QL Art

A place to discuss general QL issues.
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TMD2003
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Re: QL Art

Post by TMD2003 »

dilwyn wrote:I'll give both of these a shot - finally, it looks like there might be a use for PCX! I always remember that as being a format that Microsoft Paint offered (along with the equally seemingly-useless DIB) that offered no advantages over BMP. Good things may come to those who wait for 21 years...
Do bear in mind that my Convert-PCX program only really converts black and white images though.[/quote]
That was... slightly worrying when I looked in the Quill file.

I was wrestling with CONVPCX for the last half-hour or so - and having concluded that it really doesn't like trying to be run from DOS1_ on QPC2, I made my first ever floppy disc image, manually transferred all the files over, made another disc for the output, loaded them both into QPC2, and... the same result.

20 EXEC FLP1_PCX_OBJ game "At line 20:1 bad parameter" - and for the record I tried EXEC_W as well, just in case.

Still, I'll try the BMP program next and see what happens...

EDIT: ...it's doing exactly the same thing.

EXEC DOS1_BMP104_OBJ - "invalid parameter". This is exactly what it says I should do in the accompanying Quill document with the exception of that using FLP1_ instead - but I suspect that if I did copy all the files over to a new disc image, it'd still do the same. I've checked how EXEC works as well, and I can't see any possible problem. And it isn't case sensitive.

EDIT AGAIN: ...and I was right. What trick am I missing here?
Last edited by TMD2003 on Sun Aug 22, 2021 12:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.


Spectribution: Dr. Jim's Sinclair computing pages.
Features my own programs, modified type-ins, RZXs, character sets & UDGs, and QL type-ins... so far!
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dilwyn
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Re: QL Art

Post by dilwyn »

TMD2003 wrote:
dilwyn wrote:I'll give both of these a shot - finally, it looks like there might be a use for PCX! I always remember that as being a format that Microsoft Paint offered (along with the equally seemingly-useless DIB) that offered no advantages over BMP. Good things may come to those who wait for 21 years...
Do bear in mind that my Convert-PCX program only really converts black and white images though.
That was... slightly worrying when I looked in the Quill file.

I was wrestling with CONVPCX for the last half-hour or so - and having concluded that it really doesn't like trying to be run from DOS1_ on QPC2, I made my first ever floppy disc image, manually transferred all the files over, made another disc for the output, loaded them both into QPC2, and... the same result.

20 EXEC FLP1_PCX_OBJ game "At line 20:1 bad parameter" - and for the record I tried EXEC_W as well, just in case.

Still, I'll try the BMP program next and see what happens...

EDIT: ...it's doing exactly the same thing.

EXEC DOS1_BMP104_OBJ - "invalid parameter". This is exactly what it says I should do in the accompanying Quill document with the exception of that using FLP1_ instead - but I suspect that if I did copy all the files over to a new disc image, it'd still do the same. I've checked how EXEC works as well, and I can't see any possible problem. And it isn't case sensitive.[/quote]

at line 20 Bad Parameter - looks like you've lost the executable file header for the program there, somehow.


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TMD2003
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Re: QL Art

Post by TMD2003 »

dilwyn wrote:at line 20 Bad Parameter - looks like you've lost the executable file header for the program there, somehow.
Right, so I think I know what I've done now - I'll transfer everything directly from the original ZIP file and see how that works. Back in a mo...

EDIT: It was being somewhat intransigent to start with (giving out of range errors) - and I don't know what I did to correct it, but it's working now and I see what I want to see.

Congraturation, I sucsess! The package bmp104_results.zip is not a QL package, it's the output of 7-Zip, but it does show the perfectly working non-speckly test images.
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Last edited by TMD2003 on Sun Aug 22, 2021 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.


Spectribution: Dr. Jim's Sinclair computing pages.
Features my own programs, modified type-ins, RZXs, character sets & UDGs, and QL type-ins... so far!
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dilwyn
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Re: QL Art

Post by dilwyn »

TMD2003 wrote:
dilwyn wrote:at line 20 Bad Parameter - looks like you've lost the executable file header for the program there, somehow.
Right, so I think I know what I've done now - I'll transfer everything directly from the original ZIP file and see how that works. Back in a mo...
Just a thought, as you mentioned the DOS device - which version of QPC2 is it? Older ones didn't support storing executables on a DOS drive, can't remember in which version that Marcel changed that.


