Topic: What 's old is new again!

[James]

This version:

http://akrobiz.com/laserboy/code/LaserBoy_2009_07_19.zip

of LaserBoy introduces a reasonably well developed idea into the world of laser vector art display!

PLAIN TEXT! 

We can now save and retrieve palette or 24-bit, 2D or 3D laser vector art in text!

There is still a little bit of clean up work to do. But it now reads what it writes. In the future, it will read "real" numbers for coordinates in addition to "short" and "unit".

You have the option of saving coordinates in their native, signed 16-bit integers or in real numbers that fit inside unit space (-1.0 to +1.0).

You also have the option of saving colors in decimal (0 to 255) triplets (r g b) or as single 24-bit, hexadecimal integers (0xRRGGBB).

You can save frames with integrated color values or save palettes and tables separately.

Most importantly, you can open these formats back into LaserBoy and fully recover your data!

Check it out!

If you don't agree this is the most exciting thing to come along in the laser biz for several years, I'll give you double your money back! 

(But you have to call me, personally!) 

Seriously... Please check this out for errors and see what YOU can do with it! AND TELL ME!

I will probably be releasing daily updates for a while to fix the little glitches.

I really wanted something new and different to show off at SELEM this year and THIS IS IT! 

James. 

PS. I think you will like it!

Code: [Select]

frame xy hex unit
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PSS. I'm pretty sure this is the first laser vector art frame ever pasted into a forum!

[meandean]

 What's old is new again... A few months back, my mom's TV set took a dump, so we went to the store to pick out
one of them new high-flutin' flatscreen 1080P HDTV jobs- now, mom can clearly count the hairs on top of Dr. Phil's
head... Mom's big complaint was that it takes the new set a little while to start up (maybe 10 or 15 sec)- I remember the day when you turned on the TV (or the radio) and waited a good 45 sec or so for the tubes to warm up. Now, we wait for the CPU to boot up!

[James]

I'm going to bed now.

I expect full reports from several of you with my first cup of coffee! 

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

I'm not sure what to do with it.  Please post a format spec.

[James]

What?

You want instructions?

Geeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzz!

Some people!

OK.

Coffee is brewing...

James. 

[James]

OK. This is all about the new old ASCII text color laser vector art file format.

Since it is text, it relies on delimiting principals of text; i.e.: white space and lines.

# A comment is anything on a line that follows a bletch (#).

There are three different kinds of text information blocks.

frame
palette
table

Each block of text starts with a line with one of these words as the first token. The first word is the only criteria of the block that can not be assumed to be a default value. Tokens that modify the meaning of the first word may follow.

The tokens that modify the word frame are:

frame [xy | xyz]  [rgb | hex | palette | table]  [short | unit | real]

(Importing "real" numbers for coordinates is not done yet.) EDIT: maybe! try the latest version!

The tokens in bold are the assumed values. Tokens may be omitted only from right to left. In other words, if you want to designate a frame to store coordinates in unit values, you must also specify your choice of [xy | xyz]  [rgb | hex | palette | table] before you place the token unit at the end of the line.

So, just placing the word

frame

on a line by itself tells LaserBoy to read the numbers that follow it as though it was

frame xy rgb short

a 2D frame of 16-bit signed short integers with individual byte values (0 - 255) for each red, green and blue; a total of 5 numerical values per vertex (per line).

frame xyz

would be a similar 3D frame.

frame xy hex

would be a 2D frame of 16-bit signed short integers with one 24-bit hexadecimal value for the color.

LaserBoy ASCII text frame blocks can have the color integrated into them or they can rely on palettes or tables.

The relationship between frames palettes and tables is similar to the way it was supposed to work in the ILDA format.

A palette can have a one-to-many relationship with frames. A palette must be defined in the file before it is used by any frame. If a frame definition appears that uses the word palette to describe its color model before any palette is defined, the default palette of 62 colors is assumed.

Since the frame designates that its color is to be one of [rgb | hex | palette | table] LaserBoy knows to use the last palette loaded into the palette array. LaserBoy can also distinguish between a frame that uses a palette or a table (with ILDA format 0 or 1 there is no difference). So it is not necessary to repeat a palette definition after a table + frame combination.

A palette can be stored as rgb or hex, just like the integrated color values of the frame. A palette can also be named. A named palette is any one of the pre-defined palettes that come with the LaserBoy application.

A name is 8 or less characters following the color storage token.

palette [rgb | hex | named] [name]

If you store frames with palettes that are built into LaserBoy, you have the option of just storing the name of the palette and none of its values. LaserBoy looks for the name and if it finds it in the array of predefined palettes it uses that one; if not, it's an error.

Any palette can be giving a name, but only those palettes that are built into LaserBoy can be designated as named.

In other words, a custom palette could be made with the first line like this:

palette rgb happy

This would need to be followed by lines containing r, g, b byte values, one color per line. This palette would load into LaserBoy with the name "happy".

A table is much like the ill-fated ILDA format 3. It is a list of only the color values of a frame in the same exact order as the vertices of the frame that must follow it. It has a one-to-one relationship with the frame. Tables can also be rgb or hex, but they can not have a name.

table [rgb | hex]

Blanking is indicated in either frames or tables by storing the literal number -1. Since a blank vertex has no color, there is no need to store or read anything after that single value. It takes three values to store a color in rgb format, but only one value to designate that it is blank.

The keywords or tokens that are part of the LaserBoy ASCII file format are lower case only! Names for palettes can be up to 8 of any of the visible characters.

