INTRO(9)						     Kernel Developer's Manual							  INTRO(9)

NAME

       intro - introduction to raster image software

DESCRIPTION

       Plan  9 provides a suite of commands and library routines to create and manipulate files containing gray-scale and full-color images.  Sec-
       tion 9 of this manual is divided into subsections numbered like the main manual sections:  9.1 for commands, 9.2 for library routines,  9.6
       for file formats.

       Picture	files are two-dimensional arrays of multi-byte records with a textual header describing the dimensions of the image, the algorithm
       used to encode the file, and whatever  other  information  programs  may  wish  to  preserve.   Picfile(9.6)  describes	the  file  format;
       picopen(9.2) describes a library of routines to read and write picture files.

       /bin/fb contains a collection of programs to manipulate picture files.

       9v  displays a picture file in an 81/2(1) window.  Examine similarly displays an image and allows interactive examination of its pixel val-
       ues.  Picinfo displays the header of a picture file on its standard output.  Pcp copies	picture  files,  modifying  header  attributes	as
       requested  and  updating  the encoded picture array correspondingly.  It can clip a subwindow out of a picture, permute, delete, and rename
       channels, change the encoding type and even convert full-color images to monochrome and vice-versa.  Hed is a more brute-force  version	of
       pcp that can apply an arbitrary sed(1) script to a picfile header.  It copies the image array verbatim and can thus convert precious images
       into garbage or vice-versa.

       Dumppic, gif2pic, picopic, and face2pic convert files in various alien formats to picfile(9.6) format.  Pic2ps converts picfiles to  encap-
       sulated	PostScript.   Nohed removes the header from a picture file.  When applied to a TYPE=dump picture this converts it into the ubiqui-
       tous `raw dump' format.	Mugs is an interactive program to convert picfiles into 48x48 icons of the sort used by seemail (see  mail(1)  and
       face(6)).

       Some commands create simple images out of whole cloth.  Card writes an image of constant color.	Ramp creates an image that is one color at
       one edge and changes linearly to another color at the opposite edge.

       Aplot reads a square array of data points and draws an anti-aliased perspective plot of the surface it defines.

       There are numerous commands that read one or more images and write a modified image on  standard  output.   See	remap(9.1),  filters(9.1),
       floyd(9.1),  he(9.1),  lam(9.1),  lerp(9.1), logo(9.1), lum(9.1), quantize(9.1), resample(9.1), transpose(9.1), and xpand(9.1) for descrip-
       tions.

       Moto is an animator's command language.	It converts concise descriptions of simultaneous processes overlapping	in  time  into	sequential
       command files suitable for producing frames of an animation.

SEE ALSO

       Tom Duff, ``Raster Graphics in Plan 9''
       Sections  add(2), balloc(2), cachechars(2), subfalloc(2), bitblt(2), event(2), frame(2), print(2), bit(3), layer(2), bitmap(6), and font(6)
       describe the standard Plan 9 interactive bitmap graphics interface.

																	  INTRO(9)