mcap.exe FILE, with FILE first (as Explorer's Open with passes it), opens an .mcap, image, video or
.snagx (app/open_file.jai). With no mcap running, the app starts as usual: an .mcap in the library
opens in the Capture window, anything else in the Opened File window, which says where the library
has it already (by its hash in .import-index) or imports it into the library folder typed or chosen.
With mcap running, a second window opens in view mode: the file alone, with Import, and Open in mcap
/ Show in mcap, which hand it to the running copy (a new Open_File message) and close the view. The
library is not loaded or watched, no model loads, and it has no tray icon, no global hotkeys, and
writes no settings or layout.
Import takes a single file as its source too (and -import FILE DEST); an .mcap is copied in as it is,
while a folder's import still skips them. -open-import DEST imports the opened file as its Import
button does, then exits.
-h and --help open a Command Line window listing the options, also toggled from the Debug Panel; with
mcap running, that one comes forward with it (a Show_Help message).
Thumbnails: the "First preview shown" log line, put between creating a preview's texture and its
else, had every preview after the first marked failed. Once its texture was released (scrolled far
away, or the switch from WARP to the GPU at startup) it was never decoded again and showed "Cannot
read".
The catalog is kept in .catalog-cache in the library, each entry with the size and modified time of
the file it was read from; a start takes the entries whose file is unchanged from it and reads only
the rest. It is saved once the catalog is complete and has changed (at most every 30 s) and at
shutdown. After a reboot the catalog was complete 145 ms after launch, against 3.5 s reading every
file.
The catalog loads on the background Thread_Group, every worker of it, instead of the four preview
workers. rpmalloc (modules/Default_Allocator, 2.0.1-jai.16) takes the place of Jai's single locked
heap: entries from the cache 380 -> 50 ms, and reading the files now scales with threads.
thread_idle is called where workers idle. check_targets.jai checks other OSes with Jai's own
allocator, as rpmalloc runs at compile time with the target's OS layer.
-cold drops the library from the system's file cache first; -no-catalog-cache and -catalog-threads N
are for measuring. [startup] log lines time the listing, the first frame, the cache, the first
preview and the complete catalog.
- capture_region, a new [global_hotkeys] action, on PrintScreen by default (Windows only; none on
macOS). Existing settings files get the line appended on the next launch. When the key cannot be
registered, the log names Snagit and Windows' "Print screen opens screen capture" setting.
- app/screen_capture_win32.jai: every screen copied the moment the key fires (BitBlt with
CAPTUREBLT over the virtual desktop), shown darkened in a topmost GDI window in a modal loop of its
own, so it works with mcap hidden in the tray. Dragging shows the region bright and outlined; a
magnifier shows the pixels under the cursor with its position or the selection's size; arrow keys
move a pixel (ten with Shift). A click or Enter takes the whole screen under the cursor; Escape,
a right click or losing the focus cancels. Only the parts that change are redrawn.
- app/screen_capture.jai: the region goes on the clipboard (CF_DIB) at once, then a thread writes it
into the library's "Screen Captures" folder as a PNG .mcap: metadata.json with the window under
the region's middle (its title as WindowName, its program's description as AppName) and
capture.json (where on the desktop, the program's path, the hash). mcap then comes to the front
showing it, and OCR, labels and segmentation read it as they read an import.
- A "screen capture" group in the import tests: the file written, its pixels, preview and Capture
Text read back. README and the format's README describe it.
- Import window (and -import SOURCE DEST): every image under a folder (PNG, JPEG, HEIC, AVIF, WebP,
GIF, BMP, TIFF, camera RAW) becomes an .mcap holding the file as it was, a preview turned by its
EXIF orientation, and metadata.json and import.json Capture Text (date from EXIF, the file name or
its time; file name as title; camera as app). .snagx files become the same .mcap SnagitConverter
makes. Duplicates across the whole library are skipped by a hash index (.import-index); videos
and sidecars are skipped; source files are only read.
- modules/Image_Decode: stb_image, then WIC for everything else; EXIF; orientation; previews.
tools/image_probe.jai shows what it reads.
- modules/Snagx (and modules/jaison), copied from SnagitConverter.
- The library is a folder of folders: recursive scan, a folder filter, and a folder: search prefix.
- OCR, the viewer and ocr-bench decode any image format, turned the right way up.
- Rename D:\SnagitIndex to D:\McapIndex.
