Re: [hatari-devel] Screenshots in NEO format

[Thomas Huth <th.huth@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 18/01/2024 00.35, Eero Tamminen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 17.1.2024 3.02, Brad Smith wrote:
> > The NEO format seemed to have a header that specifies dimensions of the
> > picture, resolution (low/medium/high), and a 16-colour palette, followed by
> > a 32k dump of screen data. The original NEOChrome program itself only works
> > with 320x200x4bpp images, however.
> >
> > So, the question becomes what to do with the other screen modes available
> > for STE/TT/Falcon. My thought was rather than dumping nothing, or something
> > incomplete, just include the missing information in a benign way.

Dumping something that cannot be read by any known application (AFAIK) does 
not make much sense, does it? So I agree with Nicolas here to omit the code.

> It may make more sense to save it in *addition* to PNG/BMP, not instead.

Uh, if the users asked for NEO, why should we fill their hard disks with 
additional files?

> I.e. do that additional save only when Hatari option for that is enabled, 
> and screen size & number of colors matches.

IMHO there should be a radio button in the GUI that can be used to switch 
between PNG, BMP and NEO, instead of having an additional option for NEO 
beside the PNG/BMP switch in the configs.

> While making PNG use exact palette from ST/STE is useful, the first question 
> I have about the Neochrome support is why that particular format?
>
> Why not e.g. DegasElite format support?   Or maybe both, and let user select?

So far only NEO has been requested, so please let's not complicate things 
until there is a real need for it!

> As to larger than 32k Atari compatible screen dumps... Why not use standard 
> Atari format that supports different sizes by the spec, e.g. XIMG:
> https://freemint.github.io/tos.hyp/en/VDI_fundamentals.html#The_20XIMG_20format_20for_20pixel_20images
> ?

dito, as long as nobody really really needs this, let's keep our code 
simple, please.

> > If the concept of using the format in an extended way is not acceptable, I
> > would at least suggest returning an error from ScreenSnapShot_SaveNEO for
> > the GenConv case, so we aren't generating a file containing uninitialized
> > data, and at least giving a warning through stderr.

Agreed, there should be an error message in the log if a user tries to save 
a NEO file in a non-compliant screen mode.

 Thomas