TI-99/Geneve picture formats

[Brufnus]

During my intense floppy archiving project, I've come across some picture formats I don't recall to have seen before. It doesn't help much that I've been away from it for many, many years, alas... c".)

 

Anyway, I encountered quite a few RLE and Graphx format pics, but don't know with which programs to display these. Any suggestions? Altso, I lack a good gif viewer for the Geneve... 

[Nick99]

MaxRLE was the viewer I used back in the days. 

A gif-viewer for the Geneve should be found in one of the Geneve-threads in this forum.

[Brufnus]

6 hours ago, Nick99 said:

MaxRLE was the viewer I used back in the days. 

A gif-viewer for the Geneve should be found in one of the Geneve-threads in this forum.

In the mean time, I found gif2 which works, although not as user friendly as I could wish for. Do you know where to find MaxRLE? 

[+mizapf]

My Fractals program uses RLE, but switches to bitmap whenever the RLE overhead becomes too high.

[Brufnus]

3 hours ago, mizapf said:

My Fractals program uses RLE, but switches to bitmap whenever the RLE overhead becomes too high.

Okay, I'll take a look into that... think I have a copy. Thanks!

[+Ksarul]

There were several formats in use BITD: CSGD (used by a program of the same name), RLE (used by MAXRLE and several others), GRAPHX (used by the program of the same name), TI Artist fonts and instances (used by the program of the same name), PixPro fonts and images (used by the program of the same name), MYART (used by the program of the same name), The Printer's Apprentice/The Geometer's Apprentice pictures/fonts, YAPP images (read GIF and MYART formats, IIRC), and probably one or two others. . .

[+mizapf]

2 hours ago, Brufnus said:

Okay, I'll take a look into that... think I have a copy. Thanks!

This is from my documentation:

 

There are two save and load formats for the pictures.  The first is the
     MyArt  compatible  format  (Dis/Fix  128)  which  proved  to   be   too
     space-consuming  for  complex fractal pictures.  To reduce file sizes I
     invented a new format, referred to as the Fractals format.

     MyArt format

     +----+-+------------+
     0    3 4           15    Bit position
      Color     Length

     Length describes the number of consecutive pixels  of  the  same  color
     (bits  0-3) starting from the current position in a row.  Length cannot
     grow larger than 512 since the format is line-oriented and stops at the
     end of every line.  This means that there are vacant bit position (e.g.
     bit number 4) useful for further information:

     Fractals format

     (1) +----+-0-+------------+      identical with MyArt format
         0    3 4 5           15

     (2) +----+-1-+------------+
         0    3 4 5           15

     Format (2) is to be interpreted as follows: Bits 0-3 are the  color  of
     the pixel at the current position; bits 5-15 inform about the number of
     nybbles following this word which have to  be  plotted  as  consecutive
     points,  each with its own color.  One dummy nybble may be added to get
     to the byte boundary.

     Example: Instead of 1002  4001  3003  F001  in  the  MyArt  format  the
     Fractals  format  would  read  like  this:  1806 1433 3F.  An algorithm
     decides which format ((1) or (2)) to take to  save  as  much  space  as
     possible.   This works out in a considerably reduced file size (for the
     computer scientists among you: best case appr.   75%,  worst  case  0%,
     average  case  (empirically)  appr.   50%  reduction  compared to MyArt
     format).

     Furthermore, picture data are stored in the first sector  of  the  file
     which  format  is  DIS/FIX 255 (also to be distinguished from the MyArt
     files).  The structure of the first sector is listed below:

     Byte 0: Backdrop color
     Byte 1: 'C' or 'M'
     Bytes 2-33: Color palette
     Bytes 34-67: xmin,xmax,ymin,ymax in RADIX-100, iter in INTEGER
     Bytes 68-71: Unused
     Bytes 72-254: Comments in ASCII

     The following sectors are filled with picture data in the  formats  (1)
     and (2).

