Version 1.4
June, 2000
http://www.nigels.com/exorcist/Exorcist.html
Nigel Stewart
http://www.nigels.com/
nigels@nigels.com
A freeware utility for converting GIF images files to the PNG "ping" format.
Drag and drop interface.
Background batch operation.
Persistant configuration.
Optionally move GIF files to recycle bin.
Windows 95, 98, NT4, NT3.51
CONTENTS
System Requirements
Runtime Configuration
Converting Files to PNG
Other PNG Software
PNG Information Sources
Revision History
Credits
Legal Notices
The Exorcist is known to work correctly on Windows 95,Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.
If people are still using Windows NT 3.51, let me know if everything works.
Two Microsoft DLL files are required at runtime: olepro32.dll and msvc42.dll.
These are included in the distribution, and need to reside in the same directory as the program.
Create Interlaced PNG file
Encode the PNG with multiple passes. This costs slightly more in storage but is very useful for low-bandwidth environments such as the World Wide Web. The display of an interlaced PNG file will progress from a quick blocky version, to the final image.
Delete Source GIF file
GIF File will be moved to the recycle bin, once converted.
Write Histogram Information
PNG supports an optional palette histogram so that displays with fewer available colours can quantise the image more easily. This will make the output file slightly larger, but improve performance in color poor environments.
Write Software Chunk
Identify The Exorcist - Gif2Png as the originator of the PNG file.
The Exorcist is designed to operate as a background task with minimal user intervention.
It maintains a queue of input GIF files to be processed.
There are different ways of scheduling files for conversion.
Here are a couple of tools that I use to view and manipulate PNG images.
ACDSee (Windows 95,98,NT)
http://www.acdvictoria.com/
Sea (Shareware, DOS/Windows 95)
http://www.photodex.com/
Display for DOS (Freeware, Powerful, DOS/Win95/WinNT)
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Hills/6744/
JASC Paint Shop Pro (Shareware, Windows95/98/NT)
http://www.jasc.com/
| PNG Home Site | http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/ |
| Burn All GIF's | http://pegasus.uni-paderborn.de/enno/burnallgifs/ |
| The gif2png Home Page | http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/gif2png/ |
| Greg Roelof's Home Page | http://www.sonic.net/~roelofs/ |
| PNG Technical Documentation | http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngdocs.html |
| Applications supporting PNG | http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapps.html |
The Exorcist
This is a Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) user interface written by Nigel Stewart.
http://www.nigels.com/exorcist/Exorcist.html
Gif2Png
A command-line based program originally written by Alexander Lehmann.
It is generic C source and should compile for most platforms.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/gif2png/
PNG Lib
A library of functions to manage Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image files.
It is generic C source and should compile for most platforms.
Z Lib
This is the compression library used by PNG Lib.
It is generic C source and should compile for most platforms.
Exorcist
The Exorcist is guaranteed only to occupy disk space. The fact that the files associated with this distribution may behave as an executable program should be considered purely coincidental. None of the authors of this software accept any liability for any damages caused by this software. This software is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
This software is to be distributed at no charge, apart from reasonable costs for distribution media.
Nigel Stewart
nigels@nigels.com
Gif2Png
Copyright (C) 1995 Alexander Lehmann
This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.
Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications (see below), and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:
1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.
3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.
4. Binary only distributions of the software must include the file README with the copyright statement. You are welcome to add a copyright statement for your modifications and a contact address, though.
Note that this program uses the LZW decompression algorithm, which due to patent claims probably requires you to license if you use the algorithm in a commercial program or distribute this program on a for-profit basis. (See http://www.unisys.com)
Alexander Lehmann
alex@hal.rhein-main.de
Gif Read
Copyright 1990 - 1994, David Koblas. (koblas@netcom.com)
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. This software is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
PNG Lib
The PNG Reference Library is supplied "AS IS". The Contributing Authors and Group 42, Inc. disclaim all warranties, expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability and of fitness for any purpose. The Contributing Authors and Group 42, Inc. assume no liability for direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages, which may result from the use of the PNG Reference Library, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.
Permission is hereby granted to use, copy, modify, and distribute this source code, or portions hereof, for any purpose, without fee, subject to the following restrictions:
1. The origin of this source code must not be misrepresented.
2. Altered versions must be plainly marked as such and must not be misrepresented as being the original source.
3. This Copyright notice may not be removed or altered from any source or altered source distribution.
The Contributing Authors and Group 42, Inc. specifically permit, without fee, and encourage the use of this source code as a component to supporting the PNG file format in commercial products. If you use this source code in a product, acknowledgment is not required but would be appreciated.
ZLib
Copyright (C) 1995-1996 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler
This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.
Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions:
1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software.
3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.
Jean-loup Gailly
gzip@prep.ai.mit.edu
Mark Adler
madler@alumni.caltech.edu
The data format used by the zlib library is described by RFCs (Request for Comments) 1950 to 1952 in the files ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1950.txt (zlib format), rfc1951.txt (deflate format) and rfc1952.txt (gzip format).