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_______________________________________________________________________________ Translator 6.21 ------------------------------- This program is PUBLIC DOMAIN Version date : 26 Aug 1990 ------------------------------- ---------------- - Introduction - ---------------- Translator will translate image files from other computers to the Archimedes. The following image files are supported : - Atari PI1,PI2,PI3,PC1,PC2,PC3 files (320x200x16, 640x200x4 and 640x400x2, uncompressed and compressed) - Atari IMG files (monochrome only) - Amiga IFF files (including HAM and halfbright modes) - MacIntosh MacPaint files (576x720x2 b/w) - GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) files - Archimedes' sprite files - ProArtisan compressed (type 0 and 1) files (640x256x256) - Watford digitiser files (512x256x64 greys) - Render Bender files (256 colour mode images) - AIM files (256x256x256 greys) - SUN Microsystems files (1/8-bit per pixel uncompressed) - PCX files (2/4/16-colour EGA and 256-colour MCGA) - TIFF files (bilevel, greyscale, palette colour and RGB full colour (also known as TIFF Classes B,G,P and R), uncompressed or PackBits compressed, 1,2,4,8 or 24 bits per pixel) - QRT RAW (24-bit RGB) files (Quick Ray Tracer) - ArVis Videographics (15-bit RGB) files (2 sprite files in HIP/LOP dirs) - Translator's own 'Clear' files (pure 24-bits RGB and up to 8 bit per pixel with palette, any resolution, refer to 'Clear files' for more information) - MTV (Marc Terrence VanDeWettering) ray tracer images (24-bit RGB) - 'CadSoft' (used by Cadsoft and Millipede PRISMA digitiser) images (8 bit per pixel colour) ------------------------- - Using the application - ------------------------- To start up Translator, double-click on the '!Translatr' icon. It will install itself on the icon bar, and clicking MENU on Translator's icon will give the usual 'Info' and 'Quit' options. Clicking SELECT or ADJUST will pop up the options menu, but most options will not be selectable at this stage. Loading an image can be done in three ways : a) by dragging the image file to the Translator icon on the icon bar b) by dragging the image file to the image window (when an image is loaded) c) by double-clicking on an image file (not for 'native' Archimedes formats, to ensure that the originating programs (when loaded) 'catch' these files, not Translator) NOTE : The ArVis Videographics format consists of two sprite files per image, of which one resides in a directory named 'HIP', the other in a directory called 'LOP' (both at the same directory level). To load an ArVis image, drag the sprite file in the 'HIP' directory to Translator (i.e. a or b). Image files should be filetyped appropiately to be recognized by Translator. The following filetypes are used by Translator (the filetypes in the range &690-&6xx are new filetypes, used for foreign formats) : ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Filetype Name Image file type/origin ------------------------------------------------------------------------- &004 AIM AIM (Archimedes Image Manager) &690 *Clear Translator Clear &691 *Degas Atari PI1,PI2,PI3,PC1,PC2,PC3 &692 *Img Atari IMG &693 !*AmigaIFF Amiga IFF (ILBM) &694 !*MacPaint MacIntosh MacPaint &695 !*GIF GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) &696 !*SUN SUN Microsystems &697 *PCX PC PCX &698 *QRT QRT (Quick Ray Tracer) RAW &699 *MTV MTV ray tracer &69A !*CadSoft CadSoft/Millipede PRISMA &D58 RendPic Render Bender &DE2 ProArt ProArtisan &DFA Picture Watford digitiser &FF0 !*TIFF TIFF (Tag Image File Format) &FF9 Sprite Standard Archimedes sprite file (or ArVis, see above) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A '*' indicates which filetypes also load by method c) (see above). A '!' indicates which filetypes can be recognized and loaded without having the correct filetype. You can choose to give these files the correct filetype yourself, or leave them as they are. Every new filetype is represented in filer windows by its own icon, which is similar to Translator's iconbar icon. When succesfully processed, the image will appear in a resizable, scrollable window. -------------------- - The options menu - -------------------- Clicking MENU on the image window (when an image is loaded) or clicking SELECT or ADJUST on the iconbar icon will pop up the options menu : -------------- | Image info | -------------- This icon gives access to an information window, in which the resolution, compression technique, filename, etc. of the image is displayed. ---------- | Pop up | ---------- This icon gives access to a submenu in which options can be set that influence the way that the image first appears when succesfully processed : 'Auto mode' Clicking this icon will toggle the 'auto mode' flag. When it is ON (i.e. ticked) Translator will select the most suitable mode for display of the image for you when the image appears in its window. When OFF, you can/must choose the mode yourself (possibly using the image information provided under 'Image info'). 'Auto palette' Clicking this icon will toggle the 'auto palette' flag. When it is ON (i.e. ticked) Translator will select the 'Image palette' (see below) automatically when the image appears in its window. When OFF, the palette remains unchanged. 