home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- SPLITDKB.EXE Version 1.0
- By Dan Farmer March 10, '91
-
- HISTORY:
- The concept for this program came from Randy Antler, who created a
- batchfile named PARTS.BAT to do the same job as this program does.
- The limitation I ran into, however, was that I was constantly re-editing
- copies of PARTS.BAT into 3PART.BAT and 4PART.BAT, and re-calculating the
- starting and ending lines for the various formats I wanted to render, etc.
-
- SPLITDKB yields the same results as PARTS.BAT, except that it allows
- you to custom tailor the resulting batch files easily.
-
- HOW IT WORKS:
- SPLITDKB creates batch files. It will create a batch file for
- each portion of the split, named PART1.BAT, PART2.BAT, etc.
- It also creates a batch file named GLUE.BAT that uses GLUETGA.EXE
- (came with your DKB stuff) to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again,
- and runs a processing batch file that you provide. (more on that later.)
-
- COMMAND LINE:
- An input filename is mandatory. Extension is optional, with .DAT
- assumed if none is specified. You can also override the default
- switches by specifiying them FOLLOWING the input filename.
-
- The switches specified by default are: dkbno87 -p -a -v +d.
- These switches
- run the no87 version of dkb,
- do not pause when finished
- have no anti-aliasing
- suppress line numbers
- display the image during processing.
-
- NOTE: This is a simple program: ANY SWITCH ON THE COMMAND LINE
- WILL CAUSE THE PROGRAM TO DROP ALL DEFAULT SWITCHES, including
- the name of the DKB program to run!! Your switch list MUST
- include the name of your DKB executeable! (Screen resolution
- is not considered a command line switch in this document. The
- are provided by user input from within the program.)
-
- A convenient way to run SPLITDKB with a different set of switches
- would be with a batch file like the following:
-
- RUNSPLIT.BAT
- @echo off
- splitdkb %1 dkb [your list of preferred switches]
-
-
- ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES:
- There are two environment variables that can optionally be
- set before running (or by a batch file that runs SPLITDKB).
-
- The first is the path to the directory holding your input .DAT file.
- If your data file is not in the current directory (the one holding
- SPLITDKB), then you must SET DATA=data directory (SET DATA=C:\DKB\DATA)
- DO NOT INCLUDE A TRAILING BACKSLASH! (The program will put it in where
- its needed)
-
- The second is the path to the directory to put the output .TGA files.
- This is also where you need to keep the progam GLUETGA.EXE and
- a batch file named PROCESS.BAT that will do the image conversion.
- More about PROCESS.BAT later...
- So, to send the output to another directory, SET GLUE=glue directory.
- (SET GLUE=D:\GLUE)
- Again, DO NOT INCLUDE A TRAILING BACKSLASH! (The program will put it
- in where its needed)
-
- PROCESS.BAT:
- Whether you chose to use a separate GLUE directory, or just dump
- everything into the current directory, you should have a batch file
- called PROCESS.BAT in the SAME DIRECTORY AS GLUETGA.EXE. This batch
- file should accept one, and only one parameter: the root name of the
- original DKB data file. It should call whatever program(s) you use
- to process the .TGA image into a .GIF image, whether that be PICLAB
- or TGA2IMG/IMG2GIF or whatever. If you wish to skip this step, then
- before running any of the PARTn.BATs, edit GLUE.BAT to remove the
- call to PROCESS.BAT.
- Here is my own PROCESS.BAT using the TGA2IMG/IMG2GIF combination:
-
- @echo off
- :loop
- if "%1"=="" goto end
- tga2img %1
- img2gif -d -m %1
- del %1.img
- shift
- goto loop
- :end
-
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- CREDITS:
- DKB is a ray tracing program written by David K. Buck and Aaron A Collins.
- PICLAB is an image processing program written by the Stone Soup Group.
- TGA2IMG.EXE is an image conversion program written by myself.
- IMG2GIF is a program written by Stephen B. Coy, provided with his
- ray tracing program, "VIVID".
-
- NOTE:
- If anyone knows enough about other (non-DOS) operating systems to
- write a portable version of this program in C, please go for it.
- I hold no claims on the rights to this program. It is fully
- released to the public domain.
-
-
- CHANGES IN SPLITDKB SINCE INITIAL RELEASE TO BBS ( Mar 10, '91)
- -------------------------------------------------
- - Convert commandline switches to lower case.
- - Re-calc default columns after row has been entered. (rows * 0.625)
- - Put a beep at the end of GLUE.BAT to signal completion.
- - The GLUE.BAT WAIT idea only works if using a separate GLUE directory.
- Otherwise, the .tga files DO exist, they just haven't been released yet.
- - Limit splits to 9 or risk overflow on the PRINT USING's.
- - If only 1 part, skip call to GLUETGA and simply rename it to ROOT$+".TGA"
- - Delete PART?.TGA when finished.
- - RUNSPLIT.BAT included. First commandline parm is filename, rest are
- substituted. RUNSPLIT filename %2 %3 %4, etc.
- An example would be: RUNSPLIT MYFILE -q0
- - OOPS! Had rows & cols reversed in original code!
- - Default # of parts is now 1.
- - LZEXE the executeable for smaller size.
-