A eutocode graphics art festival.
William Overington
Copyright 2002 and 2003 William Overington
Wednesday 15 January 2003
In December 2002 I started a new thread in the discussion forum at http://forum.mhp.org entitled "A eutocode graphics art festival".
I thought that it might be interesting to add a transcript of those postings into this sequence of documents.
The postings are the text that appeared, except that I have made the web addresses referenced into active links.
Each transcript consists of the date and time recorded with the posting, followed by the posting itself.
2002/12/17 12:29
Following the recent publication in this forum of the thread on eutocode graphics, the publication of the eutocodegraphics.htm applet on the web and the gradual spread of the DVB-MHP system, I write to initiate a eutocode graphics art festival.
2002/12/27 11:12
Winter Night
Copyright 2002 and 2003 William Overington
This file is accessible as follows.
1. There is a eutocode graphics art festival.
2. This eutocode graphics art festival takes place in this thread, named "A eutocode graphics art festival" in the forum at the
http://forum.mhp.org
website.
3. The purpose of the festival is to encourage interest in the eutocode graphics system and its application upon the DVB-MHP platform. It is hoped that interest in the festival will lead to people learning how to encode graphics in the eutocode graphics format and hopefully produce a variety of published graphics from various authors.
The festival is intended to be fun. There is just the chance that one or more DVB-MHP broadcasters will see the entries to the festival and wish to put them on air as a feature in a DVB-MHP channel, though that is not necessarily going to happen.
The intention is that the process of preparing an entry for the festival, even if it is not posted in this thread, will hopefully be an interesting experience for readers as it hopefully combines art and science in an interesting way.
4. Entry is free to all participants in the forum. Each participant may make as many entries as he or she chooses. Entries may be made from now. There is no closing date to the festival.
5. There are no prizes.
6. There is no judging of entries as between one entry and another entry.
7. Entry does not mean any transfer of copyright or other intellectual property rights from the original owner of them.
8. An entry to the festival is made by posting the sequence of Unicode Private Use Area codes for the graphic in this present thread in this present forum. This will probably appear as a sequence of black rectangles in the display of the thread on the web. An example is in the fourth posting in the thread "eutocode graphics". An entry may, but need not, be accompanied by a transcript showing the codes used in U+E... format as used in the fourth posting in the thread "eutocode graphics". An entry should have a title. An entry may, but need not, be accompanied by some notes about the design, the way that it was implemented and any interesting matters which arose along the way in the production of the artwork.
9. There are four categories of art in the festival. These are "fruits and vegetables", "abstract art", "DVB-MHP around the world" and "any other topic". All entries should be consistent with use on a DVB-MHP channel suitable for family viewing.
10. Entries should be no longer in terms of Unicode Private Use Area characters than may be displayed using just one push of the draw button using the eutocodegraphics.htm applet. This is so that readers of this thread may be able to produce a display of each entry by a simple copy of the eutocode graphics characters from the thread followed by a paste into the text box in the applet and pushing the draw button. Finding that size limit is part of the fun of this festival.
11. Entries should produce a graphic which would look good on a DVB-MHP screen using 720 pixels wide by 576 pixels high resolution. Entries which are larger than 600 pixels wide by 450 pixels high should have essentially background outside those limits, so that display can be made on television sets without edge effect problems. However, entries may be much smaller than that with the intention of being usable as graphics within a multimedia display of text and graphics. Bearing in mind that pixels in the DVB-MHP minimum display are slightly "landscape oblong" in a ratio of 16 wide to 15 high for each pixel, entrants may, if they wish, produce two versions of an entry, one with allowance made for display using landscape oblong pixels: thus, for example, the version produced for broadcasting would appear squashed in from the sides in a web-based display using square pixels. Certainly, this produces an added level of complexity, yet it is a matter which is going to need to be considered when producing graphics for use of the DVB-MHP platform. However, for many images, only one version need be prepared as two versions may perhaps only need to be produced when a specific feature such as a circle needs to be displayed on the screen.
William Overington
17 December 2002
This graphic is intended to produce a square display on a DVB-MHP system. Thus it has a slightly portrait aspect when viewed on a web browser.
It is 400 pixels high. The width is chosen to be fifteen sixteenths of 400, namely 375 pixels.
