Storing / Compressing schematic scans (slightly off topic)

This might be of interest to those on this list who maintain archives of
schematic scans.

My current job required me to compress some small B&W images, so as spin off of
that project I wrote a compressor for archiving my scanned schematics.

It's available at:

   www.zonn.com/Compression

including the 'C' source.

It only works with .BMP format files (they are by *far* the easiest to read, and
since they're is no bi-color compression already implemented in the .BMP format,
I don't have to worry about decompressing the image before re-compressing it).
It's lossless compression so the decompressed file is identical to the original.
I've also add mucho CRC32 checking so that downloads can be immediately checked
for errors.

If you're currently using PKZIP on uncompressed files, this program will cut
your disk requirements by at least half, usually a bit more than that.

If you've saved them in the older .TIF (like the Cinematronics CPU scans on
www.spies.com) this program will cut your storage to about 1/10 the size. It's
about half the size of some of the newer .TIF formats (but there are so many TIF
formats that I have no idea which ones to compare to).

As an example, all the Cinematronics CPU scans (six pages) at 600dpi, and both
monitor (Vectorbeam / Cinematronics 4 more pages) scans at 600dpi, together only
take up ~700k of space compressed. Uncompressed they use ~38meg.

I can now fit all the Cinematronics schematics on my measly homepage.

It currently runs in DOS (or a DOS window), and I've made the source available
so that a possible conversion to a Mac could be done, if someone were motivated
to do so (I know nothing of Mac programming).

-Zonn

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Received on Thu May 14 17:39:43 1998