Re: Caution on AP-64E EPROM Programmer

[salfter@salfter.dyndns.org (Scott Alfter)]

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In article <3e8aeb62_1@news.iprimus.com.au>,
Mark Cummings <figjams@primus.com.au> wrote:
>Incidently, anyone know how to convert a Protel drawing into some image
>format, like GIF ?, otherwise I have to print it and re-scan it, losing
>some quality and squareness.

If Protel can export PostScript, you can use Ghostscript to convert
PostScript to PBM and netpbm to convert PBM to PNG.  IIRC, you could also
use Ghostscript to save directly to TIFF.  Ghostscript has some options that
let you set the resolution at which the input file is rendered...the default
setting is too low for anything but the simplest designs, but you can set it
to 600 or 1200 dpi and get something that you could print onto film for
making boards.  (I'd think that for enabling people to have boards made
instead of rolling their own, you'd want to provide Gerber and Excellon
files too...I'd think Protel can do that by itself.  It's easier (and not
much more expensive...places like Olimex and Custom PCB are dirt-cheap for
small-quantity board production) for me to send files to a boardhouse than
to try making a board myself, and the quality is better.)

Not much is out there that saves to GIF, due to patent issues.  PNG is
better than GIF anyway...it offers better compression and supports up to (at
least) 24-bit color.  The LZW patent runs out in less than three months (20
Jun 03), but I doubt there will be a big rush to add GIF support to graphics
software in the same way that there was a big rush to add RSA support to
encryption software when that patent expired.

  _/_   Scott Alfter
 / v \  salfter@salfter.dyndns.org
(IIGS(  http://alfter.us            Top-posting!
 \_^_/  pkill -9 /bin/laden         >What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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