I begin by encoding a deep blue background. First I need to construct the colour.
It is convenient to choose a colour using the file colours.bmp within the Microsoft Paint program. The file colours.bmp can be found on the web.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/colours.bmp
This can be accessed from the following web page.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/pai07000.htm
By looking at the colours I choose the colour from the first block, fifth row, seventh column.
I use the Pick Color tool of Paint, then use Colors | Edit Colors... then I choose Define Custom Colors >> from the dialogue box and find that for this colour that Red = 0, Green = 191, Blue = 255.
I then use Microsoft Calculator, select View | Scientific, then find that the hexadecimal values are Red = 0x00, Green = 0xBF, Blue = 0xFF.
Please note that I did not need to use the colours.bmp file in Microsoft Paint in order to find a colour, yet it is a particularly convenient method to use.
I can thus set colour 16 to be that colour when next chosen by using the following sequence.
U+EC00 U+EB21 U+ECBF U+EB22 U+ECFF U+EB23
I can then set colour 16 to be the current colour using the following sequence.
U+EC10 U+EB20
I can now draw a filled rectangle so as to provide the background for the picture.
It is a rectangle which has its top left corner at (0,0) and which is 375 pixels wide by 400 pixels high.
Using Microsoft Calculator gives 375 as 0x177 hexadecimal and 400 as 0x190 hexadecimal. The 0x177 is entered using the character U+ED77 and the 0x190 is entered using the character U+ED90.
The full sequence for entering the filled rectangle is as follows.
U+EC00 U+EB00 U+EC00 U+EB01 U+ED77 U+EB02 U+ED90 U+EB03 U+EB42
However, the second U+EC00 may be omitted as it makes no change to the value in the accumulator register of the eutocode engine.
I now need to draw a black polygon to represent a barn and the ground.
The polygon is to be as follows, using coordinates with (0,0) at the top left corner.
(0,200)
(100,200)
(125,250)
(125,320)
(374,320)
(374,399)
(0,399)
then back to (0,200).
The polygon is to be filled with black, which is colour 0 in the eutocode graphics system.
The polygon is produced by first setting the current colour to be colour 0. This is by using the following sequence.
U+EC00 U+EB20
Then the entry of the polygon data is initiated by the following.
U+EB30
Then each point is entered by a sequence as follows.
data value for x U+EB10 data value for y U+EB11 U+EB31
When all of the data for the polygon is entered, use U+EB51 to draw a filled polygon in the selected colour from the set of points which have been entered.
Firstly, it is convenient to work out the hexadecimal values and eutocode graphics data codes for the numbers used in the coordinates.
0 0x00 U+EC00
100 0x64 U+EC64
125 0x7D U+EC7D
200 0xC8 U+ECC8
250 0xFA U+ECFA
320 0x140 U+ED40
374 0x176 U+ED76
399 0x18F U+ED8F
The sequence is as follows, spaced out on separate lines here for convenience.
U+EC00 U+EB20 U+EB30
U+EC00 U+EB10 U+ECC8 U+EB11 U+EB31
U+EC64 U+EB10 U+ECC8 U+EB11 U+EB31
U+EC7D U+EB10 U+ECFA U+EB11 U+EB31
U+EC7D U+EB10 U+ED40 U+EB11 U+EB31
U+ED76 U+EB10 U+ED40 U+EB11 U+EB31
U+ED76 U+EB10 U+ED8F U+EB11 U+EB31
U+EC00 U+EB10 U+ED8F U+EB11 U+EB31
U+EB51
Now I want to add the moon. I am drawing the moon as a filled oval with a width of 30 pixels and a height of 32 pixels, as that is a convenient ratio of 15 wide to 16 high. So in the web page this should look slightly oval and on a DVB-MHP screen it should look circular.
First I shall choose a colour for the moon from the set of DVB-MHP standard colours, using the file colours.bmp again.
A problem arises. The colour which I would like is not a standard colour, nor is there anything near it. The colour which I chose artistically in Paint turned out to have colour values of Red = 250, Green = 251, Blue = 219. The nearest colours are white at Red=255, Green = 255, Blue = 255 and a yellow at Red = 255, Green = 255, Blue = 127. I choose to use the yellow.
I can thus set colour 16 to be that colour when next chosen by using the following sequence.
U+ECFF U+EB21 U+ECFF U+EB22 U+EC7F U+EB23
I can then set colour 16 to be the current colour using the following sequence.
U+EC10 U+EB20
The filled oval is 30 pixels wide and 32 pixels high. I choose to place its top left corner at (320, 60).
30 0x1E
32 0x20
60 0x3C
320 0x140
I can then draw the filled oval as follows.
U+ED40 U+EB00 U+EC3C U+EB01 U+EC1E U+EB02 U+EC20 U+EB03 U+EB44
I now wish to have a try at displaying the finished graphic using the eutocodegraphics.htm facility.
First I need to produce the sequence of Unicode Private Use Area characters needed for the complete graphic.
The first stage of doing that is to gather the codes in U+ format which I have already chosen above into one sequence.
U+EC00 U+EB21 U+ECBF U+EB22 U+ECFF U+EB23
U+EC10 U+EB20
U+EC00 U+EB00 U+EC00 U+EB01 U+ED77 U+EB02 U+ED90 U+EB03 U+EB42
U+EC00 U+EB20 U+EB30
U+EC00 U+EB10 U+ECC8 U+EB11 U+EB31
U+EC64 U+EB10 U+ECC8 U+EB11 U+EB31
U+EC7D U+EB10 U+ECFA U+EB11 U+EB31
U+EC7D U+EB10 U+ED40 U+EB11 U+EB31
U+ED76 U+EB10 U+ED40 U+EB11 U+EB31
U+ED76 U+EB10 U+ED8F U+EB11 U+EB31
U+EC00 U+EB10 U+ED8F U+EB11 U+EB31
U+EB51
U+ECFF U+EB21 U+ECFF U+EB22 U+EC7F U+EB23
U+EC10 U+EB20
U+ED40 U+EB00 U+EC3C U+EB01 U+EC1E U+EB02 U+EC20 U+EB03 U+EB44
The next stage is to start the SC UniPad program.
Use Options | Character Rendering | Private Use Characters | Hexadecimal
Next copy the above U+ sequence onto the clipboard and paste it into SC UniPad.
In SC Unipad, delete the line endings and add space characters where they were, one for each, and place a space character at the start so that there is a continuous sequence of characters in the form of lots of repetitions of space U+Exxx. It is a good idea to save that file from SC UniPad in case any adaptions are needed to the design so that that stage can be retrieved easily.
Now, in SC UniPad do an Edit | Select All then do a Search | Replace and replace all occurrences of space U+ with a \u in each case. This may involve clicking a Yes button many times unless one unchecks the Prompt on replace checkbox in the dialogue box for the replace facility. However, for a first use of the system it is a good learning experience not to uncheck that checkbox.
Now, Edit | Select All in SC UniPad.
Now, Edit | Convert | \u...A
It is desirable to save that file as well.
Now, Edit | Select All and copy onto the clip board and that is the text to paste into the text box of the applet on the eutocodegraphics.htm facility.
This is that sequence. I have used the WordPad program to prepare this case history document off-line, saving the file in the one Unicode Text Document format offered by this particular version of WordPad.
Readers should be able to view the graphic if they so choose by copying the above characters onto the clipboard and then pasting the contents of the clipboard into the text box of the applet at the following address on the web and clicking on the draw button of the applet.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/eutocodegraphics.htm
The result is pleasing.
Readers might like to know that the inspiration for this graphic is the painting Carnival Evening by Henri Rousseau. I happened to become aware of its existence when it was shown for a short time in the BBC television programme Rolf on Art recently (website http://www.bbc.co.uk/rolfonart ) and I found it on
the web by searching for Henri Rousseau. I chose the picture as an inspiration partly because I just happened to like it and also because it contained the moon which allowed me to experiment with the aspect ratio of the pixels effect as a learning exercise. I am hoping to add the outlines of some trees.
This exercise so far has shown me that in specifying a level 1 eutocode graphics system it may well be desirable to include an additional character which is a character that performs the effects of both U+EB11 and U+EB31 in sequence as that will cut down the length of the eutocode character sequence needed for each polygon.
William Overington
27 December 2002
