wanted was something like a playlist - not just looping through the directory. maybe giving xee a file as playlist, or - as i meant - to give xee in the Terminal some files as argument: xee /dir1/file1.jpg /dir2/file2.jpg /dir2/file3.jpg /dir3/file4.jpg ...

Hi, I have a need for an image viewer that does something a little different from what Xee does -- unless I'm overlooking something. I sometimes use JSTOR, which is a service that serves scanned pages of old journals in GIF or JPEG format. I can save pages into a folder and then use a viewer to read them offline. Problem is, Xee opens images sized to fit the screen. So I have to cmd-0 to make the page legible, then arrow up to top of screen and start reading. At end of page I go to the next page... and Xee sizes it to the screen again, so I have to cmd-0 and arrow up to the top again, for every page. What I'd like is really two things: (1) once I've established a magnification, use it for all subsequent images unless I change it, and (2) concomitant with that, when I go to the next page, I want to be looking at the TOP of the next page (and for previous page, the BOTTOM of the page). I can understand why one might not want that mode of operation when looking at a folder full of pictures, but for this particular case of looking at scanned articles, Xee's behavior is annoying. So I guess I either need an "article mode" in Xee, or a different viewer. Suggestions?

Hi, I have a need for an image viewer that does something a little different from what Xee does -- unless I'm overlooking something. I sometimes use JSTOR, which is a service that serves scanned pages of old journals in GIF or JPEG format. I can save pages into a folder and then use a viewer to read them offline. Problem is, Xee opens images sized to fit the screen. So I have to cmd-0 to make the page legible, then arrow up to top of screen and start reading. At end of page I go to the next page... and Xee sizes it to the screen again, so I have to cmd-0 and arrow up to the top again, for every page. What I'd like is really two things: (1) once I've established a magnification, use it for all subsequent images unless I change it, and (2) concomitant with that, when I go to the next page, I want to be looking at the TOP of the next page (and for previous page, the BOTTOM of the page). I can understand why one might not want that mode of operation when looking at a folder full of pictures, but for this particular case of looking at scanned articles, Xee's behavior is annoying. So I guess I either need an "article mode" in Xee, or a different viewer. Suggestions?

View -> Automatic Zoom.

Sorry about the duplicate post; the board was acting weird yesterday. Maybe it always acts weird. We'll see.

I hadn't noticed the Automatic Zoom menu option (I'd been looking in Preferences). With that turned off, it does something like what I want. Not quite. It opens each new image at unit magnification, centered on the top leftmost part of the image. What I would like is for the new image to open at the same magnification as was used for the previous image. (I realized I talked about using cmd-0 on each page, but that was just an example; for some texts that is not be the ideal magnification.) And, ideally but not critically, when going back a page, it would centered on the bottom rightmost part of the image.

ALSO -- is there a way to turn off the "feature" where scrolling selects later/earlier images? I hate that. On my MacBook I'm so used to the idea that 2-finger dragging on the trackpad scrolls window content downward that I find myself doing it without thinking in Xee, instead of using the arrow keys... and I find myself looking at some later image in the folder rather than a lower part of the same image.

>>283
I saw that you've been unable to reproduce my crash when quitting from fullscreen in 2.0 alpha 2. It's consistent for me, so here's a screen of the crash report. It looks like a NULL dereference.
I'd respond on the Google page, but I don't have an account.

>>330

I think it might have been fixed by some changes I made in the current development version. When I finally get alpha 3 ready, try reporting back if the crash is still there or not.

(PS: _deallocHardCore: is the best method name ever.)

Hi, I love XEE, but I have an intel iMac (Core 2 Duo) I compiled a universal binary with XCode, but .jpg files are wierd looking.

(look @ attachment)

I opened a .png file, and it worked fine.

Thanks for you help.

Here's what it's supposed to look like.

>>332

Yes, that is why 1.2 is not Universal. You'll have to wait for 2.0, which will still take some time. There is an alpha version available, but you'll have to disable antialiasing or it will crash your machine. Check older posts in this thread.

Xee is simple and efficient, Yeah! :-)

just one request , view an edit keywords (i.e. spotlight search)

Can you do that?

hew i tried the alpha.

on a ppc some really big jpgs only load half way.

and i could reallllllly use hotkeys to move to specific folders (as in, you assign a hotkey to a folder, and then press that hotkey to move an image there)

and maybe some kind of movie file handling (acknowledgement and handling of movies, not viewing them) so i can move them into folders like i would a picture)