TRANSLATORS

This directory contains contributed CAD translators and image file
converters for going to and from Radiance.  Most of the programs should
be here as compressed tar files that unpack to create a directory with
the appropriate Makefile and manual page(s).

By convention, CAD format translators are named something like *2rad,
and usually do not perform the reverse conversion from Radiance models
to the CAD system.  Image file converters, on the other hand, should
provide a '-r' option to go from the foreign image format to a Radiance
floating point pictures.  The convention for image converter names is ra_*.

The following translators have been contributed so far:

dem2rad.tar.Z	- A translator from Digital Elevation Maps to gensurf input
dxf2rad.lisp	- An AutoLISP DXF translator [uncompressed]
ra2pict.tar.Z	- A translator from Radiance to Macintosh PICT (forward only)
ra_ps.c		- A translator from Radiance to Adobe PostScript
ra_xim.tar.Z	- A translator between Radiance pictures and Ximage format
ra_rle.c	- A translator from Radiance pictures to Utah RLE format
torad.tar.Z	- An improved AutoLISP translator for Radiance

If you are planning to write a CAD format translator for Radiance, please
consult the translators file in the ray/doc/notes directory of the standard
Radiance distribution.

If you wish to write an image converter, please avail yourself of the
Radiance scanline color manipulation routines in ray/src/px and
ray/src/common:  color.h, resolu.h, color.c, colrops.c, header.c and
resolu.c.  You may use start from the ra_skel.c example converter.  If
you are converting to 8-bit color, you may also want to use the
routines in ciq.c, cut.c and closest.c.  You can follow ra_pr as an
example of 8-bit color conversion.  If you are converting to some raw
image format, you should check that pvalue doesn't do the conversion
already.