Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!princeton!udel!gatech!ncar!ames!lll-lcc!unisoft!gethen!farren
From: farren@gethen.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: IFF -> icon translation
Message-ID: <1029@gethen.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jul 88 09:05:12 GMT
References: <10369@oberon.USC.EDU>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland
Lines: 52

In article <10369@oberon.USC.EDU> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes:
>I recall a while ago a message about a program that translates Dpaint II
>pictures or brushes to icons (merging pixels, etc...). Can anybody give
>me any information on such a beast if it does exist?

This is as good a time as any to announce the New, Improved, Vaporware
gi - the vastly improved version of my original ILBM - C source converter.
I've finally got both the time and the incentive to start work on the
thing (I need a more sophisticated conversion utility, so I might as
well write one myself), and am taking this opportunity to solicit your
comments and requests.  If there's something you've always wanted to see
in an ILBM - whatever converter, send me email letting me know what you'd
like.

Current design features:

 - fully Intuitionized, can be called from either Workbench or CLI
 - handles ANY IBLM image, including HAM mode or brushes
 - various output provisions:
   - different Image types, including sprite, Intuition Image structure,
     or compressed data (for overlaying graphics, or for very large images,
     with decompression routine provided)
   - source code output for C or assembler, including structure definitions
     if desired, and optional comments
   - object code output, ready to link, CHIP hunks if desired
   - Icon output, producing ready-to-use icons
 - handles any size image, up to full screen (possibly with overscan)
 - palette mapping, to allow different depth images to be used together.
   Specifically, this will process HAM images to the "best-fit" 32 color
   palette, and will allow images with different pallettes to be merged
   intelligently.
 - Editing facilities to allow basic editing of images
 - Intelligent capture facilities, to allow either the smallest possible
   image or a fixed-size image to be handled (i.e., when you "grab" an
   image to be converted, you can either grab a fixed-size chunk or a
   variable-sized chunk, and optionally cause the size of the image to
   be as small as possible, moving the borders as close to the image
   boundary as possible.

Anyhow, if you've got anything else you'd like to see in there, let me
know soon, as I plan on getting to work on this immediately.  I will NOT
promise a release date, though...

Note: email may have trouble with "gethen!farren", as gethen is not 
currently in the maps, and since I'm moving soon, probably won't be.
If you have email trouble, try "well!farren" instead of "gethen!farren".

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame