bitmap, bmtoa, atobm - bitmap editor and converter utilities for the X Window
System
bitmap [
-options ... ] [
filename ] [
basename ]
bmtoa [
-chars ... ] [
filename ]
atobm [
-chars cc ] [
-name variable ] [
-xhot number ] [
-yhot number ] [
filename
]
The
bitmap program is a rudimentary tool for creating or editing
rectangular images made up of 1's and 0's. Bitmaps are used in X for defining
clipping regions, cursor shapes, icon shapes, and tile and stipple patterns.
The
bmtoa and
atobm filters convert
bitmap files (FILE
FORMAT) to and from ASCII strings. They are most commonly used to quickly
print out bitmaps and to generate versions for including in text.
Bitmap supports the standard X Toolkit command line arguments (see
X(7)). The following additional arguments are supported as well.
- -size WIDTHxHEIGHT
- Specifies size of the grid in squares.
- -sw dimension
- Specifies the width of squares in pixels.
- -sh dimension
- Specifies the height of squares in pixels.
- -gt dimension
- Grid tolerance. If the square dimensions fall below the
specified value, grid will be automatically turned off.
- -grid, +grid
- Turns on or off the grid lines.
- -axes, +axes
- Turns on or off the major axes.
- -dashed, +dashed
- Turns on or off dashing for the frame and grid lines.
- -stippled, +stippled
- Turns on or off stippling of highlighted squares.
- -proportional, +proportional
- Turns proportional mode on or off. If proportional mode is
on, square width is equal to square height. If proportional mode is off,
bitmap will use the smaller square dimension, if they were
initially different.
- -dashes filename
- Specifies the bitmap to be used as a stipple for
dashing.
- -stipple filename
- Specifies the bitmap to be used as a stipple for
highlighting.
- -hl color
- Specifies the color used for highlighting.
- -fr color
- Specifies the color used for the frame and grid lines.
- filename
- Specifies the bitmap to be initially loaded into the
program. If the file does not exist, bitmap will assume it is a
new file.
- basename
- Specifies the basename to be used in the C code output
file. If it is different than the basename in the working file,
bitmap will change it when saving the file.
Bmtoa accepts the following option:
- -chars cc
- This option specifies the pair of characters to use in the
string version of the bitmap. The first character is used for 0 bits and
the second character is used for 1 bits. The default is to use dashes (-)
for 0's and sharp signs (#) for 1's.
Atobm accepts the following options:
- -chars cc
- This option specifies the pair of characters to use when
converting string bitmaps into arrays of numbers. The first character
represents a 0 bit and the second character represents a 1 bit. The
default is to use dashes (-) for 0's and sharp signs (#) for 1's.
- -name variable
- This option specifies the variable name to be used when
writing out the bitmap file. The default is to use the basename of the
filename command line argument or leave it blank if the standard
input is read.
- -xhot number
- This option specifies the X coordinate of the hotspot. Only
positive values are allowed. By default, no hotspot information is
included.
- -yhot number
- This option specifies the Y coordinate of the hotspot. Only
positive values are allowed. By default, no hotspot information is
included.
Bitmap displays grid in which each square represents a single bit in the
picture being edited. Actual size of the bitmap image, as it would appear
normally and inverted, can be obtained by pressing
Meta-I key.
You are free to move the image popup out of the way to continue editing.
Pressing the left mouse button in the popup window or
Meta-I again
will remove the real size bitmap image.
If the bitmap is to be used for defining a cursor, one of the squares in the
images may be designated as the hot spot. This determines where the cursor is
actually pointing. For cursors with sharp tips (such as arrows or fingers),
this is usually at the end of the tip; for symmetric cursors (such as crosses
or bullseyes), this is usually at the center.
Bitmaps are stored as small C code fragments suitable for including in
applications. They provide an array of bits as well as symbolic constants
giving the width, height, and hot spot (if specified) that may be used in
creating cursors, icons, and tiles.
To edit a bitmap image simply click on one of the buttons with drawing commands
(
Point, Curve, Line, Rectangle, etc.) and move the pointer into the
bitmap grid window. Press one of the buttons on your mouse and the appropriate
action will take place. You can either set, clear or invert the gird squares.
Setting a grid square corresponds to setting a bit in the bitmap image to 1.
Clearing a grid square corresponds to setting a bit in the bitmap image to 0.
Inverting a grid square corresponds to changing a bit in the bitmap image from
0 to 1 or 1 to 0, depending what its previous state was. The default behavior
of mouse buttons is as specified below.
MouseButton1 Set
MouseButton2 Invert
MouseButton3 Clear
MouseButton4 Clear
MouseButton5 Clear
This default behavior can be changed by setting the button function resources.
An example is provided below.
bitmap*button1Function: Set
bitmap*button2Function: Clear
bitmap*button3Function: Invert
etc.
The button function applies to all drawing commands, including copying, moving
and pasting, flood filling and setting the hot spot.
Here is the list of drawing commands accessible through the buttons at the left
side of the application's window. Some commands can be aborted by pressing A
inside the bitmap window, allowing the user to select different guiding points
where applicable.
- Clear
- This command clears all bits in the bitmap image. The grid
squares will be set to the background color. Pressing C inside the bitmap
window has the same effect.
- Set
- This command sets all bits in the bitmap image. The grid
squares will be set to the foreground color. Pressing S inside the bitmap
window has the same effect.
- Invert
- This command inverts all bits in the bitmap image. The grid
squares will be inverted appropriately. Pressing I inside the bitmap
window has the same effect.
- Mark
- This command is used to mark an area of the grid by
dragging out a rectangular shape in the highlighting color. Once the area
is marked, it can be operated on by a number of commands (see Up, Down,
Left, Right, Rotate, Flip, Cut, etc.) Only one marked area can
be present at any time. If you attempt to mark another area, the old mark
will vanish. The same effect can be achieved by pressing
Shift-MouseButton1 and dragging out a rectangle in the grid window.
Pressing Shift-MouseButton2 will mark the entire grid area.
- Unmark
- This command will cause the marked area to vanish. The same
effect can be achieved by pressing Shift-MouseButton3.
- Copy
- This command is used to copy an area of the grid from one
location to another. If there is no marked grid area displayed,
Copy behaves just like Mark described above. Once there is a
marked grid area displayed in the highlighting color, this command has two
alternative behaviors. If you click a mouse button inside the marked area,
you will be able to drag the rectangle that represents the marked area to
the desired location. After you release the mouse button, the area will be
copied. If you click outside the marked area, Copy will assume
that you wish to mark a different region of the bitmap image, thus it will
behave like Mark again.
- Move
- This command is used to move an area of the grid from one
location to another. Its behavior resembles the behavior of Copy
command, except that the marked area will be moved instead of copied.
- Flip Horizontally
- This command will flip the bitmap image with respect to the
horizontal axes. If a marked area of the grid is highlighted, it will
operate only inside the marked area. Pressing H inside the bitmap window
has the same effect.
- Up
- This command moves the bitmap image one pixel up. If a
marked area of the grid is highlighted, it will operate only inside the
marked area. Pressing UpArrow inside the bitmap window has the same
effect.
- Flip Vertically
- This command will flip the bitmap image with respect to the
vertical axes. If a marked area of the grid is highlighted, it will
operate only inside the marked area. Pressing V inside the bitmap window
has the same effect.
- Left
- This command moves the bitmap image one pixel to the left.
If a marked area of the grid is highlighted, it will operate only inside
the marked area. Pressing LeftArrow inside the bitmap window has the same
effect.
- Fold
- This command will fold the bitmap image so that the
opposite corners become adjacent. This is useful when creating bitmap
images for tiling. Pressing F inside the bitmap window has the same
effect.
- Right
- This command moves the bitmap image one pixel to the right.
If a marked area of the grid is highlighted, it will operate only inside
the marked area. Pressing RightArrow inside the bitmap window has the same
effect.
- Rotate Left
- This command rotates the bitmap image 90 degrees to the
left (counter clockwise.) If a marked area of the grid is highlighted, it
will operate only inside the marked area. Pressing L inside the bitmap
window has the same effect.
- Down
- This command moves the bitmap image one pixel down. If a
marked area of the grid is highlighted, it will operate only inside the
marked area. Pressing DownArrow inside the bitmap window has the same
effect.
- Rotate Right
- This command rotates the bitmap image 90 degrees to the
right (clockwise.) If a marked area of the grid is highlighted, it will
operate only inside the marked area. Pressing R inside the bitmap window
has the same effect.
- Point
- This command will change the grid squares underneath the
mouse pointer if a mouse button is being pressed down. If you drag the
mouse button continuously, the line may not be continuous, depending on
the speed of your system and frequency of mouse motion events.
- Curve
- This command will change the grid squares underneath the
mouse pointer if a mouse button is being pressed down. If you drag the
mouse button continuously, it will make sure that the line is continuous.
If your system is slow or bitmap receives very few mouse motion
events, it might behave quite strangely.
- Line
- This command will change the gird squares in a line between
two squares. Once you press a mouse button in the grid window,
bitmap will highlight the line from the square where the mouse button
was initially pressed to the square where the mouse pointer is located. By
releasing the mouse button you will cause the change to take effect, and
the highlighted line will disappear.
- Rectangle
- This command will change the gird squares in a rectangle
between two squares. Once you press a mouse button in the grid window,
bitmap will highlight the rectangle from the square where the mouse
button was initially pressed to the square where the mouse pointer is
located. By releasing the mouse button you will cause the change to take
effect, and the highlighted rectangle will disappear.
- Filled Rectangle
- This command is identical to Rectangle, except at
the end the rectangle will be filled rather than outlined.
- Circle
- This command will change the gird squares in a circle
between two squares. Once you press a mouse button in the grid window,
bitmap will highlight the circle from the square where the mouse
button was initially pressed to the square where the mouse pointer is
located. By releasing the mouse button you will cause the change to take
effect, and the highlighted circle will disappear.
- Filled Circle
- This command is identical to Circle, except at the
end the circle will be filled rather than outlined.
- Flood Fill
- This command will flood fill the connected area underneath
the mouse pointer when you click on the desired square. Diagonally
adjacent squares are not considered to be connected.
- Set Hot Spot
- This command designates one square in the grid as the hot
spot if this bitmap image is to be used for defining a cursor. Pressing a
mouse button in the desired square will cause a diamond shape to be
displayed.
- Clear Hot Spot
- This command removes any designated hot spot from the
bitmap image.
- Undo
- This command will undo the last executed command. It has
depth one, that is, pressing Undo after Undo will undo
itself.
The File menu commands can be accessed by pressing the File button and selecting
the appropriate menu entry, or by pressing Ctrl key with another key. These
commands deal with files and global bitmap parameters, such as size, basename,
filename etc.
- New
- This command will clear the editing area and prompt for the
name of the new file to be edited. It will not load in the new file.
- Load
- This command is used to load a new bitmap file into the
bitmap editor. If the current image has not been saved, user will be asked
whether to save or ignore the changes. The editor can edit only one file
at a time. If you need interactive editing, run a number of editors and
use cut and paste mechanism as described below.
- Insert
- This command is used to insert a bitmap file into the image
being currently edited. After being prompted for the filename, click
inside the grid window and drag the outlined rectangle to the location
where you want to insert the new file.
- Save
- This command will save the bitmap image. It will not prompt
for the filename unless it is said to be <none>. If you leave the
filename undesignated or -, the output will be piped to stdout.
