Bill Buckels, curator of the Aztec C Museum has released a new image comverter for the Apple IIgs. According to the announcment on CSA2, “BMP2SHR is a command line utility to convert BMP files to Apple IIgs SHR Files. Please see the User’s Manual and the Tutorial for information on using BMP2SHR.
If you have BMP2SHR Version 1.0 upgrading to Version 2.0 is well worth the effort. If you want to learn more about the SHR (Super Hi-Res) display on the Apple IIgs or on the Apple II VOC (Video Overlay Card) or you want to work with either, downloading BMP2SHR is likely worth the effort as well, especially for Windows Users.
The BMP2SHR utility is provided with source code and 3 flavors of executable program(s):
B2S16.EXE – MS-DOS Executable
Built under Large Model 16 bit Microsoft C (MSC) Version 8.00c Note: Run in an MS-DOS emulator like DOSBox if you can’t run it raw.
B2S32.EXE (bloatware) – Win32 cmd
Built under Visual Studio 2005 Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00 for 80×86
B2S.EXE – Win32 cmd
Built under MinGW 5.1.4 (gcc). This EXE was used for most of the testing. This builds properly under MinGW’s gcc GNU c compiler also widely used in
Linux.
Build environments and source code are provided with all the above.
SubDirectories:
These have changed for BMP2SHR Version 2.0.
bmp – I no longer provide all the BMPs that I have used to prepare the Demos and Documentation. A small number have been placed in this sub-directory to keep from cluttering-up the main directory. Serious users of BMP2SHR are unlikely to want my BMPs anyway so I see no point in making this distribution any larger than it already is for the sake of providing the source of the graphics content for the likes of demos and documentation, since BMP2SHR’s finished output is already included with the demos and docs.
bmp2shr – Source code and build environments for BMP2SHR’s various target executables distributed in the main directory and noted above. See the documentation also noted above for more details on what you can do with these. See the source code and source code comments, etc. to find-out more about how the implementation works. This will likely only be of interest to programmers.
code – This sub-directory contains the Aztec C65 Version 3.2b source code and AppleX build environment for some of the Apple II programs included on the demo disks. In fact the main B2S directory is designed to be “unzipped” below the AppleX\PROGRAMS directory on your own AppleX installation. This will provide you with the ability to compile the AztecC65 programs included.
disks – Disk Images of demos etc. in 2mg format. Note that I have provided copies of 4 Versions of an 8 bit SHR viewer by Ron Mercer called SHRView as well as my own demo viewers in Aztec C65. Ron’s program is distributed as ShareWare. Recent attempts to contact Ron to register my own copy have failed. Aside from that, since SHRView loads Brooks Format SHR files as well as the PIC and PNT formats that my demo loaders also load, I am using Ron’s viewer for my slideshows of some of BMP2SHR’s conversions.
Read the SHRView docs (on disk) for more info about SHRView. For that matter, review the contents of these disks (using a disk explorer like CiderPress) for more info about any of them.
docs – The User Manual and Tutorial, and other related documents live here. If these documents do not give you all the information that you need to use BMP2SHR, they will certainly provide a starting point. There are limits as to how much information should be included in a distribution like this. I have many more related documents which are available on request as time permits, if this is not enough, and if Internet searches etc. are not giving you the extra info you need.
I hope you enjoy using BMP2SHR. Please distribute what you have here freely and in its entirety if possible. BMP2SHR was written for fun and is free for all to use.”
To download the application, go to::
http://www.aztecmuseum.ca/
The User’s Manual can be downloaded from the following URL. (If you downloaded the zip file listed above, the manual is included):
http://www.aztecmuseum.ca/
The user tutorial can also be downloaded at the following URL (Also included in the .ZIP file with the application):
http://www.aztecmuseum.ca/
