I think nvg's mail server is on crack... yesterday it responded to an
unsubscribe command that I'd sent on April 4*.  Thanks Frode, if it was
you who kicked it. :-)

On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 02:54:05PM +0100, Simon Owen wrote:
> Thanks for that Ian -- it does sound very similar to what I was aiming
> for.  Though the standard screen$ capabilities seem very limited, with
> maybe just 1 change per line?  (plus flash)

Sam BASIC's handling of this is tied to line interrupts (i.e., same
as when you type PALETTE LINE).  The advantage of that is the machine
keeps working while the screen is up; the disadvantage is that you
can't do much work during the interrupt (and the code isn't written
for speed).  I think the limit is about 2 before the changes start
showing on screen.

I've tried this program on a few random images but With 2 changes per
line the difference between allowing changes and having no changes is
only minimally visible (unless I'm just not using colourful enough
images to start with).

The other problem it has is that with FS dithering sometimes the error
values build up to the extent that when a palette change occurs it might
select too much of the new colour just to get rid of the errors - this
produces either a visible horizontal line in the output or occasionally
a sudden change in shade.  The program's "-s" flag tries to fix this
by using a random number to inhibit selection of a colour on the line
where it's new, but either that doesn't work very well or I didn't get
the randomness quite right.

imc

* Needed to slightly change the format of my email address so it would
  let me post.

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