trb@stag.UUCP ( Todd Burkey ) (09/07/87)
If there is sufficient interest, I am thinking of putting CANDUMP into the Shareware category. CANDUMP is a product that we developed about 2 years ago when the CANON Color Ink Jet Printers were being liquidated (i.e. in one year the prices fell from $899 to $225). We also modified it for the Radio Shack Color Ink Jet and the Quadram Color Ink Jets (just one byte difference), since those were both relabled CANON printers with slightly modified ROMS. After DAK beat us out on a purchase of QUADRAMS (we had planned on selling them for $200, but DAK is selling them for $500 to IBM PC people), we haven't seen much demand for the product. What is CANDUMP? Basically, it is a standalone program that will intelligently print out a NEO, DEGAS, NVISION (yep, even full page stuff), and even Tiny format files. All resolutions of pictures are supported. The program has three printing mode options. First, you can just let CANDUMP analyze your picture and determine the necessary pixel blending to get the correct color on the paper. Steve Pauley contributed the 'auto' color mapping routine (he is a graphics artist by profession). Second, you can tell CANDUMP to also look at a pixel over-ride file...this is basically a file that contains lines like: 000 0000 real black 540 6262 nice brown where the first 3 numbers are the rgb values that might be found for a pixel in a picture, and the next four numbers refer to a 2x2 grid of colors (range of 0-7) that the pixel will be mapped into. Finally, there is a mode I added just for digitized pictures like Roberta, Marina, etc. This mode allows color 'greyscaling' by analyzing a pictures colors, sorting them by brightness, and then assigning user adjustable color matches to the pixels as they are encountered. Let me know if anyone out there even has these type of printers (although how you could live without being able to print out the color graphics on your system is beyond me...) I will have to decide how to repackage the program for shareware (more coding...), but it will be worth it if people can make use of it. -Todd Burkey ...ihnp4!meccts!stag!trb or trb@stag.UUCP