Alright all, here's what I've managed to work out with Xbin images. Easiest way for me to do it, anyways.

Find a nice monochrome (as in black and white, not greyscale) image to start with. You want to make the final image no larger than 640x384 (XBin's go up to 640x400 but the status bar cuts off a row)

Do whatever work you need in an image editor of your choice, then save it is a a JPG. You have two options from here:

linux/os x: install imagemagick, and run:
convert -colors 2 infile.jpg BMP3:outfile.bmp
windows:
I dunno, DM uses MS pain and can save as a monochrome bitmap from there.

put that bmp on your BBS system, and run this on it from /sbbs/exec:

./jsexec xbimage create /path/to/file/outfile.bmp -normal

it'll chug and chug away, and may or may not create several images ranging from outfile.16.xb to outfile.8.xb.

if it errors out and says there's too many glyphs, the picture's too complicated. go back and try to create more areas with blank white and black. 16 pixel fonts tend to work easiest, followed by 14, then by 8.

to display the images, you can either set them up as a gallery in ansiview.js, or use xbimage.js show myawesomeimage.16.xb as a logon event to do a splash screen.

I've not yet: figured out how to determine if a caller can actually view xbins and not show them. put together a "demo" (it's one of the options, I just haven't touched it yet.)

that's my quick writeup.

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Re: XBin Images
By: deepthaw to All on Sat Nov 14 2020 10:58 pm

I've not yet: figured out how to determine if a caller can actually view xbins and not show them. put together a "demo" (it's one of the options, I just haven't touched it yet.)

See the demo() function in xbimage.js.

It uses cterm.supports_fonts() to determine if the user's terminal supports custom fonts (and thus XBimages) or not.

Here's how have the XBimage logon demo setup on Vertrauen:

Name XBin Image Demo
Internal Code XBINDEMO
Start-up Directory
Command Line ?xbimage demo=images.ini -delay=1500
Clean-up Command Line
Execution Cost None
Access Requirements ANSI
Execution Requirements
Multiple Concurrent Users Yes
Intercept I/O No
Native Executable No
Use Shell to Execute No
Modify User Data No

ctrl/images.ini:

name = SyncTERM/XBin Images
xpos = center
ypos = center
;delay = 5000

[addisks2]
lightgray=white

[einstein]
lightgray=white

[rush-logo]

[starman480]

[marilyn]
lightgray=white

[starwars]
fg_color=1

[starwars_helmets]
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digital man

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Re: XBin Images
By: Digital Man to deepthaw on Sun Nov 15 2020 03:37 pm

Here's how have the XBimage logon demo setup on Vertrauen:

Very nice, I'll have to see if I can get this working on mine.

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