Re: thumbs.el and transparency

[Mathias Dahl <brakjoller@gmail.com>]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> I've not seen much consensus on that point (indeed the consensus
> _seemed_ to say that tumme will replace thumbs), but I must admit: I
> couldn't figure out how to make tumme do anything remotely useful in
> the 10 minutes I spent trying it out.  There are lots of provocatively
> named commands -- tumme-dired, tumme-gallery-generate,
> tumme-slideshow-start -- but they never seem to _do_ anything other
> than rearrange my windows a bit or display cryptic messages. 
> Certainly I never saw an image show up.

Again, I it is a bit unpolished and the documentation (the Commentary
in tumme.el) could need some work.

This is what I did (running under Windows XP):

Start emacs -q

(load-file "~/elisp/tumme.el") ;; My emacs does not have tumme.el

(tumme-setup-dired-keybindings) ;; Well...

M-x tumme-dired RET some-directory-with-images RET

Some might think that what tumme does now is very intrusive, it sets
up a window configuration that I personally think is suitable for the
task at hand. Whatever your reaction is, please follow:

If all goes well, you should have a window config like this:

     +---------+---------+
     |         |         |
     |         |    2    |
     |         |         |
     |    1    +---------+
     |         |         |
     |         |    3    |
     |         |         |
     +---------+---------+

You need not have a window configuration like this, you can have only
one window if you want, but I find it easier to work with this
setup. You can have each buffer in its own frame or keep the buffers
all in one frame. It'll be a lot of jumping back and forth if you only
use one window though.

1 is a dired listing of the dir you specified. 2 is where the
thumbnails will be displayed (buffer is in tumme-mode) and 3 is where
a sized version of the image will be displayed.

In dired window/buffer, mark some files.

Next, press C-t d (`tumme-display-thumbs'). Tumme should now generate
thumbnail images and display them in the thumbnail buffer.

To jump to the thumbnail buffer, either use TAB (switched back and
worth between dired and thumbnail mode) or C-x o, as you are probably
used to.

Use the arrow keys to move around the thumbnails. To display an image,
press RET on the thumbnail. This will display a sized version in the
display buffer. Move some more, press RET again to change the
displayed image.

Convenience commands: use SPC to advanced and display, use DEL
(backspace) to back up and display previous picture. The mouse can
also be used to display the images.

If you enable "tracking of movement" (its in the Tumme menu), the
cursor in the dired buffer will "follow" the cursor movement you do in
the thumbnail buffer.

If you want to see the full size image, either use C-x o to jump to
the display buffer and then press "f" (full) there, or press C-return
to display image in an external viewer (which must be
configured). Press "s" to again display a sized version.

I won't go into describing more commands available in the thumbnail or
dired buffer (mark-commands, tag commands etc), they should all be
seen from the Tumme menu.

I would love to have feedback on how to make this process easier on
the user, especially how to get him/her up to speed quicker. All basic
stuff is in there, building "conveniece-commands" is just a matter of
wrapping some of those basic methods in new commands.