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README for libbsb

Building and installing

For Unix and Unix-like OSs (including Mac OS X):

      ./configure
      make
      make check
      make install

"make install" will install the library libbsb.a, its C header file bsb.h and the following conversion programs:

    bsb2ppm        ppm2bsb        bsbfix
    bsb2tif        tif2bsb

bsb2png

For WIN32 native builds you must install MSYS to be able to run the configure script. MSYS can be downloaded gratis from http://www.mingw.org/msys.shtml and once installed run the same commands as above for Unix OSs.
Or, to select the MSVC compiler instead of gcc use: ./configure CC=cl
Or, for a cross-compiler built to target i686-x-mingw32msvc use: ./configure --host=i686-x-mingw32msvc

Optional libraries

You must have libtiff installed to be able to build bsb2tif and tif2bsb. For LZW compression support use libtiff 3.7.0 or later. libtiff - http://www.libtiff.org/

For bsb2png you must have libpng installed. libpng - http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html

Usage

A sample BSB file is included in the release. The image is based on a hand drawn map of Australia so it is not intended for navigational purposes :)

australia4c.kap - 4 color chart of Australia

bsb2tif & tif2bsb

To convert a BSB file to a TIFF file:

bsb2tif australia4c.kap australia4c.tif

To convert a TIFF file to BSB you need a template file containing all the cartographic information appropriate for the image. The template file is merely the ASCII text lines at the start of a BSB file, and for the conversion to work it must contain the RA=<width>,<height> data in the "BSB/" token.

In this example I used the original BSB file as the template: tif2bsb australia4c.kap edited.tif new.kap

In this example the max number of colors for the BSB colormap is specified: tif2bsb -c 4 australia4c.kap edited.tif new.kap

bsb2ppm & ppm2bsb

Usage of bsb2ppm and ppm2bsb is similiar to the TIFF utilities.

      bsb2ppm australia4c.kap australia4c.ppm
      ppm2bsb australia4c.kap edited.ppm new.kap

bsbfix

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The utility bsbfix fixes the index table in a BSB file that has become invalid. A BSB file becomes invalid whenever you edit the cartographic information in the ASCII text header at the start of a BSB file using a text editor like vi or emacs.
E.g.

      Edit the BSB file to change registration points in the text header:
        vi australia4c.kap
      Fix the binary index table in the BSB file:
        bsbfix australia4c.kap

Author

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Send feedback to Stuart Cunningham <stuart_hc@users.sourceforge.net>