[Re: PICT format]

[mathog at seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu]

In article <5v8uoh$djj$1 at niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk>, ptaylor at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Dr. P.L. Taylor) writes:
>>Your choice of a bitmap is not the simplest PICT output -- it
>>is kind of tricky.  PICT is mostly a vector drawing format,
>>like Postscript, and adding bitmaps requires some complex
>>compression and bit counting.
>
>Not at all - it could hardly be simpler in fact.  
>Takes just 3 lines of code:
>
>OpenPicture(aPicHandle);
>CopyBits(myBitMap, myBitMap, myBitMap.bounds, myBitMap.bounds,
>			SrcCopy, Nil);
>ClosePicture;
>
>aPicHandle is a PicHandle which will hold the picture.

That's what it looks like inside a Mac, but none of those calls are
available on any other platform, so if you want to have a program that can
write a PICT *in general* it is a serious amount of work.  This is why
PICT never became a widely accepted standard outside of the Mac platform.

Regards,

David Mathog
mathog at seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu
Manager, sequence analysis facility, biology division, Caltech