BitmapTxt

What is BitmapTxt?

BitmapTxt is an open source ColdFusion 8 application that renders text and ascii files into an image for web viewing. Using authentic bitmap text mode fonts for both the Amiga and DOS PC any text file can be viewed the way it was intended by its authors. It is based off the PHP application NFO Viewer 1 by Richard David that was released in May of 2007.

BitmapTxt website: bitmaptxt.riaforge.org

Examples

Long Island NFO by barium YSP NFO by barium using 80x50 font There is a Lobster in my Backpack using Amiga font Poetic Ramblings by Blackend with inverted colours I Love You by Spinsane with pink font and blue background Telecomputist Newsletter from 1986 An Apple II text file from 1985 with a green font Remorse 1981 Promo by ZeroSeven using 80x50 font Remorse Fiddy Promo by Tzeentch using 80x50 font Image information dump

Please view the source of bitmaptxt-example.cfm to see the examples' arguments.

Features

• Saves the rendered image to server or displays it directly to the browser
• Multiple font support including MS-DOS 80*25, MS-DOS 80*50, Amiga BIOS font and Amiga Topaz
• Multiple font colours
• Colour or grayscale output
• Customised background colour, either a string, RGB or hexadecimal value
• Multiple image formats
• Adjustable image borders for framing

Limitations

• ColdFusion currently does not support PNG 4 or PNG 8 so image file sizes are larger than they could be (a feature request has been lodged with Adobe)
  You can use the imageType="grayscale" as a work around as it will significantly reduce the image file size but all colours will be converted to grey shadings
• A bug in ColdFusion's image function means a number of the images may display font corruption. The only absolute work around so far is to reload font character file at every line pass during the image generation process. But the trade off is an increased render time of up to and over 40%. Use the fontreload="1" argument to adjust this function. A value of 0 disables the function for optimal performance (default), otherwise you can supply any value between 1 (slowest, eliminate font problems) and 10 (faster, but less likely to fix the font problem).

Future Additions

• ANSI and BINARY support
• ANSI extensions such as ADF, ANSI/2, IDF and XBIN
• ASCII font maps for antiquated systems

Requirements

• Adobe ColdFusion 8

Attributes

There are 10 different attributes that can be used with BitMapTxt, but of those only one is required. The default settings generally work best for most text files.

Attributes	Type/Range	Result
source	string absolute or relative path	This is the path to and the name of the file you wish to convert, it is the only required attribute.
destination	string absolute or relative path or writeToBrowser	This is the path to the directory where you wish to save the image, otherwise if set to 'writeToBrowser' then the image will displayed directly to the web browser without writing it to a file. Default: writeToBrowser
bgc	string HTML named, hexadecimal or rgb colour value	The background colour of the image. This can be a HTML named colour, a hexadecimal colour or an RGB value. Default: 000000 (black)
border	integer	This is the size (in pixels) of the rectangular border around the outside edge of the image. Default: 0
colour	integer range (0 - 15)	This is a numeric value representing which font colour should be used. Default: 0 0 Black 1 Dark Blue 2 Dark Green 3 Dark Cyan 4 Red 5 Purple 6 Brown 7 Light Grey 8 Grey 9 Dark Sky Blue 10 Light Green 11 Cyan 12 Light Red 13 Light Purple 14 Yellow 15 White
fontreload	integer range (0 - 10)	Reload the font character file at every fontreload value line pass during the image generation process. A 0 value disables this function, a 1 value reloads the font file every line pass, while a 5 value would reload it at every 5th pass. Default: 0
font	list 80x50, 80x25, amiga, damn, topaz	The bitmap (raster) font to use. 80x25 is a standard VGA MS-DOS 80 column by 25 row text-mode font 80x50 is a standard VGA MS-DOS 80 column by 50 row text-mode font amiga is a size 8 font Amiga ROM font topaz is a size 11 Amiga Topaz font damn is an alternative 80 column by 25 row bitmap font originally used in the DAMN NFO Viewer Default: 80x25
format	list png, jpeg, gif, tiff, bmp	Format the image should be displayed in or saved as. Default: PNG
imagetype	list gb, argb, grayscale	Colour scale the image should support. Grayscale converts colours into shades of grey, but when combined with the PNG format it offers a significant reduction to the size of the file.
imagetrim	boolean	This attribute was removed after BitampTxt 0.7
imagedump	boolean	CFDump the image details such as width, height, colour information and rendering time. Default: No