- Save As
- This command will save the bitmap image after prompting for
a new filename. It should be used if you want to change the filename.
- Resize
- This command is used to resize the editing area to the new
number of pixels. The size should be entered in the WIDTHxHEIGHT format.
The information in the image being edited will not be lost unless the new
size is smaller that the current image size. The editor was not designed
to edit huge files.
- Rescale
- This command is used to rescale the editing area to the new
width and height. The size should be entered in the WIDTHxHEIGHT format.
It will not do antialiasing and information will be lost if you rescale to
the smaller sizes. Feel free to add you own algorithms for better
rescaling.
- Filename
- This command is used to change the filename without
changing the basename nor saving the file. If you specify - for a
filename, the output will be piped to stdout.
- Basename
- This command is used to change the basename, if a different
one from the specified filename is desired.
- Quit
- This command will terminate the bitmap application. If the
file was not saved, user will be prompted and asked whether to save the
image or not. This command is preferred over killing the process.
The Edit menu commands can be accessed by pressing the Edit button and selecting
the appropriate menu entry, or by pressing Meta key with another key. These
commands deal with editing facilities such as grid, axes, zooming, cut and
paste, etc.
- Image
- This command will display the image being edited and its
inverse in its actual size in a separate window. The window can be moved
away to continue with editing. Pressing the left mouse button in the image
window will cause it to disappear from the screen.
- Grid
- This command controls the grid in the editing area. If the
grid spacing is below the value specified by gridTolerance resource (8 by
default), the grid will be automatically turned off. It can be enforced by
explicitly activating this command.
- Dashed
- This command controls the stipple for drawing the grid
lines. The stipple specified by dashes resource can be turned on or off by
activating this command.
- Axes
- This command controls the highlighting of the main axes of
the image being edited. The actual lines are not part of the image. They
are provided to aid user when constructing symmetrical images, or whenever
having the main axes highlighted helps your editing.
- Stippled
- This command controls the stippling of the highlighted
areas of the bitmap image. The stipple specified by stipple resource can
be turned on or off by activating this command.
- Proportional
- This command controls the proportional mode. If the
proportional mode is on, width and height of all image squares are forced
to be equal, regardless of the proportions of the bitmap window.
- Zoom
- This command controls the zoom mode. If there is a marked
area of the image already displayed, bitmap will automatically zoom into
it. Otherwise, user will have to highlight an area to be edited in the
zoom mode and bitmap will automatically switch into it. One can use all
the editing commands and other utilities in the zoom mode. When you zoom
out, undo command will undo the whole zoom session.
- Cut
- This commands cuts the contents of the highlighted image
area into the internal cut and paste buffer.
- Copy
- This command copies the contents of the highlighted image
area into the internal cut and paste buffer.
- Paste
- This command will check if there are any other bitmap
applications with a highlighted image area, or if there is something in
the internal cut and paste buffer and copy it to the image. To place the
copied image, click in the editing window and drag the outlined image to
the position where you want to place i, and then release the button.
Bitmap supports two cut and paste mechanisms; the internal cut and paste and the
global X selection cut and paste. The internal cut and paste is used when
executing copy and move drawing commands and also cut and copy commands from
the edit menu. The global X selection cut and paste is used whenever there is
a highlighted area of a bitmap image displayed anywhere on the screen. To copy
a part of image from another bitmap editor simply highlight the desired area
by using the Mark command or pressing the shift key and dragging the area with
the left mouse button. When the selected area becomes highlighted, any other
applications (such as xterm, etc.) that use primary selection will discard
their selection values and unhighlight the appropriate information. Now, use
the Paste command for the Edit menu or control mouse button to copy the
selected part of image into another (or the same) bitmap application. If you
attempt to do this without a visible highlighted image area, the bitmap will
fall back to the internal cut and paste buffer and paste whatever was there
stored at the moment.
