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DosView

This is a quick hack for an image viewer/converter for MS-DOS

People on DOS ain't dead asked if it would be possible to create such a program for MS-DOS supporting modern image formats. As I had quite a lot of the necessary code already available from DOjS I decided to give it a try.

DosView uses Allegro to display the images, it should support all available VESA modes. The default screen format is 640x480 with most number of bpp, see below for other options.

Please note: Although DosView should work from a i386 upwards, this programm can eat huge amounts of RAM (>64MiB) if you feed it large images and/or screen sizes.

Binary downloads are available on the Releases page. UPXVIEW.EXE is the same binary as DOSVIEW.EXE but compressed with UPX 4.2.1.

The source is on GitHub

Usage

Supported formats

Reading

  • BMP
  • PCX
  • TGA
  • LBM
  • QOI
  • JPG
  • PNG
  • WEBP (using the .WEB file extension)
  • TIFF (using the .TIF file extension): only first image
  • JPEG 2000 (using the .JP2 file extension)
  • PBM PPM
  • RAS
  • GIF: only first image
  • PSD: composited view only, no extra channels, 8/16 bit-per-channel
  • HDR: radiance rgbE format
  • PIC: Softimage PIC, untested

Writing

  • BMP
  • PCX
  • TGA
  • QOI
  • JPG: quality can be controlled with -q.
  • PNG
  • WEBP (using the .WEB file extension): always lossy, quality can be controlled with -q.
  • TIFF (using the .TIF file extension), LZW compression only
  • JPEG 2000 (using the .JP2 file extension)
  • PBM
  • RAS
  • GIF: uses dithering which is extremly slow

Command line arguments

Usage:
  DOSVIEW.EXE [-hkl] [-q <quality>] [-r <num>] [-s <outfile>] <infile>
  -h           : show this screen.
  -l           : list know screen modes.
  -r <num>     : screen mode to use (use -l for a list).
  -s <outfile> : do not show the image, save it to outfile instead.
  -f <factor>  : scale saved image, <1 reduce, >1 enlarge (float).
  -q <quality> : Quality for writing JPG/WEP/JP2 image (1..100). Default: 95

Keys

  • ESC/Q: quit
  • F: show actual size
  • Z: fit to screen
  • I: toggle image info
  • PAGE UP/9: increase zoom
  • PAGE DOWN/3: decrease zoom
  • UP/8: move image up
  • DOWN/2: move image down
  • LEFT/4: move image left
  • RIGHT/6: move image right
  • SHIFT: move/scale 2x as fast
  • CTRL: move/scale 4x as fast
  • ALT: move/scale 8x as fast

SHIFT, ALT and CTRL can be used in any combination.

LICENSE

Please see the attached LICENSE file for the license of all involved libraries/files.

Known problems

  • error handling is a mess
  • code is badly documented
  • PIC is untested (I could not create an image)
  • some versions of DOSBox-X can't write TIFF images (known issue, SQLite3 has problems in these versions, too)
  • can be very slow on old machines (especially saving/dithering)
  • eats HUGE amounts of memory (we are talking >128MiB to encode a 2672x2004 JPEG2000)
  • if loading/saving fails you get no info why (if you are not running a debug build that is)
  • image conversion always needs a working display mode (Allegros fault)

Changelog

1.5 / November 26th, 2023

  • Fixed Allegro VESA driver
  • Added screen mode autodetection

1.4 / November 24th, 2023

  • new screen resolutions and change in command line
  • (hopefully) fixed bug in image zooming when image was not 4:3 and a multiple of the resolution

1.3.1 / November 12th, 2023

  • fixed color palette error

1.3 / November 12th, 2023

  • added GIF
  • added PSD
  • added HDR
  • added PIC
  • added an UPX compressed EXE
  • enabled dithering
  • added 8bpp display mode
  • fixed another scaling error
  • fixed error when reading certain PNGs

1.2 / November 8th, 2023

  • added NetPBM formats
  • added Sun RAS format
  • added imiage scaling

1.1 / November 4th, 2023

  • added TIFF
  • added JPEG 2000
  • fixed zoom and documentation
  • added 24/32bpp autodetection
  • added image info
  • added num pad keys
  • added check to list modes

1.0 / November 3rd, 2023

  • first public release