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This first release, codenamed ‘Betta splendens’, includes just a handful of features for now, however it is the base on which development of more advanced features will take place. Still, the goal of NeonView is to remain clean and lightweight, while also trying to implement only the needed functions that a simple image viewer should have.
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This is the first release of NeonView, a minimalist, lightweight image viewer written in C and using the GTK toolkit.
This first release, codenamed ‘Betta splendens’, includes just a handful of features for now, however it is the base on which development of more advanced features will take place. Still, the goal of NeonView is to remain clean and lightweight, while also trying to implement only the needed functions that a simple image viewer should have.
Some of the features of NeonView:
supports many image formats, including JPG, PNG, SVG, GIF or TGA (any format supported by gtk_pixbuf)
allows navigation with next/prev buttons with images sorted by name
fit to window or normal size image view modes
it remembers the window size between sessions and can be started maximized (in order to remember these use Ctrl+Q to quit it for now, or just edit the ~/.neonview/neonview.cfg file)
allows manual configuration via ~/.neonview/neonview.cfg
Most of the work still needs to be done, including (but not only) support for plugins, zooming, rotating, saving/printing images, fullscreen and slideshow modes, image properties dialog, an eventual sidebar, importing/exporting, settings to configure its behavior (like remembering fit to window/normal size between sessions, scrolling images with the mouse button, and so on). As you can see, a lot of work still has to be done.
NeonView is free and licensed under the GPLv2, so the source code is completely available to modify and make improvements or forks.
NeonView is beta software, and this is the first release. There are known bugs, not to mention there surely are some more hidden. However, improving it and making it work in a reliable way over time is my main goal. Since this is beta software and my C knowledge is medium (to say nothing this was my first try at using GTK, so probably some of the widgets and algorithms could have been implemented better), I expect it to have bugs. If you find one, please alert me and I’ll try to fix it (the forums or via comments or email).
This version was written in C and compiled using GTK 2.24 on Ubuntu 11.04. The binary download below should work out of the box in Ubuntu. The PPA will come soon too, as for other distributions, hopefully there will be volunteers to package it if there is a need for it.
The application icon was taken from Wikipedia – – and depicts two Neon tetra fish. However, it should really have another icon (I’m not much of a painter person). If you’re interested in creating one, please do so. It should be SVG or PNG and should have something to do with neon, neon light, or a neon tetra fish or something similar. Also, it must be licensed under a permissive license like Creative Commons for example, so it can be used in the project.
Again, any kind of feedback, criticism and suggestions are welcome. You can do so here or on the forum.
There are two packages available for download. The first one contains the executable file, which can be copied anywhere on your disc (preferably in your $PATH) and it should work out of the box by double-clicking it. This is until I’ll set up a PPA and a proper installation script, or someone else does. The second package contains the source code. You don’t need this if you only want to run NeonView. Full Story |
