AlternaTIFF

Introduction

AlternaTIFF was designed primarily to be used for convenient viewing of large (around 200 dpi) black-and-white scanned documents, using a minimum of mouse clicks. However, it should be quite acceptable for other kinds of images.

Installation

Installation of Netscape plug-in

AlternaTIFF must be registered before it can be used to view images. If you have never registered it before, you will be shown a form to fill out for automatic registration over the internet. This feature requires an active internet connection. (It will attempt to use Internet Explorer's proxy settings, if available.) If your computer does not have a direct internet connection, press the "Manual registration" button to allow you to enter an activation key that can be generated at any time at a web site.

If you are not able to complete the registration at this time, you can still continue with the installation by pressing Cancel. However, the plug-in will not display images until it is registered. Registration can be completed later when the plug-in is in use, or by re-running the install program.

After registration (if necessary), you will see a dialog box that allows you to choose where to install AlternaTIFF. Use the checkboxes to the left of each section to choose whether to install to that location. In most cases, one or more of the Location fields will be filled in automatically. In the unlikely event that the install program was unable to find your browser's plug-ins folder, you can locate it manually by pressing the corresponding "Browse" button. However, that may be an indication of some other problem.

The Associate TIFF images with IE... checkbox tells the install program to reset certain entries in the Windows registry that may be necessary in order to get Microsoft Internet Explorer to find and use this plug-in. It will remove any current TIFF file assocations, and associate TIFF files with Internet Explorer. That means that if you have other applications on your computer that handle TIFF files, they may behave differently until you reconfigure them.

The Add TIFF to IE's "Accept" list checkbox tells the install program to modify an Internet Explorer setting to make it report to web sites that it supports documents of type "image/tiff". This is useful mostly on intranets. Most people should leave this turned off.

Check the Automatically check for new versions checkbox if you would like the plug-in to periodically check to see if a new version of AlternaTIFF is available. This requires an internet connection. This setting can be changed later from the right-click menu.

Installation of ActiveX control

Other than that, there is no friendly install procedure available for the ActiveX control. To install, download the alternatiffx-1_x_x.zip file; then create a folder and unzip the contents of the ZIP file into it. Run the "install.bat" script. You should see the message "DllRegisterServer in alttiff.ocx succeeded."

You will be instructed to register the first time you attempt to view a TIFF file, if you have not previously registered either the plug-in or the ActiveX control.

Uninstallation

Uninstallation of Netscape plug-in

To disable AlternaTIFF, find the file npzzatif.dll in your Plugins folder and delete it or rename it so it doesn't end with ".dll". To remove it completely from your computer, find your Plugins folder and delete the files "npzzatif.dll" and "alternatiff.html". Delete the keys "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MIE\AlternaTIFF" and "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MIE\AlternaTIFF" from the registry.

Uninstallation of ActiveX control

If you installed the ActiveX control automatically from the AlternaTIFF web site, follow this procedure:

• If you've used AlternaTIFF since you last restarted Internet Explorer, you will need to close all Internet Explorer sessions.
• Use My Computer or Windows Explorer to browse to the Downloaded Program Files folder in your Windows folder. (Often this is at C:\WINDOWS\Downloaded Program Files.)
• There should be an item in that folder named AlternaTIFF ActiveX Object. Right-click on it, then select Remove from the menu. Answer Yes when asked if you want to continue.

If you "manually" installed the ActiveX control from a ZIP file, run the "uninstall.bat" script to uninstall it. You should see the message "DllUnRegisterServer in alttiff.ocx succeeded." Then, if desired, delete the files you unzipped and the folder you created.

AlternaTIFF Features

• Zoom. When in Zooming mode (the magnifying glass on the toolbar), left-click anywhere on the image to activate the full-screen zoom function. (If the image is a "hot-link", or you are in Panning mode, you must hold down Shift when you left-click.) After zooming, you can pan around the full-size image using the mouse. You do not need to hold down the mouse button. Left-click again to close the window. (Advanced: While zoomed, click the right mouse button to lock the image in place, and also allow the mouse to move over the whole screen, switch to other programs, whatever. To resume panning, click the right mouse button on the zoomed window again. This doesn't work well with Zoom Window Size set to full-screen.)

  If the zoomed image is too large, you can reduce the size using the "Zoom Image Size" option on the right-click menu. Zooming will be slower if you do that, because it takes time for the viewer to resize the image.