'Auto zoom' Clicking this icon will toggle the 'Auto zoom' flag. When it is ON, then Translator will attempt to zoom out (never in though) on the image so that it fits entirely on the current mode's screen. 'View mode' Clicking this icon will toggle the 'View mode' flag. When it is ON, then when a new image is loaded, the current mode is remembered, and is re-selected when the image window is closed. 'Mode set' This icon gives access to a submenu of 'mode sets'. When one of these mode sets is 'active' (default is none), selection of the mode for display of the image will be via this mode set. Each mode set consists of four mode numbers, for 2,4,16 and 256 colour display requirements of the image respectively. There are two standard sets : 'Normal' (modes 0,8,12 and 15, all 640x256 pixels) is for users of all monitors, 'Multisync' (modes 18,19,20 and 21, all 640x512 pixels) is for users of multisync monitors only. A third set is user-definable and must contain the four required mode numbers seperated by comma's (for 2,4,16 and 256 colours respectively). Selecting 'None' in this submenu will switch off the mode set option (so the 'closest' mode will always be selected, as normal). -------------- | Processing | -------------- This icon gives access to a submenu in which options can be set that influence the way in which the image is processed : 'Clear output' When this icon is ticked, a 'Clear' file will be created from the next image loaded into Translator. This icon gives access to a file window, in which a Clear file may be 'opened' by dragging the filetype icon to a filer window. By clicking on this icon, Clear output is cancelled and the last opened Clear file (which is always empty at this stage) is deleted. Refer to 'Clear files' for more information. 'Output mode' The output mode for the image may be freely chosen. This icon gives access to a submenu, in which two choices of output mode may be selected : - Auto When this icon is selected (i.e. ticked), Translator will determine the best possible output mode (and palette) to display the image. For example, for pure RGB and 256 colour images, a 256 colour mode (with at least the required resolution) will be chosen for output, whereas if the image has 5-16 colours, or 3-4, or 1-2, a 16, 4 or 2 colour mode respectively. The 'Auto' setting is the default setting, as you will usually want the highest image quality. The palette is not changed in 256 colour modes (i.e. the standard palette is used, a 'principle' that can be found in more places throughout Translator), while in other modes the image's 'exact' palette is used for optimal results. - Current When this icon is selected (i.e. ticked), the current mode will always be used as the output mode, and thus also determines the number of colours in the resulting Archimedes image. This may be useful when the quality of the image is not of the utmost importance, but other considerations play a major role. For example, if you wish to create a desktop icon based on some image, or you want the resulting image to be usable by Artisan (which can only work in 16 colour modes, in contrast to Pro-Artisan), you may specifically select a 16-colour mode for output. When this icon is ticked, the 'Output palette' icon also gives you control over the output palette (see its discussion below). 'Error spreading' (see below) will help to still reach a result as close as possible to the original, given the limited number of colours and non-ideal palettes that may be chosen. 'Output palette' This icon gives access to a submenu in which a choice for the output palette may be made. NOTE : This is only effective when 'Current' is selected in the 'Output mode' submenu, as when 'Auto' is selected, Translator determines the best possible output palette. - Current When this icon is selected (i.e. ticked), the current palette is used for the output image. Usually this is the desktop palette (ideal for creating icons), but via either palette file loading or palette manipulation by hand (via the palette utility), any palette may be chosen. In 256 colour modes however, the output palette used is ALWAYS the standard palette. There are some example palette files for 16 colour modes in the 'Palette16' directory. These contain palettes that divide the 4 available colourbits between red, green and blue (i.e. 2,1,1 or 1,2,1 or 1,1,2 respectively), and one palette with 1 bit red, blue, green and 'tint' (amount of white). - Default When this icon is selected (i.e. ticked), the current mode's default palette is used (as following a VDU20). In 16 colour modes, the upper eight 'flashing' colours are not used. - Greyscale When this icon is selected (i.e. ticked), a greyscale from black up to full white will be used. This may be especially useful for black and white images. 'Scaling' This icon gives access to a submenu with a further submenu leading to the 'x' (width) and 'y' (height) scaling factors. The scaling factors may be entered as 'multiplier:divisor' or 'multiplier'. The difference is, that the former defines an 'absolute' scaling, and that the latter (the 'simple' form) defines exactly the number of pixels you want. When using the 'simple' form, for example the X scaling ratio will (re-)appear as e.g. '100:x' when you entered '100'. This is to make clear that the exact scaling ratio is dependant upon the number of (x and/or y) pixels in the input image(s) that will be loaded subsequently. You can define any scaling ratio you want (i.e. you can scale the image both up or down). The ratio is automatically divided down to the lowest form, so you may enter any ratio that seems convenient. For example, to scale down a, say, 640x512 pixel image to 600x480 pixels, you would enter '600:640' (or simply '600') and '480:512' (or simply '480') for 'x' and 'y' respectively. Using the 'simple' form, it is possible to scale all subsequently loaded images (down or up) to an image with a fixed resolution. The 'absolute' form enables a fixed scaling to be defined for all subsequently loaded images. When scaling is active (i.e. not 1:1), the 'Scaling' icon will be ticked. Clicking on the '1:1' icon will reset the scaling factors to normal (both x and y 1:1), while clicking on any of the remaining icons will select a preset scaling for both x and y (i.e. 1:2, 2:1, etc.). When scaling without error spreading being active, obviously pixels are simply discarded (when scaling down) or duplicated (when scaling up). Usually, in this case, you can do the scaling equally well by using the scaling options of the save functions (which do exactly the same). However, when error spreading is active, you are likely to get a much better quality if you pre-scale the image (by setting the appropiate scaling factors here) and THEN save it (in full). This is because, after error spreading, every pixel's 'neighbor(s)' usually contains a correction for the pixel's true colour. When scaling down/up with the 'Save' or 'Zoom' options, you just lose or duplicate these 'neighbor' pixels and the error spreading effect may be either completely lost (when scaling down, because the corrections in the discarded pixels are lost) or not optimal (when scaling up, because all the duplicated pixels could have been used to more finely spread errors). 'Error spreading' This icon gives access to a submenu, in which Translator can be set to use one of two kinds of error spreading, or none. The icon is 'ticked' if error spreading is enabled. When either error spreading is on (i.e. ticked), errors made by the approximation of the input pixels' RGB valus in all output modes are spread out (locally) over the image. This usually results in images with a much higher quality, so you will usually leave error spreading on. When you switch it off only the best approximations to colours are used, and the errors made will be completely ignored. You may want to do this to compare results. When there are enough colours and the ideal palette can be selected, i.e. always in non-256 colour modes when 'Auto' mode is on (see above), error spreading will have no effect, as there will be no errors. There are two choices of error spreading available, which differ in the way they spread the approximation errors : - 'Simple' This spreads out the errors along the same pixel row only. In fact, it gives one of its neighbor pixels the full error factor, as follows : ------------------------------------------ | | Current pixel | full error | ------------------------------------------ This is the fastest of the two, and gives very good results. - 'Floyd Steinberg' Floyd Steinberg error spreading, devised by R.W. Floyd and L. Steinberg, spreads the errors made more intelligently. It divides the error factors among four neighbor pixels (instead of one), as follows : ------------------------------------------------- | | Current pixel | 7/16 of error | <-- current line ------------------------------------------------- | 3/16 of error | 5/16 of error | 1/16 of error | <-- next line ------------------------------------------------- The results are usually better than when using 'Simple' error spreading, but to which degree depends heavily on the type of image. Digitised images will usually benefit much less than 'drawn' images. The penalty is that it is computationally much more expensive than 'Simple' error spreading, so you'll have to wait a few seconds longer. 'Black and white' Clicking this icon toggles the 'black and white' flag. When it is ON (i.e. ticked), Translator translates colour images to grey images. In >16-colour images, this gives very good results when used in combination with error spreading. For images with 16 or less colours, only the palette is changed to the closest greys. 'Zig zag' Clicking this icon will toggle the 'zig zag' flag. When it is ON, and error spreading is also ON, every other line will be plotted in the opposite direction, i.e. left to right, then right to left, then left to right again, etc.. This reduces the chances of patterning effects in the final image. Sometimes, however, the effect is not so pleasing, so you may switch it off. When OFF, lines are always plotted left to right. 'RGB resolution' This icon gives access to a window in which the amount of red, green and blue in the resulting image can be defined. The slider values for red, green and blue represent the number of bits (0-8) of the corresponding primary colour that are 'let through' in the final image. You can drag the sliders to change the number of bits (a full bar is 8 bits). For example, red=8, green=0, blue=0 will give a red seperation of the input image, i.e. only the red components of the colours are let through. Depending on how many bits are reserved for each of the primary colours in each graphics format (mostly 8 bits giving 24-bit RGB, but sometimes 4 bits or less), a large range of effects and colour seperations can be achieved. 'Screen blanking' Clicking on this icon toggles the 'Screen blanking' flag. When it is ON (i.e. ticked), the screen will be blanked while unpacking an image. This may speed up the unpacking considerably when working in high resolution modes (with high video DMA overheads). When it is OFF (default), the screen will not be blanked while unpacking (so you'll have to wait a bit longer...). 'Invert RGB' Clicking on this icon toggles the 'Invert RGB' flag. When it is ON (i.e. ticked), the colours in the image will be processed 'inverted'. This results in 'negative' images for both colour and black and white images. 'GIF scan' Clicking on this icon toggles the 'GIF scan' flag. When it is ON (i.e. ticked), GIF files are scanned to count the number of pictures in them. This number will appear in the image information. When the GIF image contains more than one image (which is rare), you may select one by using the 'Image number' option (see below). When OFF, GIF files are NOT scanned, and are assumed to contain a single image (which is usually so). This has the advantage of substantially reducing the loading time. The image info will reflect the unknown number of images in the file by displaying a '?' instead of the image count. 'Image number' GIF image files may contain more than one image, and Archimedes sprite files may contain more than one sprite. When this is the case, the image info window will indicate this. By default the first image or sprite is displayed, but, by altering this writable icon to 'n', the n-th image or sprite will be chosen when the file is (re)loaded into Translator. When the nth image is not present, Translator will complain (except when dealing with GIF files and the 'GIF scan' flag is OFF). 'Percentage' Clicking on this icon toggles the 'Percentage' flag. When it is ON (i.e. ticked), the hourglass shows a percentage indicating the amount of rows that have been 'built' so far. It does not always indicate how much of the processing is done, for example, GIF first decompresses all the image data before building the rows. ----------------- | Image Palette | ----------------- Clicking on this icon selects the currently loaded image's own (or 'output') palette. It is selected by default when the 'Auto palette select' flag is on, after the image is loaded. Note that this MAY make things badly (or not at all!) visible (e.g. menu's, etc.). Re-selecting the image's palette may be necessary after using the desktop's palette utility (e.g. 'Default') or when some other application changes the palette. -------------- | Zoom image | -------------- This icon gives access to a submenu of zoom options : 'In', 'Out' These icons give access to zoom in and zoom out options respectively. Zooming takes place in steps of 2 (i.e. 2 times, 4 times, 8 times enlarged/reduced, etc.). By clicking one of the icons given in their submenu's, zooming can be performed in x ('x') or y ('y') directions individually, or both at the same time ('Both'). '1:1' Clicking this icon will reset the zoom factors to 1 (i.e. the image is neither enlarged nor scaled down). ------------- | Magnifier | ------------- Clicking on this icon pops up the magnifier window. The magnifier window shows a (magnified) part of the image. By clicking either SELECT or ADJUST within the image window, the area around the point clicked on will appear in the magnifier window, with the point itself in the middle. You can shift through the image by holding the button down and moving the pointer. The magnifier window starts up at 1:1, and the magnification may be increased by clicking SELECT or decreased by clicking ADJUST, within the magnifier window. The MENU button will select 1:1 magnification. The magnifier enables you to examine image areas with ease. ---------------- | Rotate image | ---------------- This will rotate the image clockwise by 90 degrees. This may be convenient with high-and-narrow images (especially on normal monitors), so more of the image can be on-screen without you having to use the scroll bars. ---------------- | Mirror image | ---------------- This icon gives access to two mirror options. Clicking 'x' will mirror the image horizontally, while 'y' will mirror it vertically. ------------------- | Include palette | ------------------- Clicking this icon will toggle the 'include palette' flag. When it is ON (i.e. ticked) any saves will save the current palette with the sprite. When OFF, no palette is saved with the image. -------------- | Save image | -------------- This icon gives access to a submenu of five ways in which (part of) the image may be saved : 'Full' This will save the whole image as a single sprite, exactly as it is stored internally (i.e. without losing pixels). The sprite can then be used in full (e.g. dumped to a printer with suitable software), or scaled as required by another application (e.g. a DTP package). The palette saved (when the 'include palette' flag is ON) will always be the image's own palette (not the current one, as with the other 'saves'). NOTE : In 256 colour modes, the palette will NOT be saved, regardless of the 'Include palette' flag, as Translator never changes the palette in these modes. 'Whole', 'Whole (scaled)', 'Part', 'Part (scaled)' These will display the image on the current mode's screen, using the currently selected palette, and save an editable part of the on-screen image to a sprite file. By selecting one of these four 'saves', you can choose whether or not you want to scale the image (the '(scaled)' saves will let you do this), and whether or not to cut out a specific piece (the 'Part' saves will let you do this, the 'Whole' saves won't), prior to saving. The palette saved (if the 'include palette' flag is ON) will be the current one, i.e. a la *SCREENSAVE. While scaling and/or cutting, the mouse pointer will continuously show the size of the scaled or cut-out image in pixels, or the pixel coordinates of the mouse pointer before clicking on the top left corner of a cut-out. Saving is done by dragging the sprite file icon (which appears before any scaling or cutting is done) to a directory viewer. Alternatively, you may save the image sprite directly into another application (e.g. !Paint), by dragging it to the application's iconbar icon or one of its windows. ---------- | Status | ---------- This icon gives access to a submenu of status handling functions. A default status can be created, which contains the Auto mode select, Auto palette select, Error spreading, Black and white, Auto zoom, View mode, Screen blanking, Invert RGB, GIF scan, Include palette and Zig zag flags and the Mode set. The 'Save' option will save the current status of the abovementioned items as the default. This default status file (when present) will be loaded on startup, or explicitly with the 'Load' option in the submenu (to override the current ones). The 'Kill' option will remove the default status file, so the 'standard' (Translator) defaults will be used on the next startup. ------------- | Hourglass | ------------- The hourglass is normally displayed when any processing is done. In addition, during image processing, the top 'LED' will be 'on' when data is being loaded from disc. It will be 'off' when processing is taking place. Also, when the 'Percentage' flag is on, during buildup of the image rows the percentage of rows done so far will show in the hourglass. --------------- | Clear files | --------------- Translator can output its own graphics file format, called 'Clear' (filetype &690). I devised this (simple to use) new filetype because of several shortcomings of Archimedes sprite files (which were the only output) : - Pure RGB input (Amiga IFF HAM, QRT, ArVis) at best ends up in a 256 colour sprite with standard palette on which error spreading has been applied. This loses a lot of image information. - 'Palette and pixel value' input (i.e. the rest of the formats) always lose any extra bits in their palette definitions if they use more than 4 per primary colour (which is the maximum on the Archimedes). In addition, output in 256 colour sprites will always lose palette definition because of the inability to fully define all 256 colours (and thus the error spreading makes the best out of the standard palette). Without being able to output a 'fully accurate' filetype, it would thus be impossible, in most cases, to retain the full resolution (both in terms of pixels and colour definition) of input images. This may be essential if the images that Translator can read are to be put to more serious use, for example image manipulation, or conversion to other formats (!MakeGIF and !MakeTIFF !). Also, I envisaged that it should be very easy to extract the image data from this 'fully accurate' format, so people can quickly and easily write simple programs to process it (i.e. no compression, no 'pixel value packing', etc.). The 'Clear' graphics format was devised because of all this, and holds either pure 24-bit RGB data or byte-wide pixel values with a 24-bit RGB palette (one entry per pixel value). The full format is as follows (the descriptions are necessarily 'formal' to avoid misinterpretation, the format is actually extremely simple) : Offset Bytes Description ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0 m Maker (string, e.g. 'Translator') m 1 0 (string terminator) m+1 4 Version number (600 currently, i.e. 6.00) m+5 4 Width of image in pixels (w) m+9 4 Height of image in pixels (h) m+13 4 Bits per pixel (bpp) If 1<=bpp<=8, then 24-bit palette entries for all colours follow (i.e. n=3*2^bpp, and l (bytes per pixel) is 1). If bpp>8, then pure 24-bit RGB is stored, which needs no palette (i.e. n=0, and l (bytes per pixel) is 3) m+17 n Palette entries for all colours (only if 1<=bpp<=8), which are triples of byte values (0=off, up to 255=full intensity) per primary colour, red first, then green, then blue. For example, when 'Rx','Gx' and 'Bx' represent the intensities of red, green and blue respectively for colour x, the palette for 4 colours (bpp=2) would be stored : R0,G0,B0, R1,G1,B1, R2,G2,B2, R3,G3,B3. m+17+n w*h*l Pixel values, representing the image rows from top to bottom and every row from left to right. If l=1, every pixel value is a byte representing the colour number/index. If l=3 (pure 24-bit RGB), data is stored like the palette entries, i.e. red first, then green, finally blue, all byte values (0-255) representing the intensity of the corresponding primary colour for that pixel. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the case of pure 24-bit RGB storage (i.e. bpp>8), bpp represents the bits of RGB resolution of the original image (i.e. 12 for Amiga IFF HAM mode, 15 for ArVis and 24 for QRT currently). If there are less than 8 bits per primary colour, lower bits are set to 0 (but do not try to deduce how many per primary colour if you don't know what the original image was). For example, in the case ofáArVis' 15 bits RGB (5 bits each for red, green and blue), the lower three bits of each pixel value are set to 0 when Translator creates the Clear file. When 1<=bpp<=8, only the lower 2^bpp pixel values of the 256 available are used. Clear files are always 'pure' representations of the input images, i.e. error spreading, black and white conversions, etc. are NEVER applied, even if they are 'on'. Clear files DO obey the scaling factors you have set however, so that you may easily create Clear files of, for example, a specified number of pixels. For example, you may scale images to 256x256 pixel Clear files and then let a simple program (calculating greyvalues out of the pixels' RGB values) turn them into AIM files. ----------------------- | Memory requirements | ----------------------- Translator starts up taking a minimum amount of RAM. As and when images are loaded/discarded, extra memory is claimed/released, as follows : - When an image is loaded, all available memory is grabbed (to ensure maximum file buffer sizes), and an attempt is made to load the image. When there is too little memory available, Translator will complain. After loading (which may or may not be succesful), all memory that is not needed anymore (i.e. all but the internal image sprite) is returned to the system. - When an image is discarded, i.e. by closing the image window, the memory taken up by the internal image sprite is also released. This memory allocation strategy ensures that a) all available memory is used to speed up processing b) Translator runs in the minimum amount of memory needed c) you do not need to worry about how much memory to allocate to Translator --------------------- | Mode independance | --------------------- When the 'ideal' mode cannot be selected (usually because of screen memory shortage), a beep will sound and succesively lower resolution modes with the right number of colours are tried by Translator (as, within the WIMP environment, there is no telling how much memory can and will be allocated to the screen by the WIMP/desktop system). Once an image has been created, it can be displayed in any mode. In modes with the 'wrong' number of colours, Translator attempts to display the image as well as possible, as follows : - If the number of available colours is larger than the required number of colours for the image, the 'lower' part of the palette is set (<=16 colour modes) or (256 colour modes) the closest available standard colours are selected. - If there are too few colours (i.e. only in <=16 colour modes), the most frequently used colours (the 'base' colours) in the image will determine the palette, and the remaining colours will be mapped to the closest base colour. This gives acceptable results for most images (for 256-colour images in 16, 16 in 4, or 4 in 2 colour modes), up to perfect results for 256-colour grey images (for example with the black and white option on) in 16 colour modes (as it is only ever possible to display 16 different greyvalues, also in 256 colour modes). Of course, if you really want a non-ideal mode to save your image in, selecting it as the output mode in the first place (see 'Output mode' and 'Output palette') gives much better results ! ---------------- | Sprite files | ---------------- Archimedes sprites may not have a palette. If they don't, the standard palette settings in the sprite's mode is used. The palette of 256-colour sprites is always ignored (the standard one is always used). Also, if the mode contained in the sprite is a valid one (i.e. it is a valid WIMP mode and it is available on your monitor), then this is used by default. If the mode is not valid, then the 'closest' mode is determined and used as usual. ----------- | The end | ----------- If you have praise, complaints, comments, bugs(!) or information about other formats to offer me, do not hesitate to write to John Kortink Middelhuisstr. 17 7482 EL Haaksbergen The Netherlands New versions are available from the same address : just send some money to cover postage and a self-addressed envelope containing a 3.5" disc. As this application is under continuous development, you are very likely to get a more recent version ! Happy imaging !!! _______________________________________________________________________________ !!! NOTE !!! You may NOT change this application or use ANY part of it in other products without my approval. You may spread it freely (with *ALL* files included), but not for any profit. This software is provided 'as is'. Using it is entirely at your own risk. _______________________________________________________________________________