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1992-05-06
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Pic To ANSI Written on February 1991 by Patrick Evans
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After years of seeing keyboard-graphic title pages on almost every
bulletin board system advertisement, contest, or anything else worth making
a title page for, one would like a new dimension to the primitive graphics
programs for making text files. The capabilities of the Amiga and the
graphics artists who work with this powerful machine are quite incredible.
There just had to be a way to make things more versatile.....
And after pondering some ideas, I am proud to provide this program to
every and any Amiga user who wants to go beyond keyboard graphics. Put
simply, the process of creation is very simple; use your favourite
paint program to create a 320x200 size picture, one plane deep. The
picture can actually be up to 5 planes, but the last four will be absent in
the final product (ie. you will see only the first bit plane image). This
picture must (for now) be in IFF format. Popular programs include Deluxe
Paint, Fusion Paint, Graphic Craft, and you could even use Grabbit if you
wanted.
The next step is the conversion process; Get yourself a CLI and
unarchive this program (which you must have done by now, right? :>). The
following is a simple breakdown of the features;
PicToANSI <infile> <outfile> <xsize> <ysize>
The <infile> is your IFF picture (ex. DH1:MYTITLE.PIC). The <outfile> is
the path and file name of the output file (ex. DH1:MYTITLE.TXT). The
<xsize> is an interesting animal; It is the horizontal size in WORDS (16
bit chunks) describing how far from the left-hand side of your picture to
convert. To convert your pixels to bytes, divide by 16 (ex. 320/16=20).
You may have to experiment with this a bit to get the desired size.
Default is 40 if you don't give it a size. The <ysize> is just the number
of vertical lines to take from your bitmap. The default is 180, as windows
consume a top and bottom border, but you can push it to 200 (it will draw
harmlessly off the bottom of the screen).
Here's an example:
PicToANSI dh1:MyTitle.pic dh1:MyTitle.txt 20 100
The final product (dh1:MyTitle.txt) when displayed would be 160 pixels
across by 100 pixels vertical.
PicToANSI dh1:MyTitle.pic dh1:MyTitle.txt
The final product defaults to a 320x180 display! Nice eh?
The output text file can be displayed by typing it (ex. type myout.txt),
or by displaying in any ANSI supporting display. Terminal programs WILL
NOT support the picture.. you will just see ANSI codes! An exceptional
idea is the use of Lharc by Paolo Zibetti, in which if you add a .DISPLAYME
to the text file, it will open up a window the same size as your picture
and display it when the archive is unlharc'ed. Very handy!
You will also notice that even though a full size picture can be almost
33 000 bytes large, it will compress to anywhere from 1 000 bytes to 4 000
bytes in an archive! This is very nice!
(some example pictures have been included)
It is my hopes that everyone will enjoy this program and make "blocky"
text and pictures a thing of the past. Use your talents, and show the
world what you can do, now that you have the technology!
This program is ShareWare. Copy it, give it to your friends, other
systems and your enemies. I ask only that this text file, the program and
thier .info files be distributed together, and that if you use this
program and find it helpful, PLEASE, make a donation, so that authors like
me and many others can make MORE programs like this one! Yes, I know
you've heard it all before, but ANY donation would help me!
If you send five dollars or more, I will register you, and send you
any future updates, and new versions, which will include a much faster
displaying time on the output files (the major drawback right now).
The following is an address where you can send comments/donations/or
any programs you want me to test or anything else!
Patrick Evans, Box 785, Nobleton, Ontario, Canada, LOG1N0.
This program uses the IFF library version 18.4, written by Christian A.
Weber, which is a freely distributable library.
Have fun, and happy programming!