hippie2000 – coding and research projects

Hello and welcome! My name is Ralf Steines, my net handle is hippie2000 and i’m the coder of the Back to the Roots project. During my work there i coded quite some invisible side projects, which help me maintain the archive and the masses of material from the team and all contributors. Back to the Roots mainly consists of a load of automatted mass processors. Wherever possible i try to maintain file masses with code instead of doing iterative work manually. At this place I will start to document or even release some of my coding and research projects.

Here’s a very incomplete list of my portable projects:

Graphics converters:

  • ilbmtoppm, ilbmtopng, ilbmtojpg – Amiga raster image converter
  • infotoppm, infotopng, infotojpg, infotogif – Amiga icon graphics converter
  • rekotoppm, rekotopng, rekotojpg – REKO cardset graphics converter

ilbmtoppm, ilbmtopng, ilbmtojpg:

You may know the name from the netpbm package (where i intend to submit this work), this is a replacement for the ilbmtoppm command, a backwards compatible but complete redesign of the netpbm command. It’s research in progress and attempts to convert each and every Amiga raster graphics format ever used, and there have been many, as you can see in the manpage!

Since it’s already by far the most evolved Amiga image converter around, it has been designed with these goals in mind:

  • Should replace the ilbmtoppm command of the netpbm package.
  • Should replace the iff ilbm loader of the image magick package.
  • Allows direct conversion to png, jpg and ppm formats (todo: gif).
  • Supports the common gateway interface to allow scriptless cgi usage.
  • Native support for apache directory browsing through mod_rewrite.
  • Ported to the Amiga, Linux and Windows platforms.

Besides a gif converter (requires color reduction) the functional goals are all reached and are well tested since years in our image mass processor and our automatic thumbnail creation engine. A few nasty image formats are not finished yet due to a lack of documentation (old VLAB scans and some Video Toaster files). The submission to netpbm and imagick requires a code split and some wrapper code which is not finished yet.

Here’s the manpage which shows the netpbm view of this project, thus does neither cover png and jpg target graphics formats nor any cgi usage.

ilbmtoppm manpage

infotoppm, infotopng, infotojpg, infotogif:

This is an enhanced version of Dirk Stoecker’s ModifyIcon program, allowing to convert all kinds of Amiga Workbench icons. It’s also research in progress, there are still a few (rare) broken icons which work on the Amiga but fail to be converted properly.

Here the design goals are similar to the ones of ilbmtoppm:

  • Should add an infotoppm command to the netpbm package.
  • Should add an amiga icon loader to the image magick package.
  • Allows direct conversion to png, jpg, gif and ppm formats.
  • Supports the common gateway interface to allow scriptless cgi usage.
  • Native support for apache directory browsing through mod_rewrite.
  • Ported to the Amiga, Linux and Windows platforms.

Also here the functional goals are all reached and are well tested since years in our image mass processor and our automatic thumbnail creation engine. The few nasty icons which do not convert properly yet will be supported with time. The submission to netpbm and imagick requires a code split and some wrapper code which is not finished yet.

Here’s the manpage covering all target graphics formats and some unfinished cgi usage info:

  • infotoxxx manpage

rekotoppm, rekotopng, rekotojpg:

This a enhanced graphics converter based on information gathered from Dirk Stoecker’s sdiREKO datatype, allowing to convert REKO and RKP cardset graphics.

Here the design goals are similar to the ones of ilbmtoppm:

  • Should add an rekotoppm command to the netpbm package.
  • Should add an reko cardset loader to the image magick package.
  • Allows direct conversion to png, jpg and ppm formats (todo: gif).
  • Supports the common gateway interface to allow scriptless cgi usage.
  • Native support for apache directory browsing through mod_rewrite.
  • Ported to the Amiga, Linux and Windows platforms.

Besides a gif converter (requires color reduction) the functional goals are all reached and are well tested since years in our image mass processor and our automatic thumbnail creation engine. The submission to netpbm and imagick requires a code split and some wrapper code which is not finished yet.

Here’s the manpage covering all target graphics formats and some unfinished cgi usage info:

  • rekotoxxx manpage