Below is the widget structure of the
bitmap application. Indentation
indicates hierarchical structure. The widget class name is given first,
followed by the widget instance name. All widgets except the bitmap widget are
from the standard Athena widget set.
Bitmap bitmap
TransientShell image
Box box
Label normalImage
Label invertedImage
TransientShell input
Dialog dialog
Command okay
Command cancel
TransientShell error
Dialog dialog
Command abort
Command retry
TransientShell qsave
Dialog dialog
Command yes
Command no
Command cancel
Paned parent
Form formy
MenuButton fileButton
SimpleMenu fileMenu
SmeBSB new
SmeBSB load
SmeBSB insert
SmeBSB save
SmeBSB saveAs
SmeBSB resize
SmeBSB rescale
SmeBSB filename
SmeBSB basename
SmeLine line
SmeBSB quit
MenuButton editButton
SimpleMenu editMenu
SmeBSB image
SmeBSB grid
SmeBSB dashed
SmeBSB axes
SmeBSB stippled
SmeBSB proportional
SmeBSB zoom
SmeLine line
SmeBSB cut
SmeBSB copy
SmeBSB paste
Label status
Pane pane
Bitmap bitmap
Form form
Command clear
Command set
Command invert
Toggle mark
Command unmark
Toggle copy
Toggle move
Command flipHoriz
Command up
Command flipVert
Command left
Command fold
Command right
Command rotateLeft
Command down
Command rotateRight
Toggle point
Toggle curve
Toggle line
Toggle rectangle
Toggle filledRectangle
Toggle circle
Toggle filledCircle
Toggle floodFill
Toggle setHotSpot
Command clearHotSpot
Command undo
If you would like bitmap to be viewable in color, include the following in the
#ifdef COLOR section of the file you read with xrdb:
*customization: -color
This will cause bitmap to pick up the colors in the app-defaults color
customization file:
/etc/X11/app-defaults/Bitmap-color
Bitmap widget is a stand-alone widget for editing raster images. It is not
designed to edit large images, although it may be used in that purpose as
well. It can be freely incorporated with other applications and used as a
standard editing tool. The following are the resources provided by the bitmap
widget.
| Bitmap Widget |
|
|
|
| Header file |
Bitmap.h |
| Class |
bitmapWidgetClass |
| Class Name |
Bitmap |
| Superclass |
Bitmap |
All the Simple Widget resources plus ...
| Name |
Class |
Type |
Default Value |
|
| foreground |
Foreground |
Pixel |
XtDefaultForeground |
|
| highlight |
Highlight |
Pixel |
XtDefaultForeground |
|
| framing |
Framing |
Pixel |
XtDefaultForeground |
|
| gridTolerance |
GridTolerance |
Dimension |
8 |
|
| size |
Size |
String |
32x32 |
|
| dashed |
Dashed |
Boolean |
True |
|
| grid |
Grid |
Boolean |
True |
|
| stippled |
Stippled |
Boolean |
True |
|
| proportional |
Proportional |
Boolean |
True |
|
| axes |
Axes |
Boolean |
False |
|
| squareWidth |
SquareWidth |
Dimension |
16 |
|
| squareHeight |
SquareHeight |
Dimension |
16 |
|
| margin |
Margin |
Dimension |
16 |
|
| xHot |
XHot |
Position |
NotSet (-1) |
|
| yHot |
YHot |
Position |
NotSet (-1) |
|
| button1Function |
Button1Function |
DrawingFunction |
Set |
|
| button2Function |
Button2Function |
DrawingFunction |
Invert |
|
| button3Function |
Button3Function |
DrawingFunction |
Clear |
|
| button4Function |
Button4Function |
DrawingFunction |
Invert |
|
| button5Function |
Button5Function |
DrawingFunction |
Invert |
|
| filename |
Filename |
String |
None ("") |
|
| basename |
Basename |
String |
None ("") |
|
Davor Matic, MIT X Consortium