I have been working on DEC's VAXen and later on Aphas running VMS and
OpenVMS for almost 20 years. During that time, beside the stuff directly
related to my profession, I have coded a number of utilities which might
be of some interest to the general public. All this stuff is quite old now
(being created in the early and mid 1990's), and probably completely
outdated, but still, here it is, taken out of the backups and freshly
recompiled:
(Due to technical reasons, some of the items on this page may not be
at all times directly available for download. In such case contact me
by e-mail).
SxConv Sixel picture convertor (Version 1.09) :
A utility that converts graphic files between DEC's "Sixel" graphic format
and some other bitmap image formats; it can perform some basic
manipulations of images, such as mirroring, inverting, rotation, scaling,
etc. Only monochrome image bitmaps are supported. Recognized file formats:
PCL (input only), SXL/SIX (including sixel flavours specific for various
DEC's printers), PCX, GEM IMG, TeX (output only; using PXPIC- see below).
Binaries for VAX and Alpha.
DVISXD DVI driver for Sixel devices (Version 3.9) :
A driver for viewing and printing TeX DVI files. It can create output
optimized for Sixel-format-compatible and PCL-compatible devices: VT240/241
and VT330/340 terminals, DECTerm window, LA100, 210 and LG02 matrix printers,
LN03 and LN05 (DECLaser 2100) laser printers, for generic 150dpi and 300dpi
sixel files, and also PCL print files (sorry, no compression) for HP
LaserJet laser printers. DVISXD supports output scaling, approximation of
missing font sizes, virtual fonts, mirrored output, some graphic \special
commands, etc. Binaries for VAX and Alpha, documentation and
command-definition files.
PXPIC Bitmap image system for TeX :
A brave attempt to create a system for inserting device- and driver-
independent (i.e. without using \special commands) monochrome bitmap
images into TeX documents. Images are converted into sequences of
bit-pattern that are displayed using a small set of specially designed
fonts (SxConv can be used to do conversion), thus avoiding the need to
load gigantic picture-containing fonts into DVI drivers. BigTeX is needed
for pictures of larger sizes.