Page 1 of 1

RECOIL - graphics viewer for PC/Android/web

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2015 11:35 am
by 0xF
Hello,

I'm new to Oric and I would like to add Oric graphics formats to my project called RECOIL.

RECOIL (Retro Computer Image Library) is a viewer of pictures in native formats of classic home computers.
RECOIL is cross-platform: it runs on Windows, OS X, Linux, Android and even in a web browser.
RECOIL currently opens over 200 different file formats.
Project website is: http://recoil.sourceforge.net/

Could you please give me a list of graphics formats native to Oric? I also need sample files for each format.

I've noticed that Oric files start with a header that includes loading addresses and the filename. Where can I find detailed information about this header? Is it mandatory?

How can I extract files from a DSK image?

Thank you,
Piotr

Re: RECOIL - graphics viewer for PC/Android/web

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2015 12:46 pm
by ibisum
Have a look at libpipi for clues:

http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/libpipi/oric

And PictConv too:

http://www.osdk.org/www_osdk/index?page ... e=pictconv

Probably you can learn a lot from just those two projects by reading their sources..

Re: RECOIL - graphics viewer for PC/Android/web

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2015 3:05 pm
by Dbug
Hi.

Some documentation about how the Oric video system works: http://www.defence-force.org/download/c ... nglish.txt

You can indeed play with PictConv to generate valid Oric pictures.

In particular, I believe this file is of interest to you: http://miniserve.getmyip.com/svn/public ... verter.cpp

Look for these two functions:
- bool OricPictureConverter::TakeSnapShot(ImageContainer& sourcePicture)
- void OricPictureConverter::SaveToFile(long handle,int output_format)

The first one shows how to decode an Oric video memory buffer to a standard PC 32 bit display, the second ones shows how the files are saved to a TAP image format with a header.

Re: RECOIL - graphics viewer for PC/Android/web

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2015 8:23 pm
by 0xF
Thank you. I had already implemented HRS files using this information: http://oricspider.home.insightbb.com/or ... olour.html and the character set CHS files (these are straightforward). The chart at the bottom shows that in bytes 160-255 ink and paper are swapped but it looks that this is not the case (i.e. bit clear is inverse paper and bit set is inverse ink). Are bytes 32-63 displayed identically to 96-127 ?

Do text mode screens have a particular filename extension?

Is the header present in files on disk?

And I'm still looking for a way to extract files from a DSK image.

Re: RECOIL - graphics viewer for PC/Android/web

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2015 8:29 pm
by Dbug
No, there are no consistent extensions for any files.
Apparently Spider used HRS, myself I used HIR, but you can find them as TAP and COM as well.
I don't think there's any rule either for the TEXT screen dumps.

The charts are not really relevant for you, they only show the final result of showing the characters on the screen, that has no impact on the actual storage of the charset: As far as you are concerned, the only important bits are the 6 first bits, the bits 6 and 7 are totally ignored by the display (But we often play with them so we can have "attribute neutral" values that would not corrupt data if they happen to be shown in HIRES).

Files on disk have no header at all, all the relevant information (name, size, type, load address, etc...) is part of the directory entry.

Btw, XnView already supports Oric "HIR" files, I gave all the informations to the author a decade or so ago :)