Help for Displayator and the Displayable Creator

• Displayator and Displayables
  • In a Displayable view
• Sample Displayables
• Create your own Displayables
• Get a Displayable into your Displayator app:
  • Loading Displayables using iTunes file sharing
  • Loading Displayables using the Displayable Creator application
  • Loading Displayables from the internet
• Acknowledgments
• Peoples

What is a Displayable

A Displayable is a transformed copy of an image so that it can be seen in full resolution on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. You can create this transformed copy with the free “Displayable Creator” application running on a computer.

Displayables allow you to view your images at their original resolution. They can be created from big, very big or super big images.

Displayator and Displayables

The main screen has three section:

• Tap on “My Displayables” to access to the list of your Displayables.
• Tap on “Download Displayables” to have the app look for Displayables shared by Displayable Creator on the local Wifi network.
• Tap on “Help” to see this section.
• Bellow this will appear the last few Displayables you’ve viewed, with the most recent on top. Tap on one to view it.

Displayables can be removed from your device in the “My Displayable”. Do a slide-to-the-right gesture on the one you want to remove and tap delete, or tap on the edit button at the top of the list (and tap on the (-) icon and then on the delete button).

To view a displayable, tap on its icon or name.

In a Displayable view

Once in a Displayable view, you can zoom and pan your image using common iOS gestures (pinch, tap, drag…)

You can hide and show the toolbars by doing a single tap on the image.

When the toolbars are hidden, tap on the image or on the little blue icon that appeared at the bottom right to show them again.

Zooming-in actions:

• un-pinching on the image.
• double tapping with a single finger.
• tapping on the looking-glass toolbar icon with a little ‘+’.

Zooming out actions:

• pinching the image.
• tapping once with two fingers on the image.
• tapping on the looking-glass toolbar icon with a little ‘-’.

You can see details about the current Displayable by tapping on the little i icon that at the right of the bar at the top of the screen. Tap on the i again or on the x to dismiss it (or on the image).

On the iPad, tapping on the expanding arrows will hide the Navigation list on the left of the screen. Tapping on the contracting arrows will show it again.

Sample Displayable(s)

You can choose from a list of free Displayables, ready to download into this app from displayator.com by tapping on this link. This link will relaunch the app with the list of available displayables, using the mechanism described bellow.

Create your own Displayables

To create a Displayable, you need an image in the BMP, PNG, GIF or JPEG format (but not JPEG CMYK). You need to run the image through the free "Displayable Creator application, available at www.displayator.com. It is a Java application, so you need to have the Java runtime installed on your computer (version 1.5 or newer). If Java is not already installed on your computer, you can get it from www.java.com.

Here is how to create a Displayable:

• Launch the Displayable Creator.
• Drag an image onto the “Drag and Drop” text.

The creator then automatically creates the Displayable. The new Displayable is then added to the Share Displayable list and is ready to be downloaded or saved.

On your computer, the Displayable creator only read your image and create the Displayable in a temporary file that will be erased when you quit the Displayable Creator.

To save the new Displayable, for later use, click on the Edit icon and then select the location in which you want to save it.

Provided the Sharing checkbox is tick and your computer is on a wifi network, once the Displayable is created, it is automatically available on your local Wifi network for Displayator-running devices.

Get a Displayable into your Displayator app

You can transfer a Displayable from your computer to your iPhone or iPod Touch in three ways:

• Loading Displayables using iTunes file sharing
• Loading Displayables using the Displayable Creator application, running on the same Wifi network as your Displayator app.
• Loading Displayables from the internet

Loading Displayables using iTunes file sharing

Warning: this only work on devices with iOS 3.2 installed or newer (it can’t work on the original iPhone or iPod Touch).

In iTunes:

• Synchronize your iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch.
• Select your device in the list on the left.
• Select the apps section to see those installed on your device.
• Bellow the list of apps, in the list of apps that use file sharing select “Displayator”
• Drag and drop your Displayable onto the list of “Displayator Documents”.

On your iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch:

• Start or restart Displayator.

The Displayable(s) should now be visible in the list of Displayable on your device.

Loading Displayables using the Displayable Creator application

For this method to work, your computer and your iPhone need to be connected to the same Wifi network.

1: On your computer:

• Open the Displayable Creator application.
• Ensure the sharing checkbox is ticked and green.
• In you file explorer of choice select the displayable you want and drag it onto the Displayable creator app.

2: On your iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch:

• Launch Displayator.
• On the start screen, tap on the “Download Displayables” item.
• After a short while, the list of Displayable shared by your computers on your wifi network should appear.
• Tap on the one you want and then tap on the “Download” button.

Once the download is completed, you can view the Displayable on your device.

Loading Displayables from the internet

The Displayator app is configured to handle links with the following prefixes:

displayator-image: for a single Displayable. example.

displayator-list: for a list of Displayables. example.

Tapping on links with the above prefix from within iOS will launch the Displayator and offer to download the linked Displayable(s).

The Displayator Creator can create a directory containing the displayables you want to share and a web page containing the links described above. Once you upload this directory and send a link to the web page to other Displayator users, they too can download those Displayables on their iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch.

More details are availables on the Displayator website.

Support

Support can be obtained by emailing the author at nicolas@displayator.com, or posting to the Displayator google group

Acknowledgments

The Displayator app rely on the following open source libraries:

• ASIHTTPRequest by Ben Copsey. Used for Displayable transfer over the wifi/internet.
• TouchJSON by Jonathan Wight. For figuring out what are the available Displayables.
• Reachability by Andrew Donoho. To see what kind of network is available. Also used by ASIHTTPRequest.

In version 2.0 (only), the iPad side of the application used MGSplitViewController for managing the Split View of the app.

The sample Displayable were created from the following images:

• Along the river during the Quingming festival, the 18th century remake of a panoramic Chinese painting, sourced from Wikipedia (original and displayable copy are public domain).
• The Great wave off Kanagawa, a scan of a Japanese woodblock print, sourced from Wikipedia (original and displayable copy are public domain).
• Curiosity @ Rock Nest Panorama, A martian panorama taken by the Curiosity rover, provided for free Courtesy of NASA / JPL-Caltech. (ref# PIA16919, image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS).
• Panorama from Rotenboden, a image taken by the author, the original of which is available on Flickr (original and displayable copy are licensed by Nicolas HOIBIAN under the Creative Commons “Attribution-Noncommercial” 2.5 Licence).

Formerly, the “XKCD Online Communities 2” image was also included in the samples. It is a creation of Randall Munroe of XKCD licensed under the Creative Commons “Attribution-Noncommercial” 2.5 Licence.

Peoples

I thank the following persons for supporting me and testing early versions of the app.

Thank you very much Annet, Daniel, Cyril and Stefano.

© Nicolas Hoibian 2013