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TMD2003
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Re: QL Art

Post by TMD2003 »

I was using QPC2 v5 all along, so there were no problems running the program once I'd worked it out.

Anyway, here's the result... it's very short, for now (LBYTES and a handful of SuperBASIC lines) but I might find a use for it at some stage.
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Spectribution: Dr. Jim's Sinclair computing pages.
Features my own programs, modified type-ins, RZXs, character sets & UDGs, and QL type-ins... so far!
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dilwyn
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Re: QL Art

Post by dilwyn »

TMD2003 wrote:I was using QPC2 v5 all along, so there were no problems running the program once I'd worked it out.

Anyway, here's the result... it's very short, for now (LBYTES and a handful of SuperBASIC lines) but I might find a use for it at some stage.
Nice. That works fine, although only on a 512x256 mode 0 screen of course. And changing the MDV deice name to wherever you run it from.

QPC2 could still run it in other modes by using the QPC_QLSCREMU 4 (or possibly the QPC_QLSCREMU -1 "auto" option) to copy the screen from the "QL screen" emulation area.


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bwinkel67
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Re: QL Art

Post by bwinkel67 »

Would this work on a BBQL? For historically reasons I like to recreate stuff on a bare-bones system just to see what things were like with the QL in the 80's. When I created the Asterix picture I used ARTice from 1986 and started with a picture I found on the internet. I struggled to find a program that could convert a color format to the QL's SCR format that would run on an unexpanded QL (I ended up using a SuperBASIC one that did a simple decode on a TIFF file to b&W). Seems like much of the software requires the Pointer environment and likely extra memory...and also creates a higher resolution PIC file (which I'm guessing is not SCR compatible).

Was there any software other than say that nifty SuperBASIC one I used (QLTIFF.bas that converted an uncompressed B&W TIFF to SCR) out there back then that could grab some simple format and convert it? With 4 or 8 color modes on the QL I'm guessing that trying to map a 16 color picture to either one presents some problems since you need to map the extra colors. Just curious if someone solved this either on the QL side for 128K or on the PC side. I did find two interesting PC programs: BMP2PIC.exe (a Windows app) and wunpic.exe (a command-line app), but both worked with the higher resolution PIC format.

There is stuff going the other way, i.e. Norman Dunbar's conversion routines to create BMP or PIC files from SCR (though today you can just run an emulator and take a screenshot).


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Andrew
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Re: QL Art

Post by Andrew »

Hi bwinkel67 - I guess this is what you are looking for: http://sinclairql.speccy.org/articulos/trucos/qlpal.htm
use Chrome to translate the page into english.
You can download the Photoshop and Gimp Sinclair QL palettes here: https://github.com/SinclairQL/Sinclair- ... c-palettes


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BSJR
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Re: QL Art

Post by BSJR »

bwinkel67 wrote:Would this work on a BBQL?
On Dilwyn's site there is also Ungif that converts GIF to mode 4/8 SCRs. It's small enough to fit in the BBQL.
http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/graphics/ungif.zip
There are several convert options including dithering.
On the same page higher up is also the Engif tool by the same author to do the opposite.

BSJR


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bwinkel67
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Re: QL Art

Post by bwinkel67 »

BSJR wrote:On Dilwyn's site there is also Ungif that converts GIF to mode 4/8 SCRs. It's small enough to fit in the BBQL.
http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/graphics/ungif.zip
There are several convert options including dithering.
On the same page higher up is also the Engif tool by the same author to do the opposite.

BSJR
I tried running it on both an emulator an on my BBQL but after loading TK2, PTR_GEN, WMAN, HOT_REXT, and then trying to run unGIF via:

EX mdv4_unGIF;mdv4_asterix2_gif

It just returns a beep and no picture.

Edit: so the problem is that the Pointer Environment only leaves 13K free memory on a 128K machine. I can get that up to above 30K if I don't use TK2 (QVTK is only 1.4K instead of 17K) and Hot_rext, but that's still not enough. So looks like unGIF needs more than a 128K BBQL to run on.


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