I've just uploaded SDSC_Imagetyper, a handy image utility, to the
Indiana archives, now in /Incoming, soon to migrate to the Mac utility
directory.
It was writ at and gotten from the San Diego Supercomputer Center which
has a number of _very_ useful image manipulation and conversion tools for
*nix workstations, as well as a few for the Mac. Ftp to sdsc.edu -
careful, it's a VMS machine, login as anonymous, password is <your e-mail
address>, cd to [anonymous.sdscpub.<machine-of-interest>.graphics],
transfer .hqx files as ASCII or BINARY.
Imagetyper allows you to stamp image (and, I suppose, other) files with
the ID of whatever application you want, so that the application will
recognize it as a native document. An example: You just generated the
almost-perfect graphic using GCG (VMS) and want to touch it up (although I
couldn't imagine why) in Canvas, but GCG doesn't output a format that
Canvas understands. No problem - you write HPGL commands to a file,
transfer that file to a PC and import the file into Corel Draw. You then
export the file in PICT format and move it to the Mac. However, because of
it's passage thru DOS, it lacksthe resource fork that identifies it as a
valid PICT file, so Canvas refuses to acknowledge it.
Ergo, the raison d'etre of Imagetyper. Using this ~26Kb utility, you
can look up Canvas' ID and stamp the image file with it so that now Canvas
will look upon it as a valid Canvas document. This will not, of course,
allow you to import image types into programs that have no facility for
handling them (it does no image conversion itself), but it does smooth the
transition from one (valid) format to another.
Cheers,
Harry Mangalam Vox:(619) 453-4100, x250
Dept of Biocomputing Fax:(619) 552-1546
The Salk Institute mangalam at salk-sc2.sdsc.edu
10010 N Torrey Pines Rd mangalam at salk-sgi.sdsc.edu
La Jolla CA 92037 mangalam at salk.bitnet
