Not "some" programs, but the specification of the graphic format:
original QL mode (4/8) must be rounded on word
new GD2 mode (even the 1 bit per pixel: B&W) must be rounded on long.
I do not see why we should insist on them being rounded on longwords - surely you are not suggesting that even for monochrome mode (1 bit per pixel) or Aurora's 8 bit mode (1 byte per pixel), we should actually store 4 bytes for every pixel !!
This is one of the standards which we need to agree on...
Surely for monochrome or 8 bit graphics, we can simply keep the line length rounded to the next byte...
The only bad thing about the PIC format is that you cannot easily
ask to ignore the pixel on the left part: the first pixel of the line
is always used. It's only a burden for screen-catcher as either:
- they force to round the left origin ( by 8 for a mode 4 for instance,
things are easier with high-colour GD2 mode)
- they have to perform some shifting themself before saving the area
into the file.
I am not sure what you mean here - as far as I understood, if you save an area 4 pixels wide (in mode 8 for example), the PIC file only uses 2 bytes to store those pixels, wherever the origin of the area is on the screen. It is up to the storage routine to ensure that the first pixel in the PIC file is the first pixel required on the screen, and similarly for the display routine.
I am working on a m/c toolkit to store and display PIC files under any modes, any offers to assist me with this... or maybe someone has already written most of the code somewhere....
--
Rich Mellor
RWAP Software
35 Chantry Croft, Kinsley, Pontefract, West Yorkshire, WF9 5JH
TEL: 01977 610509
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/rwapsoftware
