Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!hwcs!neil
From: neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Graphics file formats on new machines
Message-ID: <3104@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Date: 15 Sep 89 07:42:50 GMT
References: <2600003@hprnd.HP.COM> <7677@microsoft.UUCP>
Reply-To: neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth)
Organization: Computer Science, Heriot-Watt U., Scotland
Lines: 39

In article <7677@microsoft.UUCP> w-darekm@microsoft.UUCP (Darek Mihocka)
writes:
> Up until now, .PI1, .PI2, .PI3 and .NEO
>seem to have been the standards because everybody had a 32000 byte screen.
>What will happen now that screens are larger than 320K? None of the
>above formats bother to include the screen resolution in their files.

There IS provision in the Neochrome header for different screen sizes although
in current versions of the program it is not used.

> A simple modification
>to say, the Degas file format, might be to keep the first word which 
>indicates the graphics mode (0, 1, 2, 3, etc, which would map on to an
>appropriate number of bit planes) followed by the color pallete and then
>the image. Now, if the screen is not the standard 32000 bytes, invert
>the high bit of the first word, and follow it immediately by two words
>indicating the screen resolution, then the pallete, then the image.
>That way normal Degas will puke if you try to load this new format, but
>not the other way around.

Nope. Degas Elite uses bit 15 in the rez word to signify a compressed image
.PCx.

I personally like the Neochrome format and although it only supports low rez
just now the first long in the header is the rez.

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! Neil Forsyth                       JANET:  neil@uk.ac.hw.cs                 !
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