TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: Win95 Bitmaps & Dithering From:Chris Hulin <chrish -at- CTL -dot- COM -dot- CY> Date:Wed, 23 Oct 1996 09:44:18 +0200
At 01:37 PM 21/10/1996 GMT, Henning Bertram wrote:
<SNIP>
>And it it does give us a lot of problems. Under a lot of
>circumstances, this pattern will cause not-very-nice dithering in the
>printed matter (like, you kno,w huge areas with a checkered pattern).
<SNIP>
We found similar moire problems printing slider bars whose shade is made up
of a checker-board pattern of white (byte value 255 decimal) and light grey
(byte value 192 decimal). We found that certain reductions happen to come
out right on particular laser printers - once we found the percentage it
worked consistently.
Or why not write a program to change the offending pairs of bytes to a
smooth shade - it should be easy if your bitmap file is 8 bit and
uncompressed, and a bit of detective work will make the file header give up
its secrets.... or maybe I have been a lone tech writer for too long here in
the Cyprus sun...
Chris Hulin Tel: + 357 2 376671
Head of Documentation Fax: + 357 2 377412
Card Tech Limited chrish -at- ctl -dot- com -dot- cy
P.O. Box 552
Nicosia, Cyprus