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ST2IFF by Michael W. George, July 1998

E-Mail: m.w.george@bigfoot.com
WWW:    www.bigfoot.com/~m.w.george
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Preface
-------

One day I was sorting through my disk collection and found all of my pictures
from the Atari ST. I decided that I'd like to have a look at them but found that
none of my PC software supported NEOchrome or DEGAS files so I decided to have
hunt around on the web to look for something that did. All that I could find was
software for the Mac but I did stumble across a page explaining Atari ST picture
formats. After reading the NEOchrome and DEGAS formats I decided I might as well
write my own conversion program since the formats were so simple and here it is.

If you find it useful, please send me an e-mail to let me know.  :-)


Features
--------

Executables provided for the Amiga and Windows 95/98/NT.

Supports: NEOchrome (.NEO)
          DEGAS (.PI1, .PI2, .PI3)
          DEGAS Elite (.PI1, .PI2, .PI3)
          DEGAS Elite Compressed (.PC1, .PC2, .PC3)

Supports all three resolutions (low, medium and high) but does not retain colour
cycling information (I didn't require it).

Actually, when I say it supports all three resolutions I actually mean that it
should in theory support all three resolutions. I haven't got any medium or high
resolution pictures to test it with!


Files Provided
--------------

amiga/st2iff        Amiga executable
dos/st2iff.exe      Executable for Windows 95/98/NT (sorry, no 16-bit version)
readme.txt          This file
source/formats.htm  Atari ST picture formats
source/st2iff.c     C Source

You are free to change the archive format from .LHA or .ZIP to any other common
format but please don't change the contents of the archive itself.


Usage
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Syntax:   st2iff <source> <destination>

e.g.      st2iff ASTRONAU.NEO ASTRONAU.IFF


Developer Stuff
---------------

ST2IFF was originally developed for the Amiga using SAS/C 6.51 (running under
UAE)! Since then I have ported it to the PC using Microsoft Developer Studio 97
and various Unix platforms using the standard C compiler.

The source is included in this archive and should compile on pretty much any
C compiler I hope. It certainly compiles and runs without problems on all of the
different machines that I have access to  ;-)

I've also included the documentation that I found detailing the Atari ST picture
formats. Thanks go to David Baggett for writing it in the first place.

If you make any improvements to ST2IFF then please feel free to send them on to
me. If anyone wants to include the colour cycling it should just be a matter of
creating the appropriate CRNG chunk in the IFF. However, I don't think it is
possible to specify the direction of cycling like in NEOchrome or DEGAS.

Have fun!
