MB> Which brings me to my question.. :) I noticed that on ccnga.waterloo.ca in /pub/cbm/unix Craig has some files in there that seem to be Unix files. I tried compiling them on my provider but was unsucessful. Seemed there were some incompatabilities.
MB> My question, I guess is what form of compiler would I need to make these files work on my shell account? Specifically the xbmtovbm and the other file that converts graphics to vbm format. I may even want to use the kar and becode a well, but the graphic converters are my main interest right now.. :)
Yes, in the /pub/cbm/unix directory of ccnga.uwaterloo.ca there are some C source code of Unix programs equivalent to ACE ones.
The standard compiler on Unix is "cc". You compile a program with "cc filename.c". I had no problems compiling bcode.c, unbcode.c, unkar.c, pbmtovbm.c, etc. on a Sun workstation running Solaris. The only one I had problems with was fx.c, with cc giving me some error messages. What I did was opening Desterm buffer and entering "cc fx.c" again. With the error messages in the buffer I sent a message to Craig with them, he replied with the lines to be modified in fx.c (he said it was a difference between Solaris and SunOs), I modified them and fx.c compiled correctly. By the way, fx is GREAT!
If you're having problems compiling them on your Internet provider, do the same as I did and I'm sure Craig will help you.
Pay attention to the fact that cc ouputs a file named a.out and you have to rename it, copy or move it to your home/bin directory and put your home/bin directory at the end of the system PATH. Also, your home/bin directory and the files on it have to have execute permission.
Ismael
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From : mparson@mercury.utb.edu
> VBM > > I probbly should ask Craig Bruce this, but maybe he'll see this. Within the VBM package, there is a xbm2vbm.c program. Does this file convert an IBM graphics format to VBM format? If so, where can we find the xbm files to convert a few and how do we accomplish this feat? I ws indeed impressed by the team.vbm and the parrot.vbm (Or whatever that was called.), being displayed on the 128. I WANT MORE! :)
XBM is 1 bit bitmap used mostly on UN*X systems. I use the pbmplus utilities (can be found on your favorite UN*X ftp site) to convert my graphic files to XBM. If you have access to an Xwindows terminal and the viewer xv, you can load up the image and save it as an XBM directly. Using the PBMplus utils, I have to run the following conversions:
gif to ppm (portable pix map - 24 bit uncompressed color bitmap)
ppm to pgm (portable grey map - 24 bit uncompressed greyscale image)
pgm to pbm (portable bit map - 1 bit b/w binary bitmap)
pbm to xbm (X11 bitmap - 1 bit ascii (C) rep of a bitmap)
xbm to bm (Craig Bruce's binary rep of the x11 bitmap for VBM)
I did the first few conversions by hand, then I wrote a nifty script that runs them all in sequence, makes life nice if you are converting a whole directory of images =)
> > SRF > I guess these are also called FLI's, but I'm not sure. Again, is there a converter, or a way to create these screens? Some of them are pretty cool and the resolution is real nice. I would love to create some for a few programs I'm working on. Any ides?
The SRF is a Self Running FLI. I don't know of any programs that will directly convert to SRF, but I have run into a few packages that convert from gif to FLI, and know of at least one program that converts from IFF to IFLI. The FLI converter can be found on ftp.funet.fi, the IFF to IFLI converter runs on an Amiga, but has not yet been officially released.
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From : csbruce@ccnga.uwaterloo.ca
By complete coincidence (seriously), I worked on my "xbm2vbm.c" program today. Its new name is "pbmtovbm.c" and it is available from FTP host "ccnga.uwaterloo.ca" in directory "/pub/cbm/graphics/VBM128" in directory "pbmtovbm.c" or from my Homepage under 'My Commodore Programs'. The URL for my homepage is:
"http://ccnga.uwaterloo.ca/{$de}csbruce/"
The program will now accept input in three standard formats: XBM, PBM-ascii, and PBM-raw (PBM==Portable BitMap). The latter two are much more common than XBM format, since they are the "lowest common denominator" format are are therefore supported by most graphics packages. "XBM" is not an IBM graphics format; it is the X-Windows format for bitmaps; it is, in fact, C code for the declaration of an array containing the bitmap.
To convert images for VBM, you first need to get yourself some PC/Unix graphics package that will convert from GIF/JPEG into one of the three formats that my converter program will accept.
The 'usage' for my C converter program is:
pbmtovbm [filename ...]
If no filename is given, then it reads from stdin and writes to stdout. If filenames are given, then input is taken from each input file in turn and written to the "filename.vbm". If the suffix of the input filename is ".xbm" or ".pbm", then the suffix is replaced by the ".vbm" in the output filename.
BTW, the bird was a toucan, not a parrot. Maybe I can get some more images, convert them, and make them available.
> SRF
No idea.
Keep on Hackin'!
-Craig Bruce
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From : csbruce@ccnga.uwaterloo.ca
Alan Jones <alan.jones@qcs.org> writes:
>From: 057184449-0001@btxgate.de (Arndt Dettke)
>Hi Alan, I finished both a VBM-loader and saver for GoDot (640x400 saver) and will post it anywhere in the internet when I know how to do it. I just recieved this message from Arndt Dettke. We now have a way to create modest size VBM images using a C64. I don't have these routines, but I do have the Godot demo package and it seems to work well. The docs have not been translated into english yet. Arndt is still struggling with very limited Internet access.
Programming for the VBM format isn't really very difficult. The basic idea is to have a header followed by data in the basic format of how the C128's VDC chip stores bitmaps (the format is officially named after "VDC BitMap"). Unfortunately, there are three different versions of the format: version #2, version #3 uncompressed, and version #3 compressed. The version #2 format exists because I didn't get the format right the first time. You can tell which format the VBM file is in by reading the header. The header of all the formats is as follows (you can extract all of this information from the "pbmtovbm" version 1.99 conversion program):
POS SIZ DESC --- --- -----
0 1 the character 'b': $43
1 1 the character 'm': $4d
2 1 the binary value $cb
3 1 the VBM format version number: $02 or $03
4 2 the width (X) of the image in Hi/Lo format
6 2 the height (Y) of the image in Hi/Lo format
If the image is in version #2 format, then this is it for the header. Version #3 images have the following additional header information:
16 2 length of comment text (0 == no comment text)
18 n characters of comment text in PETSCII
If the data-encoding type is "uncompressed", then the "repeated" fields are ignored; otherwise, they contain the binary byte code that is to be used to trigger an RLE expansion when uncompressing. For version #3, I allowed the data to be either compressed or uncompressed because uncompressed data will be able to be processed and displayed faster, and compressed data will be shorter. Or, depending on the storage device and the image involved, the compressed format may turn out to be faster
