MultiView News

Current Version Release 1.2
November 1, 2001

• November 1, 2001. Printing from MultiView added. Updated toolbar icons to the Java Look N' Feel. Printing uses the Java2 java.print.Printable interface so this version requires jdk1.2 or newer. (rel-1.2)
• September 20, 1999. Updated to work with jdk1.3beta and newer. Moved system properties to Help menu.
• June 14, 1999. Fixed Bounding Box error on rotated postscript output (rel-1.0Beta2)
• May 17, 1999. Options implemented (rel-1.0beta1)
  • Coalesce either automatic or optional
  • Default scaling set by options
  • PS (center, scale, orientation) set by options
  • Default output type set by options
  • Grid frame tiling added.
• April 23, 1999. PS first cut encoding (ea-rel-2.1)
  • Coalescing of polygons done automatically.
  • Tile windows in a grid.
  • Auto rotate, auto scale for PS files (to best fit on page)
• April 21, 1999. Added the coalescing and simplifying of polygons! (ea-rel-2.0)
• April 20, 1999. Added cascade and tiling of frames. (ea-rel-1.3)
• April 20, 1999. New EPS encoder available (first cut, ea-rel-1.2)
• April 19, 1999. Progress indicators added for reading, rendering, and writing
• April 16, 1999. Additional Encoders available (ea-rel-1.1)
  • GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
  • PPM (Portable Pixmap)
• April 15, 1999. Early Access Release 1 (ea-rel-1.0)
  • WMF (Windows Metafile Format)
  • PNG (Portable Network Graphics)

Features

• Program options automatically read/save from/to $HOME/.multiview.properties file.
• PS options for scaling, rotating, and centering available.
• Using the new coalesce tool EPS files are as much as 11% the size of those produced by m2ps! The amount of size reduction strongly depends on the file.
• EPS files are as much as 50% smaller than those produced by m2ps
• WMF files are smaller than pplus meta files and can be read by Word, WordPerfect, FrameMaker, PowerPoint, ...
• WMF files can be created on UNIX, then used on PCs
• InstallAnywhere scripts for UNIX, Win32, and MacOS. Found at ftp://www.epic.noaa.gov/java/MultiView

ToDo List

• Add encapsulated postscript output
• Add GIF format output
• Add threading of reading/writing
• Coalesce Area Fill
  • Design method
  • Implement scheme
• SaveAs... enable after Frame selected
• Help. Create help page
• Zoom. Feed back zoom selection with frame
• Custom zoom. Implement both % and absolute size
• Support PS as well as EPS
  • Manual overrides needed
  • rotate (landscape & portrait) (auto rotate)
  • scale (auto scale)
  • position on page (auto center)
• Test WMF creation and reading on Macs
• Disable tools if no frame is selected.
• Command line processing for file conversion (no windows created)
  • MultiView -mode ps -scale=0.5 ppl.meta001 ppl.meta002 > out.ps
  • MultiView -mode wmf -out file.wmf ppl.meta001
• Create options dialog
  • General
    • Auto-coalesce
    • Default zoom
    • Default saveas format
  • Postscript (.ps)
    • orientation (landscape, portrait, auto)
    • scale (to fit, to fill, user)
    • center

MultiView Home Page: http://www.epic.noaa.gov/java/MultiView
EPIC Group Java Page: http://www.epic.noaa.gov/java
EPIC Home Page: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/epic/home.html

last modified: March 17, 2000