New: ASCII compression for RAW format to access text data instead of binary.

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/include/im_format_raw.h b/include/im_format_raw.h
index 80a8203..4600271 100644
--- a/include/im_format_raw.h
+++ b/include/im_format_raw.h
@@ -22,9 +22,10 @@ extern "C" {
  * \par
  * Internal Implementation.
  * \par
- * Supports RAW binary images. This is a unstructured and uncompressed binary data. 
+ * Supports RAW binary images. This is an unstructured and uncompressed binary data. 
  * It is NOT a Camera RAW file generated in many professional digital cameras. \n
- * You must know image parameters a priori and must set the IM_INT attributes "Width", "Height", "ColorMode", "DataType" before the imFileReadImageInfo/imFileWriteImageInfo functions.
+ * You must know image parameters a priori and must set the IM_INT attributes "Width", "Height", "ColorMode", "DataType" 
+ * before the imFileReadImageInfo/imFileWriteImageInfo functions.
  * \par
  * The data must be in binary form, but can start in an arbitrary offset from the begining of the file, use attribute "StartOffset".
  * The default is at 0 offset. 
@@ -36,6 +37,9 @@ extern "C" {
  * \par
  * The lines can be aligned to a BYTE (1), WORD (2) or DWORD (4) boundaries, ue attribute "Padding" with the respective value.
  * \par
+ * If the compression is ASCII the data is stored in textual format, instead of binary. 
+ * In this case SwitchType and ByteOrder are ignored, and Padding should be 0.
+ * \par
  * See \ref im_raw.h
  * 
  * \section Features
@@ -44,7 +48,8 @@ extern "C" {
     Data Types: <all>
     Color Spaces: all, except MAP.
     Compressions: 
-      NONE - no compression 
+      NONE - no compression [default] 
+      ASCII (textual data)
     Can have more than one image, depends on "StartOffset" attribute.
     Can have an alpha channel.
     Components can be packed or not.
@@ -53,6 +58,9 @@ extern "C" {
     Attributes:
       Width, Height, ColorMode, DataType IM_INT (1)
       ImageCount[1], StartOffset[0], SwitchType[FALSE], ByteOrder[IM_LITTLEENDIAN], Padding[0]  IM_INT (1)
+
+    Comments:
+      In fact ASCII is an expansion, not a compression, because the file will be larger than binary data.
 \endverbatim
  * \ingroup format */
 imFormat* imFormatInitRAW(void);