unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) (01/26/91)
In article <1991Jan25.145637.13116@infonode.ingr.com> gentrys@infonode.ingr.com (Scott Gentry) writes: >Someone wanted to know how to convert 320 mode graphics to 640 mode graphics. >Here are three programs that do a good job and are recommended. > >2. SuperConvert - not released, yet. Due by the end of this month. Much >improved version of SHRConvert. Has all SHRConverts features plus a lot more. While this has nothing to do with converting 320 to 640 mode, it seems like it was worthy of asking/saying... According to the last 'release' and what people have said on here, it will not have GIF conversion. (Supposedly 2.7 was only for AppleFest last year, but it got out... AppleFest? Don't you mean PirateFest? Heh.. Remember the games a few years ago that had the AppleFest logo then crossed out the Apple and wrote in "cursive" Pirate over it??) I think this is because the GIF standard is copyrighted by CompuServe and they were thinking about charging people to use it or somesuch.. I forget, but it was some legal hassle with CompuServe. Not that I really will -miss- it having GIF conversion, unless Jason got pissed at Jonah Stitch and _the_Lord_High_Giffer_dude, and wanted to show them up and make an EVEN BETTER/STRONGER/FASTER GIF converter.. (Why am I suddenly reminded of the Six Million Dollar Man?? heh heh) Not likely, as it seems people were DOUBLING SHRConvert (2.1?)'s speed with purportedly "simple" basic/machine language hacks.. Meaning that if he didn't care to speed up his original algorithm, it doesn't seem like he'd want to speed it up now. Not that I think that speeding up algorithms is EASY, it just seems that some great improvements to THIS algorithm were easy. -- /Apple II(GS) Forever! unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu MAIL ME FOR INFO ABOUT CHEAP CDs\ \WRITE TO ORIGIN ABOUT ULTIMA VI //e and IIGS! Mail me for addresses, & info. /
toddpw@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel) (01/26/91)
unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) writes: >Not likely, as it seems people were DOUBLING SHRConvert (2.1?)'s speed >with purportedly "simple" basic/machine language hacks.. That was my claim-- I wrote a sleazy GIF parser/decoder in Basic/Assembly, which was 2-3 X faster than SHR convert with the 320x200x16 test picture I was using. I just hauled it out to do some sample benchmarks (turned off the Zip so these are all unaccelerated tests): program 320x200x16 320x200x256 800x600x256 Basic/ML 13 sec 13 sec No thanks GIF3200v0.2 11 sec 12 sec 1:05 LHG 0.whatever 2 sec (!!) 4 sec 25 sec I tried to time the actual picture decompression, and not the interface stuff (which varies, since GIF3200 is a desktop program and LHG is still a raw EXE or S16 which only responds to finder messages). Those of you who are bugging me for beta's of LHG, sit tight, the color crunching is not even GIF3200 Pre Scale quality yet. (Jonah, don't send me anything; I want to figure this out myself.) After I get some sleep I will be rewriting a much better color cruncher. At that point it will be really tempting to release LHG betas (the real version will be shareware or something because this is finally something worth money and I am really broke this term). However, I need to figure out what to do about copyrighting it first. Todd Whitesel toddpw @ tybalt.caltech.edu