MULTIMEDIA keyword description and other filetypes

[solid]

I've searched help, wiki and forum but couldn't find the explanation of how TC handles multimedia files in lister with plugins.

What the MULTIMEDIA string means and which filetypes includes?

Is there any guide or documentation thoroughly explaining how this actually works.

Also, what setting/plugin is needed for displaying thumbs for filetypes that are supported in windows explorer?

I actually need to add thumbs and lister support for psd, pdf, ai, eps, indd filetypes to TC on Win7.
I've tried all possible plugins i've found so far, still not achieved what I want and in meanwhile created chaos with the extensions in lister.

[Dalai]

Is there any guide or documentation thoroughly explaining how this actually works.

Yes, there is, but unfortunately it's only in the help file for developers for Lister plugins. See TC's addon site for Lister plugins, last line in the table (direct link to current version).

Also, what setting/plugin is needed for displaying thumbs for filetypes that are supported in windows explorer?

I actually need to add thumbs and lister support for psd, pdf, ai, eps, indd filetypes to TC on Win7.

This should work if you have a Lister plugin that can display these files. Imagine should work for the picture/image types, sLister works for PDF files (be sure to update the included Sumatra PDF Viewer).

Regards
Dalai

[milo1012]

2Dalai
sLister can not generate Thumbnails, it lacks the necessary plug-in function for this.


See here or here for alternatives.

[Dalai]

2milo1012
It works on my system, although with some limitations: It doesn't work with all PDF files (don't know how they are different from the working ones) and it only works in TC 32 bit.

Regards
Dalai

[Horst.Epp]

2Dalai
sLister can not generate Thumbnails, it lacks the necessary plug-in function for this.


See here or here for alternatives.

For this reason I installed the actual SumatraPDF
and pointed the Slister ini to it.
This way you get all what you need including Thumbnails.

[solid]

2Dalai,
thx for poining this out. There is a descent description in the help file for developers for Lister plugins. In case someone else need it here it is:

Code: Select all

The syntax of the detection string is as follows. There are operands, operators and functions.
Operands:

EXT	The extension of the file to be loaded (always uppercase).
SIZE	The size of the file to be loaded.
FORCE	1 if the user chose 'Image/Multimedia' from the menu, 0 otherwise.

MULTIMEDIA	This detect string is special: It is always TRUE (also in older TC versions). If it is present in the string, this plugin overrides internal multimedia viewers in TC. If not, the internal viewers are used. Check the example below!

[5]	The fifth byte in the file to be loaded. The first 8192 bytes can be checked for a match.
12345	The number 12345
"TEST"	The string "TEST"

Operators
&	AND. The left AND the right expression must be true (!=0).
|	OR: Either the left OR the right expression needs to be true (!=0).
=	EQUAL: The left and right expression need to be equal.
!=	UNEQUAL: The left and right expression must not be equal.

<	SMALLER: The left expression is smaller than the right expression. Comparing a number and a string returns false (0). Booleans are stored as 0 (false) and 1 (true).
>	LARGER: The left expression is larger than the right expression.

Functions
()	Braces: The expression inside the braces is evaluated as a whole.
!()	NOT: The expression inside the braces will be inverted. Note that the braces are necessary!
FIND()	The text inside the braces is searched in the first 8192 bytes of the file. Returns 1 for success and 0 for failure.
FINDI()	The text inside the braces is searched in the first 8192 bytes of the file. Upper/lowercase is ignored.

Internal handling of variables

Varialbes can store numbers and strings. Operators can compare numbers with numbers and strings with strings, but not numbers with strings. Exception: A single char can also be compared with a number. Its value is its ANSI character code (e.g. "A"=65). Boolean values of comparisons are stored as 1 (true) and 0 (false).

Examples:


String	Interpretation
EXT="WAV" | EXT="AVI"	The file may be a Wave or AVI file.

EXT="WAV" & [0]="R" & [1]="I" & [2]="F" & [3]="F" & FIND("WAVEfmt")
Also checks for Wave header "RIFF" and string "WAVEfmt"

EXT="WAV" & (SIZE<1000000 | FORCE)	Load wave files smaller than 1000000 bytes at startup/file change, and all wave files if the user explictly chooses 'Image/Multimedia' from the menu.

([0]="P" & [1]="K" & [2]=3 & [3]=4) | ([0]="P" & [1]="K" & [2]=7 & [3]=8)
Checks for the ZIP header PK#3#4 or PK#7#8 (the latter is used for multi-volume zip files).