• Pan. In Panning mode (the Hand button on the toolbar), you can click on the image and drag it to scroll other parts of it into view. If the image is a "hot-link", or you are in Zooming mode, you can must hold down the Ctrl key when you click the mouse. If you are in Best Fit mode, you will automatically go into Zooming mode, since panning would be useless.

• Print. Attempts to print at the physical size specified in the TIFF file (unless Always Print Full Page is turned on), otherwise stretches or shrinks the image to fit as much as possible on one page.
• Save to disk, as the original TIFF, or in BMP format. If the TIFF has multiple pages, saving as BMP will only save the current page. You can save as TIFF even if AlternaTIFF was not able to display that particular file. A filename will usually be suggested, based on the URL.
• Copy image to clipboard. After pressing this button, you will be able to Paste the image into other graphics applications. (There will be no direct indication that anything has happened.)
• Best fit. Shrinks or enlarges the image to the largest size that will fit entirely within the window. When you use your browser's Print function to print a page with embedded TIFFs, the image will always be treated as if it were in "Best fit" mode.
• Fit to window width. Shrinks or enlarges the image so that it is the same width as the window. (However, the image will only be enlarged if it fits entirely within the window.) There is also a "Fit to window height" mode, but since it is rarely useful, it is only available on the right-click menu.
• Fixed size. Sets the image size to some percentage of its natural size. The percentage used is set by the arrow controls beside this button, or from the right-click menu. Warning: the larger percentages, other than 100%, can tend to require a lot of time and memory.
• Orientation. There are 4 orientation buttons, which allow you to immediately rotate the image to any multiple of 90 degrees.
• Negative image. Swap black with white, etc.
• Page controls. If the current TIFF file contains multiple pages, you can switch to other pages by using the arrows or the drop-down list. If the page controls are grayed out, it means the TIFF file contains only a single page.
• Menu. Displays AlternaTIFF's context menu (see below).
• Viewer information and image properties ("About"). Displays a window listing AlternaTIFF version information, and technical information about the image and your browser. This information can be useful if there is a problem displaying a particular image.

• Open Local File. Load a TIFF file from your computer into AlternaTIFF. This is not really what AlternaTIFF is intended for, but you can do it if you want.
• Copy Image Location. Copies the URL of the current file to the clipboard.
• Smooth image. This is normally turned on, and causes black and white images to be "resampled" as a smaller grayscale image, to make them clearer. This is slower than the ordinary resize function that will be used if this option is turned off. This does not work for color images, or when the displayed image is larger than the original one.
• Size -> X%. Sets the size of the main image to a percentage of its full size.
• Zoom Image Size -> X%. Sets the size of zoomed images to a percentage of their full size.
• Toolbar can be turned on or off, and moved to the top or bottom of the image.
• More Settings -> Tool Tips. Turn the Tool Tips for the toolbar buttons on or off. (Tool Tips are those little windows that appear when you hold your mouse over a button for a while.)
• More Settings -> Always Assume Square Pixels. If this is off, images with an aspect ratio other than 1.0 (that is, images whose horizontal resolution is different from their vertical resolution) will be stretched to their "correct" shape when being displayed on the screen. For example, if an image is 200x100 pixels per inch, it will be doubled in height so that it will look as its creator intended. This has a side-effect on Copying to Clipboard and Saving as BMP, as the stretched image will now be used. It may also cause printing to be slightly poorer quality. It will also take slightly longer to display images. If you view lots of images which have almost-but-not-quite square pixels (e.g. 202x198), you may wish to turn this on to prevent them from being stretched.
• More Settings -> Always Print Full Page. Normally, AlternaTIFF tries to print at the physical size indicated in the TIFF file. Turn on this setting to force it to print as large as possible, ignoring the images resolution. (It will still use the resolution to determine the height-to-width ratio of the image, just not the size.)
• More Settings -> Show TIFF Warnings. Determines whether minor problems that are found while decoding the TIFF image will be displayed on your screen. We recommend you leave this OFF.
• More Settings -> Show TIFF Errors. Determines whether significant problems that are found while decoding the TIFF image will be displayed on your screen. We recommend you leave this ON. If you regularly view images that can still be displayed despite such problems, you may wish to turn this off, but note that AlternaTIFF may then fail to display some images and not tell you why.
• More Settings -> Zoom Window Size. Choose the preferred size of the Zoom window: 1 is smallest, 5 is largest.
• More Settings -> Panning Sensitivity. Controls how much the image scrolls when you move the mouse in Panning mode. If you set it to "1", the image will scroll by the same amount you move the mouse.
• More Settings -> Background Color. Select the color used for areas of AlternaTIFF that are not covered up by the image, and while an image is loading.
• More Settings -> Automatically check for new versions. If this is turned on, every 10 days AlternaTIFF will attempt to check over the internet to see if a new version of AlternaTIFF is available. If one is, you will get a message asking if you would like to download it. You can find out when the last check was made by choosing "About..." from the menu.
• Save All Settings. Saves image-specific settings such as Rotate, Fit Width/Height, Negative, Smooth Image, Mouse Mode, etc. Most other settings will be automatically saved whenever you change them, without requiring you to select this.
• View Image. View the image on a web page by itself. Usually the browser will still use AlternaTIFF to display the image, but it's possible that your browser could choose to use some other viewer.
• Open in New Window. Open up a new browser window and view just the image in it.
• Set As WallPaper. Sets your Windows desktop wallpaper to the current image. You can set it to be Centered or Tiled.
• AlternaTIFF Home Page. Go to the AlternaTIFF web site on the Internet. This will only work if you have an active Internet connection.

