VDR Plugin 'osdimage' README
----------------------------

This is a "plugin" for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR).

Written by:                  Andreas Brugger <brougs78@gmx.net>

Project's homepage:          http://home.pages.at/brougs78

Latest version available at: http://home.pages.at/brougs78

See the file COPYING for license information.

Short Description:           Views Pictures on the OSD


================================================================================


Ok, this is my first attempt of writing a plugin for the VDR (the software we
all love so much ... thank you Klaus). Actually it is also my first C++-program
so please keep that in mind, if you're planning to tear of my head for the bad
coding-style. ;-)

So what's it all about? There are several of people out there, who have an OSD,
which is capable of 256-color at fullscreen. So I thought it would be a nice
idea to use that for viewing pictures. After some promissing tests I tried to
put it all together and write a plugin ... and there it is.
I also thought that propably pictures in 16 colors wouldn't look that bad on
standard-TVs, so I added that possibility. Therefor also the unmodded DVB-cards
are capable of using this plugin (don't know about the DXR3). But if you own
a LCD-TV or Plasma-TV I don't think you want to violate your eyes with that. ;-)

You can look at the homepage
	'http://home.pages.at/brougs78/comparison/index.htm',
which shows some examples. But like I said, on standard TV's it should look
better than on a monitor.


Requirements:
-------------

 - VDR ... of course. It should compile for VDR >= v1.3.7
 - ImageMagick (I guess at least v6, I use v6.1.1)
   This library is used for resizing, rotating and (optionally) for quantizing
   the images.
 - The linux-tools 'find' and 'sort'. I think every "not too old"-version should
   do just fine.
 - Netpbm OPTIONAL - you have to activate it in the MAKEFILE (I use 10.22)
   The tools bmptopnm, ppmquant and ppmtobmp are needed, if you plan to use
	Netpbm for quantizing the images.
  
   Pro: better (my optinion) qualitiy, at least for the quantization with 15
		colors.
   Contra: much slower than ImageMagick. Quantizing for 256 colors is painfully
      slow on my VDR (approx. 18 seconds), but it's acceptable for the 16-color-
	   mode (approx. 3 seconds), where the quality of quantizing is more
		important. So I recommend
	   using Netpbm for the latter.
	
	If you are using Netpbm the plugin will create temp-pictures in the directory
	'/tmp' so you have to ensure that it exists and VDR has the right to read and
	write	into this directory.


Installation:
-------------

Like the majority of all other plugins. Just type
	make plugins
in the VDR-source-directory and add the plugin to your VDR-start-script:
	-P 'OSDImage --directory <directory where the pictures are located>' or
	-P 'OSDImage -d <directory where the pictures are located>'

It is only possible to add one directory, so if you have more than one directory
I recommend you make a "master-dir" where you link to other dirs.
Mounting of CD- or DVD-drives is also not supported, so if you're planning to
watch pictures from one of those it is best to use an automounter.
BTW, bash-variables in the path are not evaluated (it's on my TODO).


Features:
---------

 - Viewing pictures ;-)
 - Slideshow (interval configurable via the setup-menu)
 - changeable alpha-values for picture, background and text-area
 - supports two different quantizer
 - autmatically determines the capability of the OSD-providing hardware
   for selection of 256- or 16-color-mode


Key-assignment:
---------------

In the picture-selection-mode:
 - LEFT, RIGHT,   traditional navigation mode
   UP, DOWN
 - OK on [..]		jump to the parent-directory
      on [xyz]		enter the directory [xyz]
		on pic.jpg	generate playlist for all the pictures in the current
						directory (without the subdirs) and show the selected one
 - EXIT				back to the main menu
 - RED				generate playlist for all the pictures in the current
						directory (including the subdirs) and show the first one
 - BLUE				end the plugin
						
In the picture-viewing-mode:
 - DOWN, UP			previous, next picture
 - LEFT, RIGHT		jump 10 pictures down or up in the picture-list
 - EXIT				end the plugin
 - RED				rotate back to initial state (orientation like in the picture-
 						file)
 - GREEN				rotate 90° counter-clockwise
 - YELLOW			rotate 90° clockwise
 - BLUE				start slide-show, which automatically switches to the next
 						picture in the playlist and stops at the end of the list
						(the timeout can be adjusted in teh setup-menu)