README.MSW revision 19569120
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2README.MSW	hedu@cul-ipn.uni-kiel.de	5/94
3
4		The XPM library for MS-Windows
5
6Motivated by the wxWindows library, which is a (freely available) toolkit
7for developing multi-platform, graphical applications from the same body
8of C++ code, I wanted to have XPM pixmaps for MS-windows. Instead of rewriting
9a XPM-parser I managed to port the XPM-library-code to MS-windows.
10Thanks to Anaud Le Hors this became a part of the official XPM-library.
11
12Until now it's only used together with wxWindows. And even there it's more
13a kind of beta. But it should be possible to run it as a simple libxpm.a
14without wxWindows.
15
16The key is a transformation of some X types plus some basic X functions.
17There is not yet a special MSW-API, so you should know the X types used.
18
19The following is done in simx.h:
20
21typedef HDC Display;
22typedef COLORREF Pixel;
23
24typedef struct {
25    Pixel pixel;
26    BYTE red, green, blue;
27}      XColor;
28
29typedef struct {
30    HBITMAP bitmap;
31    unsigned int width;
32    unsigned int height;
33    unsigned int depth;
34}      XImage;
35
36With these defines and the according functions from simx.c you can call
37XPM-functions the way it's done under X windows. It can look like this:
38
39	ErrorStatus=XpmCreateImageFromData(&dc, data,
40				&ximage,(XImage **)NULL, &xpmAttr);
41	ms_bitmap = ximage->bitmap;
42	// releases the malloc,but do not destroy the bitmap
43	XImageFree(ximage);
44
45Supported functions are the Xpm*Image* but not the Xpm*Pixmap*.
46
47DRAWBACKS:
48The main drawback is the missing support for Colormaps! There was nothing for
49it in wxWindows, so I did not know how to deal with Colormaps.
50
51The size of the pixmaps is bounded by malloc() (width*height*2 < 64K).
52
53Close colors do not look that close. But that seems to be the window system.
54
55Neither a special API for MSW nor a special MSW documentation other than this.
56(I can only point you to wxxpm as an example , see below.)
57
58INSTALLATION:
59There is not yet a makefile with it. Simply take all the *.c files
60into your project except the files related to Pixmap operations: *P*.c.
61!!!You MUST set FOR_MSW on the preprocessor options!!!
62(You might uncomment NEED_STRCASECMP in xpm.h if it's in your lib)
63This should compile into libxpm.a. Good luck...
64
65FTP:
66wxWindows is currently available from the Artificial Intelligence
67Applications Institute (University of Edinburgh) by anonymous FTP.
68	skye.aiai.ed.ac.uk  pub/wxwin/
69or read http://burray.aiai.ed.ac.uk/aiai/aiai.html
70
71wxxpm, XPM support for wxWindows, the latest version is available at
72	yoda.cul-ipn.uni-kiel.de pub/wxxpm/
73	and maybe in the contrib or tools of wxWindows
74
75Please contact me if you have suggestions, comments or problems!
76
77================================================================
78Some fixes and comments by Jan Wielemaker (jan@swi.psy.uva.nl),
79Oct 24, 1996:
80
81	* Please try not to disturb me on this, XPM is not my
82	piece of cake.
83
84	* Hermann Dunkel has apparently moved in virtual space.
85
86Changes:
87
88	* I've used the xpm package under NT 4.0 and MSVC++ 4.2.
89
90	* I've made a big performance improvement in
91	ParseAndPutPixels(), fixed creation of the mask in
92	SetColor() in create.c.  I looked into XCreateImage()
93	in simx.c, but commented out my improvement for reasons
94	you'll find there.  If you know what is going on, statement
95	(1) does not apply to you.
96
97Comments on installation:
98
99	* Donot include the to/from pixmap files into the project.
100	These are the ones containing a capital P somewhere in their
101	name.  You can also first include all, and then remove all
102	the files you get errors on :-)
103
104	* The DC that is requested should be a valid memory DC, thus
105	CreateCompatibleDC(NULL) provides a good generic one, but
106	GetDC(NULL) doesn't!  This costed me some time.
107
108	* The real difficulty is using the mask, mostly due to the
109	bad documentation.  If 95 or NT is your target, use:
110
111	MaskBlt(context.hdc,	// Destination DC
112		x, y, w, h,	// Destination area
113		mhdc,		// Memory DC with the image selected
114		sx, sy,		// Source X,Y
115		msk,		// HBITMAP of the mask
116		sx, sy,		// Mask X,Y
117		MAKEROP4(SRCPAINT, SRCCOPY));	// The magic op code.
118================================================================
119
120
121--
122   ////|\\\\   \\\\\\  Hermann Dunkel
123     O   O     //////  IPN Uni Kiel, Germany
124       |       \\\\\\  Tel: +49 431 / 880 3144
125     \___/     //////  E-mail: hedu@cul-ipn.uni-kiel.de
126      \_/      \\\\\\  X.400 : c=de;a=d400;p=uni-kiel;ou=nw-didaktik;s=dunkel
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