New File Format??

Hi there! I wanna create my own custom file format which em-beds and
holds a bitmap image and some text within the file.(let's call it .dip)

When the user serializes(saves) the file, I wanna store the data bits
and information about the bitmap in member variables, so that when the
file is saved, the file size will be much much lighter, cos' the bitmap
isn't physically saved to disk, just the information about the bitmap,
so that when the user clicks the Open menu item, the bitmap bits and
information are read and united into a bitmap at run-time.

Hope u can reply and give me your views! Thanks! :-D

Er-hem!(clears my throat) :-)

[b]............[b]

what do you mean by this? Then what is the point of saving the file?
Do you intend to close your program after saving a file in that manner, and expect to read in the bitmap you 'saved' again the next time?

uncompressed bitmap file formats do what you are suggesting. infact they are a bit better than that. for example you may want to save every pixel value and its x, y coordinates in your image description file. but what if you have a stream and save pixels in order and avoid the x, y coordinates. and describe the image in rows and columns. well now you got an uncompressed image file format. the next step is compression. there are great book on this subject. some of them are so much fun to get into. not only from a technical point of view, but rather the genious behind them. I mean even the run length is pretty clever. I would recommend you to read some.

Good luck in your questioning as a method of learning. there is nothing wrong with reinventing the wheel imho.



Yalcin Yanikoglu
IoFlex Inc.