[quote][quote]
There is also the long-standing issue of images smaller than full screen not being automatically enlarged to fill the screen, despite settings that would seem to indicate that's what should happen.[/quote]
There is no setting in Opus which zooms smaller images up to the screen size. The option is "fit-to-page" and will only reduce larger images if they don't fit on the screen. If they do fit on the screen already then their size isn't changed.
I don't want to argue semantics about whether the name of the mode indicates it will do one thing or another but it isn't a bug, it's by design.
If you want a mode which also magnifies small images to fill the screen then tell GPSoftware.[/quote]
Perhaps a short discussion of semantics would be of use. This feature would seem to be more accurately described as "shrink-to-page". I know I'm not the only one who assumed "fit-to-page" would enlarge as well as reduce, so if the feature is going to work in one direction only, a more accurate name might avoid confusion in the future.
As to the feature itself, I guess I just don't understand the resistance. Opus already has the ability to zoom to a variety of sizes. Calculating the zoom factor should be simple. Why not just put the two things together and make the feature work the way people think it should work? Even if zooms to arbitrary values aren't possible, in many cases rounding the zoom factor down to the nearest 25% (or whatever) would still result in a useful feature. If true fit-to-page would require a zoom of 167%, round it down to 150% if needed. That's way better than not zooming at all.
I have requested the feature from GPSoftware and was told, "Uh, no." I let it drop at that time, but have since seen at least a couple other people request the same feature. Since the topic of the viewer had come up in a different thread, it seemed a reasonable time to bring up the fit-to-page feature again. I'm sure the answer will continue to be, "Uh, no.", but all I can do is make someone aware that there are some of us out here who think it is a worthwhile feature.
[quote="Patch"]
Perhaps a short discussion of semantics would be of use. This feature would seem to be more accurately described as "shrink-to-page". I know I'm not the only one who assumed "fit-to-page" would enlarge as well as reduce, so if the feature is going to work in one direction only, a more accurate name might avoid confusion in the future.[/quote]
It may not be perfect, but I have seen the phrase "scale to window".
I can't see how "shrink-to-page" would apply to stuff you want blown up.
The original "fit-to-page" isn't that ambiguous, but as with everything else it could help to use the terminology that is in widest use.
Another word widely used to describe fitting to a space is "zoom".
But changing anything could confuse long time users.
There's nothing about the phrase Fit-to-page that implies an image will be enlarged. If an image is smaller than the page then it already fits on the page. If an image is larger than the page then it needs to be shrunk to fit on the page.
My point was not to start an argument about the logical correctness of the phrase "fit-to-page". I am not the only one who expected this feature to enlarge images to the size of the screen. This tells me the name of the feature is at least somewhat ambiguous.
For whatever reason there seems to be a great deal of resistance to the idea of automatically zooming images to fill the screen. I don't understand it, but I accept that it exists. I'm just suggesting that if the feature is not going to be changed, it wouldn't be a bad idea to change the name to eliminate any potential confusion about what it's supposed to do. If you don't want to do that, fine. I gain nothing either way. I'm done wasting my time discussing this.
I can understand why you might want this, but I can also understand why others don't.
If DOpus did offer you the feature you want, then the "automatically" bit has to be configurable.
I have a neat clipboard utility, Clipmate, which, among many other features, can capture and preview images, screen grabs for example. It has three viewer settings: scale, scroll and stretch. Use the wrong one and it looks horrid.
Stretch takes an image, leaves one dimension alone and adjusts the other one to fill the preview area. So a square image suddenly becomes a distorted oblong.
You may just want the image to scale, but someone out there might like it to stretch. There's no accounting for taste. So the user needs to be able to control what happens.
After all my almost certainly very limited understanding is that user control is the underlying philosophy of DOpus.
This thread - and the one that spawned it are mildly entertaining... but I just don't see much point in lengthy discussion on the "semantics".
Bottom line, who gives a fig about whether or not the current 'name' of the option is less function-appropriate than some other would-be names. Is it the name of the function or the functionality that is more important? I've certainly seen other software that uses what I agree is a generic name like "fit to page" that swings both ways and both enlarges and shrinks in order to 'fill' the page... and so for the purpose of distinguishing the functionality and not to debate semantics and naming convention preferences, I would indeed like to see the current feature broken into Enlarge to fit page and Shrink to fit page options.
HOWEVER... a universal 'Enlarge' option would be a bit of a pain in the ass. It would only useful to me without also sometimes being annoying if we could control the scale at which image enlargement took place... say a user defined threshold like anything needing more than 100% up-scaling would be left alone. Otherwise I might see ridiculously enlarged 'icons' or something when all I want is for any 800x600 images I'm scrollign through to be scaled up to my 1024x768+ display or something...
Makes sense to me, Steje. I've been thinking about the same thing for a while, in fact. I'd like for Opus to enlarge photos to fill the screen but not icons and other small images.
I was thinking that maybe a size cut-off would make sense. e.g. Nothing under 256x256 would be enlarged as it's likely not supposed to fill the screen. I'm sure there will be cases where that's too high or too low, though.
I would suggest a maximum magnification factor rather than excluding images of specific sizes. For instance, don't automatically enlarge an image to more than 300%. Any image, regardless of its nature, is going to start looking pretty bad beyond that point. The maximum could, of course, be user configurable.
[quote="steje"]Otherwise I might see ridiculously enlarged 'icons' or something when all I want is for any 800x600 images I'm scrollign through to be scaled up to my 1024x768+ display or something...
Make sense to anybody else?[/quote]
That is exactly the problem that I see with Clipmate. Tiny icons blown up to fill a viewer. Nuts.
A choice to zoom to whatever I want makes sense. A blanket approach does not.
With very small images, though, I wouldn't want any scaling at all. e.g. If I'm viewing a 16x16 icon I would want it shown at 100%, not zoomed to the 300% maximum, as I'm probably looking at it to see how it'll look when used as a 16x16 icon.
The rule could be: "If a 300% zoom is still smaller than the screen then don't zoom at all." I don't know if that (or anything!) would work for all people and situations but it might work for me. (I'd have to try it for a while to see.)
Ok, not really interested in the semantic part of the argument but I would really love an option like in ACDSee (Fit to page has two options : reduce only and reduce or enlarge).
I downloaded the latest trial of ACDSee but I really prefer Opus (I'm not interested in the cataloging part) but my monitor has a big resolution (2560x1600) so being able to enlarge the "small images" (1280x1024 for example) would be a big plus
I'm sure it's probably not very difficult to implement, so, please, maybe in Directory Opus 10
