Use of Calculators, Paintbrush, Winmap MPEG Player, Window Help
Last updated on 19/03/2020Use of Calculators
A calculator is a small hand-held computer that performs mathematical calculations. Some calculators even permit simple text editing and programming.
It is also a program on a computer that simulates a hand-held calculator. Calculator programs let you perform simple math calculations without leaving the computer. The Apple Macintosh comes with a calculator desk accessory. Likewise, Microsoft Windows includes a calculator accessory.
Use of Paintbrush
A paintbrush is a tool found in image editing and paint programs that allows users to digitally “paint” on an image file. This feature enables users to make edits to an image, like giving a picture a mustache or create something new on a blank page. The image shows an example of what the paintbrush icon looks like in many programs.
Paintbrush is also the name of a free, open-source raster image editing program; similar to Microsoft Paint.
Use of Winmap MPEG Player
Winamp is a media player for Windows, macOS and Android, originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Radionomy in 2014. Since version 2 it has been sold as freemium and supports extensibility with plug-ins and skins, and features music visualization, playlist and a media library, supported by a large online community.
Version 1 of Winamp was released in 1997, and grew quickly popular with over 3 million downloads, paralleling the developing trend of MP3 (music) file sharing. Winamp 2.0 was released on September 8, 1998. The 2.x versions were widely used and made Winamp one of the most downloaded Windows applications. By 2000, Winamp had over 25 million registered users and by 2001 it had 60 million users.
A poor reception to the 2002 rewrite, Winamp3, was followed by the release of Winamp 5 in 2003, and a later release of version 5.5 in 2007.
Features of Winmap MPEG Player
- Playback formats
Winamp supports music playback using MP3, MIDI, MOD, MPEG-1 audio layers 1 and 2, AAC, M4A, FLAC, WAV, and WMA. Winamp was one of the first widely used music players on Windows to support playback of Ogg Vorbis by default. It supports gapless playback for MP3 and AAC and ReplayGain for volume leveling across tracks. CD support includes playing and importing music from audio CDs, optionally with CD-Text, and burning music to CDs. The standard version limits maximum burn speed and datarate; the “Pro” version removes these limitations. Winamp supports playback of Windows Media Video and Nullsoft Streaming Video. For MPEG Video, AVI, and other unsupported video types, Winamp uses Microsoft’s DirectShow API for playback, allowing playback of most of the video formats supported by Windows Media Player. 5.1 Surround sound is supported where formats and decoders allow.
- Media Library
At installation, Winamp scans the user’s system for media files to add to the Media Library database. It supports full Unicode filenames and Unicode metadata for media files. In the Media Library user interface pane, under Local Media, several selectors (Audio, Video, date, and frequency) permit display of subsets of media files with greater detail.
- Adding album art and track tags
Get Album Art permits retrieval of cover art, and confirmation before adding the image to the database. Autotagging analyzes a track’s audio using the Gracenote service and retrieves the song’s ID2 and ID3 metadata.
- Podcatcher
Winamp can also be used as an RSS media feeds aggregator capable of displaying articles, downloading, or playing such content as streaming media. SHOUTcast Wire provides a directory and RSS subscription system for podcasts.
- Media player device support
Winamp has extendable support for portable media players and Mass Storage Compliant devices, Microsoft PlaysForSure, and ActiveSync, and syncs unprotected music to the iPod.
- Media Monitor
Winamp Media Monitor allows web-based browsing and bookmarking music blog websites and automatically offering for streaming or downloading all MP3 files there. The Media Monitor is preloaded with music blog URLs.
- Winamp Remote
Winamp Remote allows remote playback (streaming) of unprotected media files on the user’s PC via the Internet. Remote adjusts bitrate based on available bandwidth, and can be controlled by web interface, Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and mobile phones.
- Plug-ins
In February 1998, Winamp was rewritten as a “general-purpose audio player” with a plug-in architecture. This feature was received well by reviewers. Development was early, diverse, and rapid: 66 plugins were published by November 1998. The Winamp software development kit (SDK) allows software developers to create seven different types of plug-ins.
- Input: decodes specific file formats.
- Output: sends data to specific devices or files.
- Visualization: provides sound activated graphics.
- DSP/Effect: manipulates audio for special effects.
- General Purpose plug-ins add convenience or UI features (Media Library, alarm clock, or pause when logged out).
- Media Library plug-ins add functions to the Media Library plug-in.
- Portables plug-ins support portable media players.
- Skins
Skins are bitmap files which alter the aesthetic design of the Winamp graphical user interface (GUI) and can add functionality with scripting. Winamp published documentation on skin creation in 1998 with the release of Winamp 2 and invited Winamp users to publish skins on Winamp.com. As of 2000 there were nearly 3,000 Winamp skins available. The ability to use skins contributed to Winamp’s popularity early in MP3 development. With the increasing number of available skins, genres or categories of skins developed, such as “Stereo”, “Anime”, and “Ugly”. Online communities of skin designers such as 1001Skins.com and Skinz.org have contributed thousands of designs; also at GnomeArt. Designers see skins as an opportunity to be creative: nontraditional examples have included Klingon, iPod, and Etch-a-sketch designs. The Winamp skin format is the most popular, the most commonly adopted by other media player software, and is usable across platforms. One example is the XMMS player for Linux and Unix systems, which can use unmodified Winamp 2 skin files. Winamp 5 supports two types of skins – “classic” skins designed to Winamp 2 specifications (static collections of bitmap images), and more flexible, freeform “modern” skins per the Winamp3 specification. Modern skins support true alpha channel transparency, scripting control, a docked toolbar, and other innovations to the user interface.
Use of Windows Help
Microsoft WinHelp is a proprietary format for online help files that can be displayed by the Microsoft Help browser winhelp.exe or winhlp32.exe. The file format is based on Rich Text Format (RTF). It remained a popular Help platform from Windows 3.0 platform through Windows XP. WinHelp was removed in Windows Vista purportedly to discourage software developers from using the obsolete format and encourage use of newer help formats.