Introduction

About Q2Pix

Q2Pix is the modern successor to QPix.

Initially released in 1997, QPix was the first 4D plug-in that took advantage of the cross-platform imaging infrastructure of QuickTime 3. In the 20 years of its life, QPix became a trusted companion of many serious 4D projects involved with imaging, scanning and document management. When Apple dropped support of QuickTime for Windows, thus declaring the end of QuickTime in general, QPix had no other choice but to follow behind the rim.

Q2Pix is totally new - the only asset carried over from QPix is our team’s experience with writing, enriching and supporting it.

Q2Pix is the first offspring of Escape’s Q2 Platform, a comprehensive collection of modern toolkits and technologies, and advanced 4D features. This is a new generation of 4D add-ons which are not mere 4D plug-ins in the sense of QPix or QGrid. Rather, they are 4D extensions comprising a plug-in and a set of open-source 4D components that blend the plug-in with modern 4D features, such as subforms, objects and JSON.

In Q2Pix’s case there’s a plug-in and the Q2PixLib, Q2ImgControl, and Q2XMPLib components. The combination results in a rich, modular, extensible – in all, an extremely powerful toolkit for image manipulation and management, for now and the future.

Key Q2Pix characteristics:

Support for modern versions of 4D. 4Dv16+, 32/64 bit macOS & Windows.
No dependence on QuickTime. Q2Pix is based on OS services and open-source projects.
Modern architecture.
  • Implements an Object Model
  • Makes extensive use of advanced 4D features:
    • Components
    • Widgets and subforms
    • C_OBJECT
    • JSON
Document-based programming interface. Open an image, modify it in a number of ways, save it back.
Image Control

Implemented in the Q2ImgControl component, the ImgControl widget manages a group of 4D form objects to provide a rich user interface for image viewing and manipulation:

  • A customizable and extensible menubar.
  • A customizable and extensible toolbar.
  • A plug-in area.
  • A sidebar for viewing multi-page documents.
Full support for XMP Metadata.

Full access and control of XMP Metadata stored in images by means of plug-in and component methods.

The Q2XMPLib component also includes a generic, data-driven, and extensible XMP Metadata Editor that can be invoked with a simple method call.
Extensive PDF support. Cross platform PDF support is provided by PDFium, the PDF rendering engine from Google’s Chromium project.
Extensive image acquisition capabilities. Acquire images using TWAIN (all platforms), Image Capture (macOS), and Windows Image Acquisition (Windows).
Batteries included. Q2Pix comes with all necessary parts included. No installation of 3rd party software is required on any platform.

Acknowledgments

Q2Pix makes use of several open-source projects: