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Date: Mon, 31 Aug 92 22:44:20 -0400 From: stewart@shiva.PSU.EDU (Dr. Jon Stewart) Subject: [*] Using Silicon Graphics images on the Mac, A report Fellow MacUsers, A few weeks ago I asked how I could use some of the images I created on the Silicon Graphics workstation on my Mac. Specifically, I have some pictures of protein structures that I wanted to pretty up and print out as part of docu- ments on my Mac. I received three very helpful answers to this question, and for the benefit of others who might be interested in this problem, I have collected the methods together (with the authors' kind permission) and submitted this to the report directory. Many thanks to all who took the time to reply to my question! Jon Stewart Department of Chemistry Penn State University stewart@shiva.psu.edu ------------------------------Cut Here---------------------------------------- Bill - I suggest that this go in the report section and be titled silicon_graphics_to_mac.txt. Thanks very much. Displaying Figures From a Silicon Graphics Workstation on the Macintosh Jon Stewart Department of Chemistry, Penn State University stewart@shiva.psu.edu This is a summary of responses that I received to the following question: "I use a molecular modeling package (Quanta) on a Silicon Graphics workstation which produces a PostScript file. I can print this file on an Apple LaserWriter IINT without any problem. How can I convert this into a format that I can edit and revise on the Mac, preferably PICT?" I have combined the three most helpful suggestions that I received below, and I have am deeply indebted each for his help. I have tried to be as accurate as possible; however, if you notice errors, please feel free to E- mail me at the above address. Naturally, all credit goes to the authors; I am only a grateful scribe :-). ....................................................................................................................................................... Method #1. Arun Malhotra, malhotra@neptune.cmc.uab.edu [This method utilizes commands which are only found on a Silicon Graphics workstation: snapshot, tobw, invert and topict. For more information on these commands, type man <command> at the UNIX prompt. Basically, snapshot is like ScreenSnap for the Mac and it produces a color screendump of whatever was located within the red square. (Note: The output file for snapshot is always called snap.rgb, so be sure to rename it if you make more than one snapshot before converting it!) This is converted to PICT format as follows. -- Jon] tobw snap.rgb (converts the screen dump to black and white) invert (makes dark bonds on a white background) topict (converts the image to PICT format) The image is downloaded to the Mac and the file type is changed to PICT, then it can be opened as usual. [I have not tried this method since the above commands have not yet been compiled on our machine. However, this method has the distinct advantage that it does NOT depend on what program you are running on the Silicon Graphics machine, and so should be a very versatile solution. -- Jon] A note about the IRIX commands: The commands tobw, invert, and topict are not a part of the standard Unix, but are utilities provided as a part of the IRIX operating system. Thus, as with the snapshot command, you will have to execute these commands after you exit out of Quanta (or within another unix window). The tobw, invert, pict, and a lot of other image utilities are provided with the SGI system as a part of "4Dgifts". These utilities (which also include source codes in C, as well as notes) will be in the /usr/people/4Dgifts directory on your SGI workstation. The image utilities are located in the directory /usr/people/4Dgifts/iristools/imgtools (this has info on commands and source code in C). The command themselves (the executable binaries) should be in /usr/sbin. For example, if you cannot execute tobw at a unix prompt, you may have to give the complete pathname: /usr/sbin/tobw or add /usr/sbin to your pathlist in the .login file. If this does not work, perhaps your system has the binaries in some bin subdirectory in the /usr/people/4Dgifts directory. ....................................................................................................................................................... Method #2. Alan Hewat, hewat@frill.bitnet I have had some moderate success with my first attempts at transferring your SGI-PS file to something that can be edited on the Mac. [The file in question is a simple stick drawing of a protein consisting of lines representing bonds on a blank background. -- Jon] 1) Your SG-PS file is simple postscript to moveto (m) and draw a lineto (l). 56.6 343.5 m 74.4 377.0 l 74.4 377.0 m 83.0 373.7 l etc.... 2) You can use a text editor (even teachtext) to copy and paste these m,l commands into an Adobe Illustrator file that you have saved empty. You put it between the %AI3_Note: (or %%EndSetup) and %%PageTrailer statements near the end. 3) Only put the m and l lines in...the other PS commands are not really necessary, (so far as I can see for the moment). They will not work as such. 4) You will also need to put in a line containing just "S" immediately before each "m" line. You can do this with a global edit of a file containing the m,l commands using eg Edit-II (a shareware app. on Sumex) or Word or most other text editors. There is probably a way of avoiding this start of drawing "S" command, but I don't know how for the moment. 5) You should then be able to re-open the file with Illustrator and edit the individual bonds. Illustrator is a great program, and not difficult to learn. 6) Alternatively, if you do all the above but use the PREVIOUS version of Illustrator called "88" (the latest version is 3.2), then you can also open the Illustrator-88 file in Canvas. You can edit it in Canvas and even save it as PICT, and I have included various Canvas files with different formats including PICT, which you can view even with TeachText (system-7 version). I don't know about MacDraw, but it should work too. HOWEVER. IMHO no drawing program is as good as Illustrator, so why go to this extra trouble. As well, the files produced by Canvas are very large, and succeed in bombing TeachText. 