Re: Windows BMP to Hires BIN

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Jon Bettencourt writes ...
> 
 ....
> >
> >      Getting the .bmp onto a .dsk is easy enough using the DSK_IN utility.
> 
> Yes, it is easy enough. In fact, I did copy the bitmap to an HDV image and
> tried to BLOAD it into HiRes. What a mess! I should have known that it
> wouldn't work, but one can always hope.

     Tried the same thing with a test pic. Apple II's hires display messed it
up pretty good.

 ....
> 
> Now how do I determine where the bitmap is and how it is arranged?

     You can use the Win95 standard painter util to create a bitmap pic which
should make it posible to figure out how the screen is set up. On an all-white
screen, pencil-in 'dot codes' at each extreme corner. For example, in the upper
left corner you might place black dots like this ...

. . ..  (top left)
. . ... (top left second line)

which, with black dots = 0 and assuming horizontal dot grouping within each
byte, would code as ...

0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1  ($53 when viewed in the monitor)
0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1  ($51 when viewed in the monitor)

or, if the byte info is read backwards, $CA and $8A.


     Put different dot codes in each corner to help you tell what's where in
memory.


> What is
> the difference between the ordering and the direction of scanning? How do
> I know it's linear?


     What I mean is that you want to find out whether pic data is stored column
by column (i.e. in 8-dot groups) or line by line (in horizontal groups of
bytes). And, you want to know where the 'scanning' begins-- like at the top
left or bottom right. (For example, is the byte with the bottom right dots the
first data byte in memory.)

     I guess that a pic format could use each byte to record vertical groups of
dots; so, that's yet another possibility (kind of anti-intuitive, though).

> Does MS Paint always use the same format? If so, what
> is it?
 ....

     Whether dots are bits or (when colored) bytes, you would expect that the
basic organization of data would be the same. As to how .bmp data is organized,
I do not know. (That's what you might discover creating the 'dot code pic' and
looking at the resulting data via the Apple II emu monitor or using a PC hex
editor.)



Rubywand