[Brufnus]

8 minutes ago, mizapf said:

This is from my documentation:

 

There are two save and load formats for the pictures.  The first is the
     MyArt  compatible  format  (Dis/Fix  128)  which  proved  to   be   too
     space-consuming  for  complex fractal pictures.  To reduce file sizes I
     invented a new format, referred to as the Fractals format.

     MyArt format

     +----+-+------------+
     0    3 4           15    Bit position
      Color     Length

     Length describes the number of consecutive pixels  of  the  same  color
     (bits  0-3) starting from the current position in a row.  Length cannot
     grow larger than 512 since the format is line-oriented and stops at the
     end of every line.  This means that there are vacant bit position (e.g.
     bit number 4) useful for further information:

     Fractals format

     (1) +----+-0-+------------+      identical with MyArt format
         0    3 4 5           15

     (2) +----+-1-+------------+
         0    3 4 5           15

     Format (2) is to be interpreted as follows: Bits 0-3 are the  color  of
     the pixel at the current position; bits 5-15 inform about the number of
     nybbles following this word which have to  be  plotted  as  consecutive
     points,  each with its own color.  One dummy nybble may be added to get
     to the byte boundary.

     Example: Instead of 1002  4001  3003  F001  in  the  MyArt  format  the
     Fractals  format  would  read  like  this:  1806 1433 3F.  An algorithm
     decides which format ((1) or (2)) to take to  save  as  much  space  as
     possible.   This works out in a considerably reduced file size (for the
     computer scientists among you: best case appr.   75%,  worst  case  0%,
     average  case  (empirically)  appr.   50%  reduction  compared to MyArt
     format).

     Furthermore, picture data are stored in the first sector  of  the  file
     which  format  is  DIS/FIX 255 (also to be distinguished from the MyArt
     files).  The structure of the first sector is listed below:

     Byte 0: Backdrop color
     Byte 1: 'C' or 'M'
     Bytes 2-33: Color palette
     Bytes 34-67: xmin,xmax,ymin,ymax in RADIX-100, iter in INTEGER
     Bytes 68-71: Unused
     Bytes 72-254: Comments in ASCII

     The following sectors are filled with picture data in the  formats  (1)
     and (2).

Thanks for the info!

[Brufnus]

35 minutes ago, Ksarul said:

There were several formats in use BITD: CSGD (used by a program of the same name), RLE (used by MAXRLE and several others), GRAPHX (used by the program of the same name), TI Artist fonts and instances (used by the program of the same name), PixPro fonts and images (used by the program of the same name), MYART (used by the program of the same name), The Printer's Apprentice/The Geometer's Apprentice pictures/fonts, YAPP images (read GIF and MYART formats, IIRC), and probably one or two others. . .

Yeah, but the problem is I don't have these two programs... MAXRLE and Graphx. I do have MyArt, TPA, Pix Pro, YAPP, and TI Artist, though. c",) I didn't recall YAPP could be used with gif, but I'll try that - thx!  

[RickyDean]

41 minutes ago, Brufnus said:

Yeah, but the problem is I don't have these two programs... MAXRLE and Graphx. I do have MyArt, TPA, Pix Pro, YAPP, and TI Artist, though. c",) I didn't recall YAPP could be used with gif, but I'll try that - thx!  

There was a gif veiwing program too! But for the moment I can't think of the name.

[+9640News]

1 hour ago, RickyDean said:

There was a gif veiwing program too! But for the moment I can't think of the name.

1 hour ago, RickyDean said:

[+9640News]

Picture Transfer

[Nick99]

MaxRLE can be found here, it's a zipped folder containing ti-files format.

1210.zip

[Brufnus]

13 hours ago, 9640News said:

Picture Transfer

Thanks, I'll see if I can find that one. c",)

[Brufnus]

6 hours ago, Nick99 said:

MaxRLE can be found here, it's a zipped folder containing ti-files format.

1210.zip 54.43 kB · 0 downloads

Great, thanks a lot!