Supported TIFF Images and Features

• Multi-image files

• 1-bit Black and White images
• 4-bit Grayscale images
• 4-bit (16-color) RGB-paletted images
• 8-bit Grayscale images
• 8-bit (256-color) RGB-paletted images
• 24-bit Truecolor RGB images (extra samples are ignored if present)
• 32-bit CMYK images (sort of; these are non-portable by definition)

• Uncompressed images
• CCITT modified Huffman RLE compression
• CCITT Group 3 fax encoding compression
• CCITT Group 4 fax encoding compression
• Macintosh Packbits compression
• ThunderScan RLE compression
• NeXT 2-bit RLE compression
• Deflate (Zip) compression

• LZW compressed images
• JPEG compressed images
• Unusual color models, such as CIE Lab
• Certain unusual combinations of samples, bits/sample, separated color planes, etc.

• Gamma correction and colorimetry
• Image orientation
• Pretty much anything not listed as supported

Troubleshooting

Please see the AlternaTIFF FAQ for troubleshooting tips.

Terms of use

AlternaTIFF
Copyright © 1998-2002 Medical Informatics Engineering, Inc.

AlternaTIFF is provided free of charge. You may use it however you like, for whatever you like (personal or commercial use), for as long as you like, at no cost. AlternaTIFF must be registered on each computer on which it is used. You are allowed to redistribute AlternaTIFF, but you may only distribute it in unmodified form.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY The software is provided "AS IS" and without warranty of any kind and Medical Informatics Engineering expressly disclaims all other warranties, express or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. Under no circumstances shall Medical Informatics Engineering be liable for any incidental, special or consequential damages that result from the use or inability to use the software or related documentation, even if Medical Informatics Engineering has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

AlternaTIFF uses code from LIBTIFF, which carries the following license and copyright:

LIBTIFF Copyright © 1988-1997 Sam Leffler Copyright © 1991-1997 Silicon Graphics, Inc. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that (i) the above copyright notices and this permission notice appear in all copies of the software and related documentation, and (ii) the names of Sam Leffler and Silicon Graphics may not be used in any advertising or publicity relating to the software without the specific, prior written permission of Sam Leffler and Silicon Graphics. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS-IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN NO EVENT SHALL SAM LEFFLER OR SILICON GRAPHICS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER OR NOT ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF DAMAGE, AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

Feedback

When reporting a possible bug relating to a particular image or images, please include a copy of the text from the About box. To do that, right-click on the image, choose "About...", press the "Copy Text" button, then switch to your mail program and paste the text into your message (you can usually do that by pressing Ctrl+V).

Disclaimer

If you decide to use TIFF, it is your responsibility to ensure that the programs that you wish to use to view TIFF files can read the TIFF files that you create. Don't just expect that because two programs claim to "support TIFF", that they will be able to read each other's images. That is a reasonable thing to expect with most image formats, but not with TIFF.