[Coco] Sockmaster HiColor and Rascan IMG file format

[John Kowalski]

At 08:03 PM 10/01/2007 -0600, Roger Taylor wrote:
>Hello Sock,
>
>I'm glad you're posting this for public use.  I wanted to understand 
>this code many years ago when I was developing the Net-Mate terminal 

I just had a look at the Hicolor code a few minutes ago and it's pretty hard
to follow.  The routines are divided up so you could look at the different
steps that go into the process but the areas that are about color/palette
assignment and divination are almost mystifyingly crypic.  I have a feeling
that maybe I should also dig out an older version of the Hicolor source and
include it as well because it'll be smaller, simpler and have more comments
in the code.

Twilight term's color trickery was much, much simpler in comparison and was
limited to just 20 preset "dither" patterns - no color calculation at all,
just manually assigned to fit the ANSI 16 colors.

>With P-3 now being a Portal-9 IDE and Rainbow IDE project 
>for anybody to use in any way they like, perhaps my past dream can 
>become a reality one day if someone studies your HiColor mode and 
>learns how to interface it with P-3 or Net-Mate.  Unfortunately, I am 
>so busy right now that I can only dream of those ideas for a future date.  :)

Now *that* would be pretty cool to see happen.  The HiColor viewer is more
or less just a technology demo that imports 320x200x256 bmp and img files.
It would look even better if the technique was applied to images with more
than 256 colors in them.
Plus, there are also some parts in the code that could be improved for even
better results (areas where I cut corners for the sake of keeping it "simple".)


Anyway, if there really are people looking at the source code but finding it
cryptic, just let me know.  I will dig out an older, slightly
easier-to-follow version of HiColor and post it up as well.

                                         John Kowalski (Sock Master)
                                         http://www.axess.com/twilight/sock/