image viewers: a different approach

[Wilfried Huss]

Am Wednesday, 26. October 2005 16:19 schrieb Benjamin Meyer:
> On Wednesday 26 October 2005 8:05 am, Michael Olbrich wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 09:43:12AM -0400, Benjamin Meyer wrote:
> > > What ever happened to the all in one basic viewer that can view images,
> > > pdf's, etc?
> >
> > I have to agree with the maintainer from kviewshell. Viewing images and
> > viewing (multipage) documents are completely different concepts that
> > don't go well together. Imho that is true for both implementations
> > details and interface. That said, similar actions should of course have
> > the same icons and shortcuts. That should apply all viewers.
> >
> > michael
> 
> Sorry, but from the users perspective I disagree.  I am viewing a file. 

No I'm clicking an an icon in konqueror, or on a attachment in KMail and a
window opens and displays the content. Why should a user care if it is
the same application for different types of files, or not? Mimetypes were
invented to solve exactly this very problem, and they solve it well.

> I have been using OS X's Preview for a few years and find it simple and works 
> great.  Gnome also now has a similar application called Evince.
> 
> http://www.gnome.org/projects/evince/

I've never used Preview but the Evince that I have installed can only open
PDF, PostScript, DVI and Fax/G3, that's all.  No png, jpeg, ...

It has probably exactly the same goals as KViewShell. KViewShell in KDE 3.5
can open DVI, DjVu and Fax/G3. PDF support will follow soon (it's already on
my harddrive).

> Like already stated as the specs for this "app" it is for basic viewing: 
> zooming, seeing the file info etc.  These are the same user requirements for 
> pdfs, tiff etc.

But still pdfs need a very different GUI then images.

Greetings,
Wilfried Huss