7) My files so far produce drawings that seem to contain SECTIONS of the molecular structure. I must have something not quite right, and will look at it again over the w/e. But it works "en principe" as we say in France. The problem is that (good as it is) Illustrator is very finicky about what it will accept as PS, and of course I have no doc. on that. I am complaining to Adobe. They should allow it to open ordinary PS files such as yours without all this trouble. Best wishes, Alan. ....................................................................................................................................................... Method #3. Andy Sheppard, mbasd@dlvh.daresbury.ac.uk [This method is for users of the molecular modeling package Sybyl. I have included it because I think the general approach might be helpful to others. -- Jon] I just saw your posting to Info-Mac re: SGI->MacPICT conversion. While not being an exact answer to your question, you might get some help from the following posting I recently sent to the Sybyl Bulletin Board. I too had been frustrated about postscript transfer from Unix (an E&S ESV in my case) to Mac - my solution is described below: I see no reason why this should not also work on a SG machine. However you may then have a problem in reading your PICT file into MacDraw II - MacDraw II has a bad habit of losing ALL colour information. A better solution is to use a painting program such as Illustrator, Canvas or MacCheese. Some of other information you need is that your Mac must have a reasonable amount of disk space and preferably >8 MB RAM. I would hope that you could expand your SE to that amount of RAM fairly cheaply or borrow a colleague's Mac II. Although initially you need a lot of disk space, after translation to PICT format a 1.5MB ESV file will compress to about 100-300K (depending on the amount of detail in the picture) and even further to 10-30K using JPEGview/QuickTime compression! Please let me know how you get on, as I'm sure this would be useful to other users! Regards, Andy Sheppard Transfer to Macintosh is essential due to the dearth of such programs for the ESV, on which I run Sybyl. There may also be a similar lack of programs for the Iris and other Unix platforms on which Sybyl will run - I don't really know. Anyway, I'm sure the majority of users would prefer to use a Mac rather than a Unix box! Below I have outlined a route which I have perfected (?) to transfer an image from the ESV to Mac PICT format, which is the standard Mac Picture format, readable by all major Mac graphics applications (of course Nitro will output a PICT file). This still relies on third-party software but is the best I can do. This method is relatively painless and inexpensive, although a Mac II with at least 8MB RAM and >2MB hard disk space is necessary. Requirements: ------------ ESV side: Sybyl (of course) ------------xwd (part of the standard X release for the ESV - produces a dump file of any X window) kermit (or other method of transferring a binary file to the Mac from the ESV) Mac side: Mac II class Macintosh (I use MacIIcx, 8-bit colour, ------------8MB RAM, hard disk) kermit, VersaTerm PRO...(or other terminal emulator) Imagery v1.8 (see below) 32-bit painting program (e.g. MacCheese, costs about $100, or a more expensive program such as Photoshop, Studio 32 etc.) Procedure: ------------- 1. In Sybyl on the ESV, get your image on the screen, press F6 to remove the tool-palette icons. Resize the picture window to 640x480 pixels: this is a good Mac size. Scale the image to fit the window [N.B. you may get some harmless PEX error messages while doing this part]. 2. At the "Sybyl>" prompt, type "dcl xwd -out name.xwd" <enter> where "name" is the name for your picture. The cursor will change from an arrow to a "+". Click inside the window containing your picture. The bell will sound: after a few seconds it will sound again indicating the file has been written to disk. For a 640x480 pixel window, the file will be about 1.25MB in size (:-O). 3. Logon to the ESV from the Mac using Kermit/VT PRO and RS232/Ethernet connection. When logged in, procedure for file transfer to the Mac is: % kermit <enter> C-kermit> set file type binary <enter> C-kermit> send name.xwd <enter> (then do whatever is necessary to start file transfer to Mac using the terminal emulator - make sure you have enough hard disk space!) C-kermit> exit <enter> % exit <enter> 4. Quit from the terminal emulator, start up Imagery v1.8. Imagery is an EXTREMELY useful program for translating many graphics file formats (Sun raster files, IBM files etc.) to Mac format. Imagery is public domain, written by Jeff Lewis (76217.2241@COM.COMPUSERVE) and available on many bulletin boards and archives. The "memory size" in the Imagery "Get Info" box should be set to 5000K to handle the large file. Versions earlier than 1.8 do not work for ESV files. 5. Select PICT2 output. Open up the xwd file: the filename MUST have ".xwd" on the end so that Imagery knows to translate an X window dump file. Type the output filename for the PICT file. When translation is complete, the output file will have been reduced to between about 30- 300K depending on the amount of detail in the original: trash the ".xwd" file to free up disk space. 6. Open up the PICT file in MacCheese (or whatever) in "32-bit true colour" mode (again the memory partition for MacCheese etc. should be about 5000K at this stage). The image should be displayed - remarkably little loss in resolution, depth cueing or colour compared to the original ESV image should be observed. 7. Retouch the image in your painting program as required - the image will be on a black background but this can easily be changed [N.B. it would be nice to have a white Sybyl background instead of just a black one sometimes*] - then print, integrate into a report, QuickTime movie, etc..... I hope you can see that this is a very inexpensive and effective way of producing good pictures from Sybyl and perhaps other users would like to try it too. etc......... * A way to get a white background is: 1. edit file $TA_ROOT/lib/X11/1280x1024/Sybyl 2. change line sybyl*portBackground black to: sybyl*portBackground white -------------------------------------------- ....................................................................................................................................................... So which method will work best for you? It depends. If you want full color images and don't care too much about size, then methods 1 or 3 look best. If you images are a relatively small number of lines on a blank background and you need to edit the individual lines, then try to make method 2 work. One other method that wasn't mentioned but which might be useful is to save your output in Hewlet-Packard 7450 plotter output files. There is a Hypercard stack at Sumex-aim called HP2PICT which is supposed to do simple conversions between these formats. In addition, the documentation for Imagery 1.8 says that the next version of this program will also handle this conversion. Many thanks to Arun, Alan and Andy for all of their time and effort, and all compliments should certainly be directed to them.