RAZ(1)

NAME
xraz - X interface to raz, a disk based raster viewer

SYNOPSIS
xraz [ options ] [ script ]

DESCRIPTION
Xraz feeds commands to raz, giving the user a nice push button interface. Without xraz the way to use raz is to feed it ascii commands directly, or from a file.

Xraz can work hand in hand with icol, the color table editor. Changes in icol are automatically passed on to xraz and so on to raz.

All of the interface elements in xraz send the expected command to raz, so to understand the effects of xraz commands read the raz man page.

If the command line script is -, xraz will read raz commands from standard input.

USING XRAZ
Run xraz, perhaps with a script from a previous session on the command line. Xraz starts up raz and sends it the script if there is one. Use the dialogs in the Image menu to set the image format and raw disk destination if playing from raw disk. Use the "Image Files" command and edit the file filter to specify a list of files.

Press either the large play button or the smaller frame increment button to trigger raz into loading the movie. The xraz interface will be frozen until raz finishes loading and responds to xraz. Once the movie has been loaded to disk or memory the xraz interface will respond to commands again.

Any change to file format or file name list will trigger a load at the next "play" or "goto" request. If the movie is already loaded to raw disk, use the "Source from Raw Disk" toggle to skip the load step.

To save your settings for next time, use the "Save Script" command. For full control of raz, use the "Script" dialog to send commands directly. This would be a good way to send a series of "play", "set speed", "set direction" and "sleep" commands for a movie sequence.

OPTIONS
Xraz understands all of the standard X toolkit options. In addition:

-t timeout
    Set the time between frame updates while playing to timeout, in milliseconds. When the frame rate timer is on, the statistics are updated at this rate. The default is 2000 milliseconds, or two seconds between updates.

-d debug
    Set the debug level, Currently, 1 will print out the communication between xraz and raz.

-h | -help
    Print a brief help message.

RESOURCES

timeout (class Timeout)
    Set the update timeout in milliseconds.

bugAddress (class BugAddress)
    The mail address to send comments to.

MENUS

Control
    The "Save Script" command interrogates raz and save its state in the selected file. The "Open Script" command reads commands from a file and sends them to raz. "Script" send text directly to raz. "Start Icol" simply starts an icol color editor. "Restart Raz" kills and restart the raz process. You will need to select a "play" or "goto" command to trigger a load and the image window.

Image
    The "Files", "Format" and "Raw Disk" dialogs each control the respective settings in raz. Set "Play from Memory" to play images out of memory instead of disk. Set "Source from Raw Disk" if the images have already been loaded to raw disk. In this case, be sure to specify the number of frames on disk in the Raw Disk dialog.

Mode
    The "Zoom Window", "Double Buffered" and "Reverse At End" toggles control the respective setting in raz. Setting the frame rate timer issues a "mark" command to raz whenever the frame scale is updated, by default every two seconds. The statistics are shown on the status line.

BUTTONS AND SCALES
The large arrow buttons issue "play" commands to raz in either the forward or reverse directions. The smaller buttons issue "goto" commands to the next frame. The stop button sends "stop".

Moving the frame scale issues "goto" commands. The speed, size, border and zoom scales set the "set speed", "set replication", "set border" and "set zoom" settings in raz.

CAVEATS
Xraz works in lock step with raz, waiting for an acknowledgment for each command before continuing. This can be a problem when loading, which can take a long time. While loading files to raw disk or memory, xraz will be unresponsive while it waits for raz to signal that the load is complete. During this time xraz will not accept commands.

Xraz can also lock up if raz freezes up for any reason.

There seems to be a problem on VGX machines when raz is flipped from color map mode to full color mode. Some of the more saturated pixels in full color images are incorrectly painted. Use the "Restart Raz" command to correct this.

Due to Motif's file selection boxes, xraz can take a long time to start up in directories with thousands of files in them. A workaround is to first create a script using cmdraz, then start xraz in another directory.

AUTHOR
Ken Chin-Purcell, AHPCRC
Mail to gvlware@ahpcrc.umn.edu.