Encyclopedia of graphics file formats

942 Pages·1994·69.386 MB·English

by  Murray, James D., VanRyper, William

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O’REILLY & ASSOCIATES, INC.
Encycloped
Graphics
File Formats
Encyclopedia of
Graphics File
Formats
James D. Murray and William vanRyper
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
103 Morris Street, Suite A
Sebastopol, CA 95472
Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats
by James D. Murray and William vanRyper
Copyright © 1994 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Editor: Deborah Russell
Production Editor: Ellen Siever
Printing History:
July 1994 First Edition
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are
claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O'Reilly & Associates,
Inc., was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps.
Specific copyright notices and restrictions for specification documents and programs included on
the CD-ROM accompanying this book are included on that CD-ROM.
All of the specification documents and programs described in this book and provided by vendors
for inclusion on the CD-ROM are subject to change without notice by those vendors.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no
responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information
contained herein.
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., and the authors specifically disclaim all other warranties, express or
implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a
particular purpose with respect to the CD-ROM, the programs therein contained, the program
listings in the book, and/or the techniques described in the book, and in no event shall the
publisher or authors be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including
but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
This book is printed on acid-free paper with 50% recycled content, 10-15% post-consumer waste.
O'Reilly & Associates is committed to using paper with the highest recycled content available
consistent with high quality.
ISBN: 1-56592-058-9 [10/94]
Preface xv
Part One
Overview
1. Introduction 3
Why Graphics File Formats? 3
The Basics 4
Graphics Files 5
Graphics Data 7
Types of Graphics File Formats 12
Elements of a Graphics File 13
Converting Formats 15
Compressing Data 15
Format Summaries 16
2. Computer Graphics Basics 27
Pixels and Coordinates 27
Pixel Data and Palettes 31
Color 46
Overlays and Transparency 51
For Further Information 53
Table of Contents v
3. Bitmap Files 57
How Bitmap Files Are Organized 57
Header 59
Examples of Bitmap Headers 64
Bitmap Data 67
Footer 74
Other Bitmap File Data Structures 75
Other Bitmap File Features 75
Pros and Cons of Bitmap File Formats 76
4. Vector Files 77
Vector Versus Bitmap Files 77
What Is Vector Data? 77
Vector Files and Device Independence 78
Sources of Vector Format Files 79
How Vector Files Are Organized 80
Vector File Size Issues 83
Scaling Vector Files 85
Text in Vector Files 85
Pros and Cons of Vector Files 86
5. Metafiles 89
Platform Independence? 90
How Metafiles Are Organized 90
Pros and Cons of Metafiles 90
6. Platform Dependencies 93
Byte Order 93
File Size and Memory Limitations 95
Floating-point Formats 95
Bit Order 96
Filenames 99
For Further Information 100
vi Table of Contents
7. Format Conversion 101
Is It Really Possible? 101
Don't Do It If You Don't Need to 102
... But If You Do 102
Other Format Conversion Considerations 106
8. Working With Graphics Files 107
Reading Graphics Data 107
Writing Graphics Data 118
Test Files 120
Designing Your Own Format 121
For Further Information 124
9. Data Compression 125
Introduction 125
Data Compression Terminology 127
Pixel Packing 130
Run-length Encoding (RLE) 132
Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) Compression 142
CCITT (Huffman) Encoding 148
JPEG Compression 159
For Further Information About Data Compression 170
10. Multimedia 173
Beyond Traditional Graphics File Formats 173
Multimedia File Formats 174
Types of Data 175
For Further Information 184
Part Two
Graphics File Formats
Adobe Photoshop 189
Atari ST Graphics Formats 193
AutoCAD DXF 208
BDF 212
BRL-CAD 217
Table of Contents vii
BUFR 220
CALS Raster 223
CGM 232
CMU Formats 238
DKB 244
Dore Raster File Format 246
Dr. Halo 252
Encapsulated PostScript 256
FaceSaver 267
FAX Formats 270
FITS 273
FLI 282
GEM Raster 298
GEMVDI 303
GIF 309
GRASP 331
GRIB 337
Harvard Graphics 340
Hierarchical Data Format 342
IGES 345
Inset PIX 347
Intel DVI 358
Interchange File Format 371
JPEG File Interchange Format 377
Kodak Photo CD 384
Kodak YCC 388
Lotus DIF 390
Lotus PIC 392
Lumena Paint 395
Macintosh Paint 400
Macintosh PICT 407
Microsoft Paint 411
Microsoft RIFF 416
Microsoft RTF 426
Microsoft SYLK 431
Microsoft Windows Bitmap 434
Microsoft Windows Metafile 444
MIFF 451
MPEG 456
vill table of Contents
MTV 4b5
NAPLPS 469
NFF 471
OFF 479
OS/2 Bitmap 482
P3D 492
PBM, PGM, PNM, and PPM 498
PCX 503
PDS 519
Pictor PC Paint 524
PixarRIB 537
Plot-10 540
POV 542
Presentation Manager Metafile 547
PRT 551
QRT 558
QuickTime 560
Radiance 573
Rayshade 577
RIX 586
RTrace 617
SGI Image File Format 600
SGI Inventor 605
SGIY\ODL 611
SGO 617
Sun Icon 622
Sun Raster 625
TDDD 630
TGA 644
TIFF 663
TTDDD 689
uRay 695
Utah RLE 698
VICAR2 702
VIFF 706
VIS-5D 716
Vivid and Bob 724
WavefrontOBJ 727
WavefrontRLA 735
Table of Contents ix
WordPerfect Graphics Metafile 746
XBM 758
XPM 762
XWD 768
Part Three
Appendices
Appendix A: What's On The CD-ROM? 777
Using the CD-ROM 777
Contents of the CD-ROM 781
Using the CD-ROM With MS-DOS 790
Using the CD-ROM With Windows 791
Using the CD-ROM With OS/2 792
Using the CD-ROM With UNIX 793
Using the CD-ROM With the Macintosh 800
Software Summaries 805
What To Do If You Have Problems? 842
Appendix B: Graphics and Imaging Resources 843
Commercial Resources 843
Internet Access Methods 845
General Imaging Resources 847
Chemical and Biomedical Imaging Resources 852
Meteorological, Oceanographic, and Geophysical Imaging Resources. 854
Astronomy and Space Exploration Imaging Resources 855
Glossary 859
Index 879
X Table of Contents