EasyBMP Cross-Platform Bitmap Library News

EasyBMP is an easy cross-platform C++ library for reading and writing Windows bitmap (BMP) files. No installation, no need for external libraries, small in size, well-documented, and simple enough for the novice programmer to start in just minutes! EasyBMP particularly shines as an easy image input/output tool for scientists and other technically-minded people who may not be formally trained in programming. ... read more

Version 1.05 was released yesterday. Due to a synchronization error on my part, it included a non-final version of EasyBMP.cpp. In particular, the rescale function was not fully implemented in the release.

I just re-uploaded Version 1.05 to included the correct EasyBMP.cpp file. The Rescale function should now work. Sorry for any inconvenience. -- Paul

EasyBMP is an easy cross-platform C++ library for reading and writing Windows bitmap (BMP) files. No installation, no need for external libraries, small in size, well-documented, and simple enough for the novice programmer to start in just minutes! EasyBMP particularly shines as an easy image input/output tool for scientists and other technically-minded people who may not be formally trained in programming. ... read more

EasyBMP is an easy cross-platform C++ library for reading and writing Windows bitmap (BMP) files. No installation, no need for external libraries, small in size, well-documented, and simple enough for the novice programmer to start in just minutes! EasyBMP particularly shines as an easy image input/output tool for scientists and other technically-minded people who may not be formally trained in programming. ... read more

Okay, so now you have your BMP still images for your scientific animations. What's to do next? Paste them together as an animation!

I'm pleased to announce that I just launched EasyBMPtoAVI Movie Creator, a new project on SourceForge that creates an AVI movie from a series of BMP images. The project website is here:

http://easybmptoavi.sourceforge.net/

Because the project uses EasyBMP for the image input, all image bit depths are supported, and the goal of the project is to be cross-platform and cross-compiler compatible. The project will emphasize ease of use and consistency across platforms.... read more

EasyBMP is an easy cross-platform C++ library for reading and writing Windows bitmap (BMP) files. No installation, no need for external libraries, small in size, well-documented, and simple enough for the novice programmer to start in just minutes! EasyBMP particularly shines as an easy image input/output tool for scientists and other technically-minded people who may not be formally trained in programming. ... read more

EasyBMP is an easy cross-platform C++ library for reading and writing Windows bitmap (BMP) files. No installation, no need for external libraries, small in size, well-documented, and simple enough for the novice programmer to start in just minutes! EasyBMP particularly shines as an easy image input/output tool for scientists and other technically-minded people who may not be formally trained in programming... read more

Hello, everyone.

September and October are going to be busy months with me, as I have a wedding in the family and am planning to advance to Ph.D. candidacy. Accordingly, I'm going to take a short-term break on EasyBMP development. However, I will still provide support and answer any EasyBMP-related correspondance. Thank you again, and I'll see you all in a couple of months! -- Paul

EasyBMP is an easy cross-platform C++ library for reading and writing Windows bitmap (BMP) files. No installation, no need for external libraries, small in size, well-documented, and simple enough for the novice programmer to start in just minutes! EasyBMP particularly shines as an easy image input/output tool for scientists and other technically-minded people who may not be formally trained in programming. ... read more

EasyBMP is an easy cross-platform C++ library for reading and writing Windows bitmap (BMP) files. No installation, no need for external libraries, small in size, well-documented, and simple enough for the novice programmer to start in just minutes! EasyBMP particularly shines as an easy image input/output tool for scientists and other technically-minded people who may not be formally trained in programming. ... read more

I'll be adding a new package to EasyBMP in the near future: a package of useful extensions. The first addition to this package will be EasyBMP_win32.h, a set of functions to convert BMP objects to and from HBITMAP/HDC objects. It will also include a few screen and window capture functions, and it will provide a means of better interfacing EasyBMP with win32 applications. Many thanks to Michael Nistler of Minnesota, who is helping to develop this extension! -- macklin01

I just finished updating and revising the documentation to match Version 0.66. Besides necessary grammatical corrections, I have updated the "Known Bugs and Quirks" section.

Hello, and welcome to any new visitors to the EasyBMP project! I'll be updating the EasyBMP documentation tomorrow to include the most recent changes to the core API. Thanks again for your interest in EasyBMP. -- macklin01

EasyBMP is an easy cross-platform C++ library for reading and writing Windows bitmap (BMP) files. No installation, no need for external libraries, small in size, well-documented, and simple enough for the novice programmer to start in just minutes! EasyBMP particularly shines as an easy image input/output tool for scientists and other technically-minded people who may not be formally trained in programming.... read more

This release focuses on code cleanup and improved robustness.
Any functions that were still implemented inside a class were
moved outside. The RGBApixel** Pixels data member of the BMP
class was made private. Two new functions were added to provide
a safe means to access and edit colors in the color table of a
BMP object. This will pave the way to making RGBApixel* Colors
a private data member in a future release. Lastly, error messages
were cleaned up throughout the library. ... read more

Things seem to be solidifying nicely in the library. The user interface has remained essentially fixed since Version 0.55 and higher, and bug fixes and code cleanups have been required less and less.

I hope to change the status of EasyBMP from its current beta state to production/stable by Release 0.75 or November 9, 2005, which is three months from now. So, from here on out, all releases in the default branch will focus primarily on bug fixes, code cleanup, and continued improvement in compatibility. But as always, if you have a feature request, I definitely want to hear it. The major reason for giving it another 3 months and/or 11 releases of waiting time is to allow the library to solidify further and implement any desired features that remain true to the philosophy of the project.... read more

I just finished updating and revising the documentation to match
Version 0.64. Besides necessary grammatical corrections, I have
included documentation on some hidden "helper" functions that
may prove useful.

I just released Version 0.64.

This release focuses on code cleanup, minor bugfixes,
and improved standards compliance/compatibility.
Namespaces have been better applied, and more modern
C++ library headers have been used. Also, some
pragmas have been added to each header so that it
should be fine the include EasyBMP.h mulitple times in
larger projects.

Also, I'm currently revising the documentation to match
the new release and to eliminate typographical and
grammatical errors. Expect a release in the next few days.

I just updated the documentation to match Version 0.63.
The most notable change is the addition of a diagram of the
coordinate system. Also new is a "What's EasyBMP Good For?"
section.

I just released Version 0.63. Download it here:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/easybmp/EasyBMP_0.63.zip?download

This release focuses on enhancing safety/reliability and cleaning up the code. More checks have been added to avoid accessing non-existent pixels, and warning messages have been added to cue in the user. The color table functions have been rewritten in a much more elegant manner; this has brought the size of the library down to under 43KB. Lastly, the appearance of error messages has been made more consistent throughout the library. ... read more

This is a big release. As of Version 0.62, EasyBMP
supports all architecture, including little-endian (e.g.,
x86) and big-endian (e.g. PowerPC G5), on all platforms.
However, the support for big-endian architectures is new,
and so there may be bugs.

The next several releases will work towards solidifying
support of the big-endian architectures, improving
stability, and squashing any remaining bugs. :-)

I just had my first successful write to a big-endian
machine: a Sun Sparc 4. The Endianess detection is
working quite well, and I wrote some routines to swap
the bytes in the WORD, DWORD, BMFH, and BMIH
data types. Because these are the only data types that
span multiple bytes, they are the only parts of the library
affected by endianess.

Version 0.62 should provide experimental support for
big-endian architectures. This will include the PowerPC
architecture on OS X, for instance, and the Sun Sparc 4
on Solaris. (That's what I'm using for testing.)... read more

The documentation (user manual) has been updated to reflect
the most recent version.

This version has a minor bugfix for the awIndex typo in the
WriteToFile() routine. Also, some floating point operations
were replaced by integer operations to speed up writing 8-bit
files. Lastly, CreateGreyscaleColorTable() was tweaked to
give a better range of colors on 4-bit files.

Well, after extensive testing in linux, I'm happy enough with
the new version of the library to deprecate the legacy code.
With that, the core library is under 50KB. :-)

Also, a preliminary test of the library on an Ultra Sparc
machine with Solaris was good. The new library
compiles and runs fine; the only oustanding issues are
those of endianess. Once I learn how to detect and deal
with these issues, EasyBMP will be truly platform and
architecture independent!!! :-). ... read more