[comp.windows.ms] Problems with Gif2Bmp and ZSoft's PC Paintbrush...

cci8j@harlequin.cs.Virginia.EDU (Carmen C. Iannacone) (09/13/90)

Hello everyone,

	I'm using a standalone DOS exe file called gif2bmp.exe.  It claims
to convert GIFs to BMP files, but everything I convert shows up as bizarre
mutilations of the original.  "Smiling Faces" turn into "Beelzebub on 
Holiday."  Even the Mona Lisa corrupts...

	I noticed the same effect when I went from GIF -> PCX (via Hijaak)
and then from PCX -> BMP via Windows Paint.

	Should I expect to see reliable renderings of 256 color gifs in my
lifetime (and I'm pretty young, if I do say so myself...)?

	Also, if you've read this far and are a user of PC Paintbrush as 
bundled with the 400 dpi MS Mouse, can you explain why I FRIEZE.EXE is
returning "Can't init virtual memory"?  The setup pgm is pretty pathetic,
so if you are running PC Paintbrush on a 382 w/4 MB ram, could you send
me your PAINT.BAT file, and any horror stories you've encountered using
it under windows 3.0.

	Thanks for everything, I had a great time.  The food was delicious.

	Carmen (cci8j@virginia.edu)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Carmen Iannacone                    Email:      cci8j@Virginia.EDU   ._o
Department of Computer Science          304 14th Street N.W. Apt. 9A       |>
University of Virginia			Charlottesville, Virginia 22903    4

jcmorris@mwunix.mitre.org (Joe Morris) (09/14/90)

In a recent article Carmen C. Iannacone writes:
 
>	Also, if you've read this far and are a user of PC Paintbrush as 
>bundled with the 400 dpi MS Mouse, can you explain why I FRIEZE.EXE is
>returning "Can't init virtual memory"?  

I get that message if I try to start PC Paintbrush with insufficient
main memory (i.e., the stuff below the 640K line).  I usually have to
reboot to drop out memory hogs like MSCDEX, run paintbrush, then reboot
again.  

Has anyone (Z-Soft, are you listening?) figured a way to make pbrush run
without frieze?

Joe Morris

d89os@efd.lth.se (Ola Sigurdson) (09/17/90)

In article <1990Sep12.211223.24944@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>,
cci8j@harlequin.cs.Virginia.EDU (Carmen C. Iannacone) writes:

> 	I'm using a standalone DOS exe file called gif2bmp.exe.  It claims
> to convert GIFs to BMP files, but everything I convert shows up as bizarre
> mutilations of the original.  "Smiling Faces" turn into "Beelzebub on 
> Holiday."  Even the Mona Lisa corrupts...
> 
> 	I noticed the same effect when I went from GIF -> PCX (via Hijaak)
> and then from PCX -> BMP via Windows Paint.
> 
> 	Should I expect to see reliable renderings of 256 color gifs in my
> lifetime (and I'm pretty young, if I do say so myself...)?

The answer is no -- if you're using a standard VGA display.
The problem is that Windows uses a fixed colour palette which doesn't match
the palette in your GIF images.
The only reliable solution is to get a display (and matching driver) with
a huge number of colours (say 256000 or 16M) and import the image to 
Windows.

(Mr) Ola Sigurdson      Internet: d89os@efd.lth.se