phils@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (02/21/89)
A new version of "Xim", along with added utilities is availble to those with
ftp access. This release has several improvements over the previously
announced version and the one found in the X11r3 release. Here is a readme
file extract.
"Xim" is an X program that displays 24 and 8 bit images onto 8, 4
and 1-bit deep terminals. It is intended to make the viewing of images
across a variety of displays fast and easy. With this distribution,
several utilities for printing, converting and processing xim format
images have been added. Various processing options are available for
making images suitable for color and bitmap displays.
Among the most useful utilities included are the abilities to:
1) Convert xwd output, this includes video windows to xim format.
2) Print to postscript.
3) Quantize 24 bit images down to 8.
4) Interface with Utah Raster Toolkit and its "rle" format.
This is now release 3 for the "Xim" program. It has several improvements
since release 2 and the version found in the X11R3 release, such as:
1) iconifying to an image.
2) the ability to invert colormaps for viewing negatives.
3) fitting images to color displays with less than 256 colors.
4) better use of the improved XPutImage and other XLib calls.
This release also incorporates changes to the xim format which make it
incompatible with the previous formats, but a conversion filter is
provided to update images. Most of the utilities also come with mam
pages.
For those unfamiliar with Xim:
The image are in an "xim" format used here at the lab. They maybe
straight forward 8 bit pixmaps or 24 bit RGB separations, plus an an
alpha channel. The files may either be compressed (for those Unix
systems with the the "compress" and "zcat" commands) or runlength
encoded. The header on each file is 1024 bytes large and contains
necessary information about image formats, sizes, authors, encoding
flags, and the colormap. Many images may be strung together in one
file. All image data is in characters (no ints, shorts or floats) so
as to be easily portable accross machines and some what human readable.
Code and images are available from m9-520-1.mit.edu (18.80.0.45)
through anonymous ftp. This version of ftp asks for an e-mail address, but
don't be afraid. This is just for accounting and justifying this free
and spare time service. This machine has its share of down time so
keep trying. Finally, images and tar files should be ftp'd in binary mode.
People having ftp'd xim3.tar before this message should get this again.
Philip R. Thompson (phils@athena.mit.edu) or (617)253-0782
Computer Resource Laboratory
Department of Architecture and Urban Planning
M.I.T.
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139