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From: colas@lemur.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: XPM Latest Version
Message-ID: <1990Dec26.133907@lemur.inria.fr>
Date: 26 Dec 90 12:39:07 GMT
References: <1990Dec20.235526.5768@julius.cs.uiuc.edu> <11611@goofy.Apple.COM>
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Reply-To: colas@lemur.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo)
Organization: Koala Project, Bull Research France
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In article <11611@goofy.Apple.COM>, abm@alan.Apple.COM (Alan Mimms) writes:
> What the heck is an "XPM" anyway? 

XPM is a text format for X pixmaps.

XPM stands for X PixMap, and we call X BitMaps XBMs



Just as X11 has a de-facto bitmap standard, which is NOT ansi-normalized, BUT
very useful for developpers (C includable), we felt that there was a need for
a standard, developper-friendly format of color pixmaps.
So we developped XPM, which we hope will succeed as a de-facto standard, and:

	supports default colors for mono, greyscale & color visuals

	is color-redefinable at load time
		you can provide symbolic names for colors and define them at
		load time ,allowing you to have the same XPM for icons in 
		applications with different colors (or application whose
		colors have been customized)

	C, C++, Lisp, (or any language) - includable
		Useful for the developper...

	good quality read/write/inclusion library code freely available
		(in fact its MAJOR advantage now...) patterned along the 
		existing Xlib primitives for XBMs

	textual (hand-editable)
		Do you know a good (I mean better than emacs :-)) editor?
		(compression of data is optionally handled by compress, not
		built-in in the format)

In the spirit of X, we hope it will succeed because it is useful, not because 
it is forced on you by some comitee. (religious opinion here).

All opinions/critics are welcome, drop by our BOF January Tuesday 15th at the X
conf...

--
Colas Nahaboo, Bull Research France -- Koala Project -- GWM X11 Window Manager
Internet: colas@mirsa.inria.fr, Phone: (33) 93.65.77.70, Fax: (33) 93 65 77 66
INRIA Sophia, 2004, rte des Lucioles, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCE