[boot scriptor] Re: BMP images Size

Hi Michael,

> The new feature of displaying BMP images in Version 1.2.14b 
> is a very good value-added feature.  However, when a 320 x 
> 240 BMP is amplified into a 800 x 600 screen or even larger, 
> the displaying quality is  not admirable.  It will be nice if 
> we can restrict the displaying size of the BMP images to 640 
> x 480.

Yes, I know the image is extremely low resolution, and I'd really like
to have 640x480 true-color images.  There are a couple reasons why the
current limitation is set:

1. I've never programmed Vesa BIOS Extensions (VBE) before.
2. High-res, high-color images would take a lot of memory to store
(about 900kb), which isn't really doable in Boot Scriptor's current
state.  So I guess that leaves streaming the image directly off the
CD/DVD into VRAM as the only option.  This may in fact work, now that I
think about it, since true-color BMP's don't need the intermediate
decoding stage.

But it may be slow.  I think if I was to do this, I'd require at least 2
pages of VRAM which would allow me to show a blank screen while loading
the image.  That would require a minimum of about 2Mb on the adapter.
This shouldn't rule out too many VBE compliant systems I don't think, so
unless there are any objections this will probably be acceptable.

Maybe there should also be the capability for Boot Scriptor to do a
(crude) down-sample of the image and use it as 320x240x8 if either VBE
or 2Mb VRAM isn't available, but that's a lot more work.

Now all I need is the time and the inclination.  My #1 priority still is
to get Boot Scriptor 1.2 stable on as many systems as possible.

Mike

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