When reading a line of numerical values, LaserBoy assumes that all of those values are relative to only one item; a vertex or a palette color value. It also assumes the individual values of each part, x, y, z, r, g, or b to be zero before it is read. If a line terminates before all the values are found, the unfound values remain zero. Extra information after all of the expected values are found is ignored.

Now, take a look at what LaserBoy can make for you when you save as txt. Take a look at the output options you have in menu 'x'.

Code: [Select]


 --> e save txt frames with integrated color
 --> f save txt coordinates in unit (-1.0 ~ +1.0) space
 --> g save txt colors as hex
 --> h save txt named LaserBoy palette data

Does that make more sense?

Based on this description, please try to BUST IT! 

And let me know what you find. 

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

That will work.  I'm not sure what purpose it serves but it works.

[James]

Have you ever worked with MatLab or Maple?

Have you ever written an Excel spread sheet with macro functions?

Knowing what you know about the ILDA file format, you can see that it would be WAY easier for someone to write code that puts out these simple text blocks than it would be to write out formatted binary ILDA!

Besides that, now you can make frames just by typing values in NotePad!

How cool is that? 

James. 

[meandean]

That will work.  I'm not sure what purpose it serves but it works.

High praise from a Vulcan...
Bletch??? I always thought the # sign was called the pound key (maybe that's only on telephones).

[James]

It is a pound sign. It's also a sharp and a tic-tac-toe!

This addition of ASCII text to the world of laser display is "one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."

And no one seems to have noticed!

(Check the date, today!)

James. 

[drlava]

that's cool, I think.  Also since you mentioned it, here's the MATLAB code for ILDA opening, in case someone actually can use it

Code: [Select]

function [f,type,endbyte,more]=ildopen(file,startbyte)
%opens ilda file and reads frame starting at startbyte (second parameter 0 indexed)
%returns a matrix [x y colorindex blanked]
%
fid=fopen(file,'r','b');
fseek(fid,7+startbyte,-1);
type=fread(fid,1,'char');
switch type
case {0} %ignore z data for now
    fseek(fid,16,0);
    size=fread(fid,1,'ushort');
    if size ~= 0
        fseek(fid,6,0);
        frameloc=ftell(fid);
        x=fread(fid,size,'short',6);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+2,-1);
        y=fread(fid,size,'short',6);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+6,-1);
        b=fread(fid,size,'uchar',7);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+7,-1);
        c=fread(fid,size,'uchar',7);
        endbyte=ftell(fid)-7;
    else
        x=0;y=0;c=0;b=0;endbyte=0;
    end
case {1} %2D paletted ilda
    fseek(fid,16,0);
    size=fread(fid,1,'ushort');
    if size ~= 0
        fseek(fid,6,0);
        frameloc=ftell(fid);
        x=fread(fid,size,'short',4);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+2,-1);
        y=fread(fid,size,'short',4);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+4,-1);
        b=fread(fid,size,'uchar',5);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+5,-1);
        c=fread(fid,size,'uchar',5);
        endbyte=ftell(fid)-5;
    else
        x=0;y=0;c=0;b=0;endbyte=0;
    end
case {4} %3D 24 bit color ilda
    fseek(fid,16,0);
    size=fread(fid,1,'ushort'); %read in number of points
    if size ~= 0
        fseek(fid,6,0); %skip to frame data
        frameloc=ftell(fid);
        x=fread(fid,size,'short',8);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+2,-1);
        y=fread(fid,size,'short',8);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+6,-1);
        b=fread(fid,size,'uchar',9);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+7,-1);
        c=fread(fid,size,'ubit24',7*8);  %skip is in bits
        endbyte=ftell(fid)-7; %remove final skip
    else
        x=0;y=0;c=0;b=0;endbyte=0;
    end
case {5} %2D 24 bit color ilda
    fseek(fid,16,0);
    size=fread(fid,1,'ushort'); %read in number of points
    if size ~= 0
        fseek(fid,6,0); %skip to frame data
        frameloc=ftell(fid);
        x=fread(fid,size,'short',6);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+2,-1);
        y=fread(fid,size,'short',6);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+4,-1);
        b=fread(fid,size,'uchar',7);
        fseek(fid,frameloc+5,-1);
        c=fread(fid,size,'ubit24',5*8); %skip is in bits
        endbyte=ftell(fid)-5;
    else
        x=0;y=0;c=0;b=0;endbyte=0;
    end
otherwise
    disp('Unknown frame format');
end
more=0;
if ~fseek(fid,33,0)
    more=1;
end
fclose(fid);
f=[x,y,c,bitget(b,7)];


[James]

What?

You don't read format 0, 3D?

And what about our all-time-favorite format 3 color tables?

You don't read those either!

Oh well. You won't need any of that crap anymore.

Now you can just use plain text blocks!

Cut and paste!

Have fun!

I'd like to know what Steve Roberts wants to do with this.

He's the one who asked for it!

James. 

[James]

I see someone (-bart-) used the text import of LaserBoy to make some art out of Brownian Noise.

http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/showthread.php?p=110252#post110252

Unfortunately, I can not download.

Could one of you PL members get it and post it here?

I'd like to see it. Agent-C told me about Brownian Noise.

James. 

[Lazerjock]

I downloaded it yesterday. I looked at it in Spaghetti. Maybe I'm missing something, but it's just garbage.
I understand it represents Brown noise, but it dodn't do much for me as far as a laser graphic.

Maybe I need to open my mind more to the science behind it.

Any way here it is.

Lazerjock

[drlava]

I understand it represents Brown noise,
Lazerjock

Uh oh the Brown Noise in laser! 
No, brownian motion is random motion of molecules.  This would be cool but each frame is completely different, not a progression of the noise in time.