CompuServe Messages

Don: >> You just have to feed it [Abekas] *.TAR file format rather than tga's. FYI, a "tar" file is not a graphics format, but a much more generic beast. It is closer to a ZIP file without compression. By convention, creators often add a ".tar" to the end of the file name to remind themselves what it is, but it is not required. (After the file has been created, it can them be run through a compression program – if you ever see a UNIX file called something like "bigfile.mine.tar.Z", the "Z" tells you that it is compressed.) It is often used to back up UNIX systems onto tape, or to gather a group of files for transfer over a modem. It is probably one of the most common file formats in UNIX. I think the format you are looking for is the YUV format. The YUV format, popularized by Abekas, has some advantages, the biggest one we found is that the files are much smaller than Targas – 1 meg vs. 650K for a typical, same-resolution comparison. They are always 720×486 in resolution. We uploaded a functioning demo in the ASOFT libraries for an IPAS BXP YUV reader/writer that handles 1/2 size images. Greg (UNIX-R-us) Pyros