Original review published on Steve Litchfield's 3-Lib.

I've been reviewing version 3.00 of MBMview by Lieuwe de Vries (web site.). This graphic display and conversion utility has been around almost as long as the Series 5 itself but has been regularly updated with new file formats and features. The earliest incarnation was little more than a display program for EPOC MBM and Sketch format pictures, but later versions included the loading and saving of alternative formats as well. Currently, MBMview can load and save MBM, Sketch, JPG (JPEG), GIF, and BMP. It can also load TIFF format including multipage Fax images from popular PC fax software (e.g. FaxNow). The handling of these ‘foreign’ formats is particularly impressive. For example, this 400KB JPG of a kit car is 800 x 600 pixels and has a full 16.7 million colour palette. Using MBMview my Series 5 classic loaded this image in 13 seconds and then I scaled it to fit the visible screen width in a mere 4 seconds.

This screenshot was created using MBMview’s modified [Shift-Control-Fn-S] capture facility, reloaded into MBMview and saved as a GIF; very slick. There are a wealth of extra options:- You can zoom in and out (I particularly like the ‘Fit to Screen’ and ‘Fit to Width’ options), rotate and flip the image, and reduce the number of image colours. Colour reduction is particularly well-handled because it uses a fine ordered dither and on the Series 5 you have to take quite a close look to tell the difference between the original 16 greyscale image and one converted to 4 shades. It is good to see an ordered dither too, because this can help to reduce the overall file size of MBM pictures on the series 5 in comparison to other popular conversion algorithms.

The program also has useful facilities to manipulate multiple bitmap MBM images such as those used to make program icons for the Series 5. Adding and replacing images in MBMview is much easier than grappling with the command-line or control files of Psion’s BMCONV utility.

One other feature worth mentioning is the ‘Mosaic’ or thumbnail option. This produces an overview of a multiple bitmap or even a directory of files:-

The only thing I felt was lacking in this program was a ‘Print’ option. This would be particularly useful alongside the mosaic facility. Overall, this is an extremely slick and competent piece of software. Having used it for a couple of weeks I'd hate to be without it now - so I’m going to register mine!

Thanks, Kevin!

Original review, 1997, by Steve Litchfield:

Along with Mat Ripley, Lieuwe de Vries has been in the forefront of the Series 5 graphics scene since the machine's launch, with versions of his picture manipulator, MbmView. I've been looking at v1.3, grabbed from Lieuwe's web site.

The primary function of MbmView (unsurprisingly) is to view Series 5 picture files, though it has a few tricks up its sleeve by being able to handle standard Sketch files as well as the MBM 'Epoc' picture format, and most usefully of all allowing informed browsing of true 'multi' bitmap files. This last is of course where the acronym MBM comes from and the trick of squeezing many separate pictures into a single compressed graphics file is well known to Series 5 authors (see Phil Spencer's web site for MBM tips and tricks). Being able to browse through such an image collection, with image size and colour depth (no. of colours) shown for each is a major boon. Individual images can be deleted, inserted and so forth.

The other main use of MbmView is for stitching together new MBM files from collections of images. Previously, this had to be done on a PC using the arcane BMCONV DOS utility, but this is friendlier and has the advantage that it can all be done on the Psion itself. Patching of OPL-saved bitmaps for later conversion and cropping of images are also supported.

MbmView has a good help section and most things are pen-aware and intuitive. A Mosaic (thumbnail) feature is included to allow faster navigating of multi-bitmaps and browsing of images in a directory, though I found the default thumbnail size to be on the small side and the first thing I did was increase it to a more sensible resolution. The thumbnails are really only the top corner of each image, which can be a bit restricting. If the Series 5 had more horsepower under the bonnet I guess a proper 'scaled down' thumbnail would have been possible.

All in all, a top-quality utility for programmers and arists everywhere.

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