EXT="TXT" & !(FINDI("<HEAD>") | FINDI("<BODY>"))	This plugin handles text files which aren't HTML files. A first detection is done with the <HEAD> and <BODY> tags. If these are not found, a more thorough check may be done in the plugin itself.

MULTIMEDIA & (EXT="WAV" | EXT="MP3")	Replace the internal player for WAV and MP3 files (which normally uses Windows Media Player as a plugin). Requires TC 6.0 or later!

Operator precedence:
The strongest operators are =, != < and >, then comes &, and finally |. What does this mean? Example:

expr1="a" & expr2 | expr3<5 & expr4!=b will be evaluated as ((expr1="a") & expr2) | ((expr3<5) & (expr4!="b"))
If in doubt, simply use braces to make the evaluation order clear.

I've managed to fix the plugins.

Now for the thumbnails part. Does the TC automatically shows the thumbs for filetypes that explorer shows? I never use explorer so have no idea what it actually supports.
Does it need some kind of plugin that adds this type of support?
Does it need thumb plugins for each filetype.

I have imagine installed, also Xnview is configured for showing 'graphic other than bmp', I'm using ulister, slister, gswlx, multimedia etc. Currently i can see thumbs for all image formats only and text files, but not eps, ai and other formats that I can see in lister. I have no idea how the thumbs are currently generated.

2Horst.Epp
I have sumatraPDF as portable installation. So I need to install it fulyl to be able to see PDF thumbs?

[Horst.Epp]

2Horst.Epp
I have sumatraPDF as portable installation. So I need to install it fulyl to be able to see PDF thumbs?

Yes

[solid]

Little update.
I've played with the options in the Configuration>Thumbnails>Thumbnails loading section. For some reason in the past, first option 'get thumbs from lister plugins' was unchecked.
I checked it and got the pdf thumbs (guess with gswlx pluging) but lost the thumbs for video files and icons for audio files (blank white thumbs). So I excluded video and audio extensions for those options and got them back.

Is there a way to tell which way is used to display the thumb (lister plugin, ole or ifran/xn)?

[Dalai]

Is there a way to tell which way is used to display the thumb (lister plugin, ole or ifran/xn)?

Not that I know of. AFAIK you can only find this out by trial & error, i.e. disabling one type/plugin and check if it still works. Note that you might need to delete TC's thumbnail cache so thumbnails are indeed extracted from the files instead of being read from the cache.

Regards
Dalai

[milo1012]

It works on my system, although with some limitations: It doesn't work with all PDF files (don't know how they are different from the working ones) and it only works in TC 32 bit.

But these can't be Thumbnails generated by sLister, but are probably from Explorer (with or w/o shell extensions) or different plug-ins.
Like I said, sLister is missing the ListGetPreviewBitmap(W) function, so it's just not possible to get Thumbnails from it, at least with the latest sLister release (not sure about older versions).

So to make PDF Thumbnails truly portable, w/o relying on Explorer (OLE2) / shell extensions, you need the plug-ins I mentioned in the threads that I linked earlier.

Is there a way to tell which way is used to display the thumb (lister plugin, ole or ifran/xn)?

Lister plug-ins have priority over Explorer/OLE2. I'm not sure about Irfan/Xnview,.

Update: it's actually covered in the TC help:

The methods are used in the same order as they are listed in this section. For each method, you can specify file types as in the search function, with include or exclude.

[solid]

Is there a way to tell which way is used to display the thumb (lister plugin, ole or ifran/xn)?

Lister plug-ins have priority over Explorer/OLE2. I'm not sure about Irfan/Xnview,.

Update: it's actually covered in the TC help:

The methods are used in the same order as they are listed in this section. For each method, you can specify file types as in the search function, with include or exclude.

Yes, that is the order in which TC is looking for thumbs. But there is no way to tell who actually generated the thumbnail, without disabling the options or plugins one by one.

[Dalai]

But these can't be Thumbnails generated by sLister

Yes, you're right. Disabled the sLister plugin, deleted TC's thumbs cache and they still show up.

but are probably from Explorer (with or w/o shell extensions) or different plug-ins.

Explorer can't show thumbnails for PDFs here, so I'm not sure what makes TC show them. Maybe the also installed GhostScript (32 bit) has something to do with it? Or the shell extension of Adobe Reader (32 bit)? Anyway, I rarely work with thumbnails, and if I do it's some image types, so I don't really care.

Regards
Dalai