a8jdpeg and JpegView can both convert JPEGs to PGM (Portable Greymap) format. PGM files can easily be read on the Atari 8-bit (and many other machines too), and converted to whatever format suits you.
Now there's a PGM viewer available for the Atari 8-bit. This uses the same interface as JpegView, but only needs 48K of RAM. This means that you can now view images in HIP and other flicker modes on a 48K machine:
PgmView 0.1
(17Oct03)
a PGM viewer for the Atari 8-bit. |
|
This is also useful for frequently viewed images or if you want to view an image in several different display modes, especially if you've got a large ramdisk. It's a lot quicker to decode a PGM than a JPEG. The downside is that PGMs take up a lot more disk space than JPEGs.
PgmView also gives another way of transfering images between other computers and the Atari 8-bit. Netpbm is a freely available toolkit that allows you to convert images from many formats to PGM and back on Unix, Windows and Mac computers. So you can convert from just about any image format to PGM and then view it on your Atari 8-bit.
Converting formats
PGM is a good format to use if you want to extract the image
information from a JPEG for your own use. The PGM files created by
a8jdpeg 0.8 contain a header:
P5 #a8jdpeg-0.8 width height 255Where width and height are the width and height of the image in pixels. These values are stored in ASCII. The header will be followed by the image data, with each pixel being held in 1 byte of data, with values ranging from 0 (black) to 255 (white). The total number of bytes in the file will depend on the width and height of the image, as found in the header. JpegView produces PGMs with an identical header, except that the #a8jdpeg-0.8 comment is replaced by #JpegView-0.9.
As an example of how to do this, a simple Atari BASIC program that
reads the PGMs produced by a8jdpeg and JpegView is available. To try
it, first create a PGM file called "PICTURE.PGM" using either a8jdpeg
or JpegView, then LOAD this program into BASIC and RUN it. The
program displays the PGM file as a GR.9 image. The program itself is
very slow - it's provided as a simple example of how to read a PGM
file, not as an example of how to draw GR.9 screens quickly (it'd be
much quicker to POKE the data to the screen area rather than using
COLOR and PLOT commands). You should be able to easily adapt this
program to suit your own needs.
NOTE:
This is an Atari BASIC tokenized program, the .BIN extension is to
make sure the file gets downloaded as a binary, you can get rid of the
.BIN extension after you have downloaded the file. Boot into BASIC and
either LOAD or RUN the file.
Here is the source to READPGM.BAS:
1 REM READ A PGM FILE CREATED BY
2 REM A8JDPEG
3 REM RAPHAEL ESPINO, 17SEP02
9 REM ---------------------------
10 WIDTH=0:HEIGHT=0:PARAM=0:DIM DAT$(1000)
20 OPEN #1,4,0,"D:PICTURE.PGM"
30 GOSUB 1000:REM READ PGM HEADER
40 REM IMAGE DIMENSIONS ARE NOW IN WIDTH AND HEIGHT VARIABLES, YOU CAN NOW READ IN IMAGE DATA AND PROCESS IT
50 WID=WIDTH:IF WID>80 THEN WID=80
55 HEI=HEIGHT:IF HEI>192 THEN HEI=192
60 ADRHI=INT(ADR(DAT$)/256):ADRLO=ADR(DAT$)-ADRHI*256:LENHI=INT(WIDTH/256):LENLO=WIDTH-LENHI*256
70 GRAPHICS 9
80 FOR Q=1 TO HEI:REM READ 1 LINE AT A TIME
90 DAT$(1)="":DAT$(1000)="":DAT$(2)=DAT$
100 POKE 852,ADRLO:POKE 853,ADRHI:POKE 856,LENLO:POKE 857,LENHI:POKE
850,7:I=USR(ADR("hhh*LVd"),16):REM The '*' and 'd' are in inverse video
109 REM NOW DRAW THE LINE ON THE SCREEN PIXEL BY PIXEL, THIS IS VERY SLOW BUT WORKS
110 FOR W=1 TO WID
120 COLOR INT(ASC(DAT$(W,W))/16):PLOT W-1,Q-1
130 NEXT W
140 NEXT Q
150 GOTO 150
200 CLOSE #1:END
999 REM -------------------------
1000 REM READ PGM HEADER
1010 GET #1,K:IF K<>ASC("P") THEN ? "NOT A PGM FILE":END
1020 GET #1,K:IF K<>ASC("5") THEN ? "UNSUPPORTED TYPE P";CHR$(K):END
1040 GET #1,K
1050 IF K=ASC("#") THEN GOSUB 1200:GOTO 1040:REM SKIP COMMENTS
1060 IF K