mdj wrote:
Simon D. Williams wrote:
Thanks for the suggestions... I was actually thinking in terms of an
8-bit solution as I was hoping to find a way to generate web-friendly
graphics during this year's retrochallenge. If something of the sort
doesn't already exist, maybe I'll add it to my list of personal
challenges for July -- I'm sure it shouldn't be too hard to figure out
the GIF format (famous last words, eh?).
The GIF format is easy - implementing nice, face LZW compression is a
little harder :-)
I've always just used a simple RLE compressor I wrote myself years ago
to store Apple II graphics. You could probably implement a TIFF encoder
that used this technique to produce a file readable by most graphics
programs...
Well, I know absolutely nothing about compression, but I'm guessing it
should be possible to just do a straight pixel-for-pixel conversion and
end up with a giff file the same size as an HGR screen... which is
about 8K right?
If you're going to generate a web-friendly format though, why not
implement PNG instead? It's certainly not been done before on the Apple
II
I'm favouring GIFF format because there are already programs to convert
that on the A2, but if PNG is even slightly easier to do I'll be all
over it. Without really looking into things I'm assuming that the
hardest part is going to be figuring out the pixel values of the HGR. I
really have no experience with graphics at the file format level, but
it seems like this might just be something that might have some
utility.