AP-PIX(1)

📦
version 7.44.0 · 2 versions
, in nixpkgs unstable

✨ ap-pix(1) ✨

okay so real talk, this is a page from the BRL-CAD manual set, and it's about one very specific little glow-up: turning an Applicon color ink jet printer file into a pix file 💅

🌈 NAME 🌈

ap-pix — the icon that converts an Applicon color ink jet printer file to a pix file 🎀

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

ap-pix [-v] file.ap > file.pix

like, that's it. that's the whole vibe. redirect it and go ✨

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

bestie. okay. ap-pix converts an Applicon color ink jet printer image file into a pix(5) file, and it writes that pix file to standard output. no cap, that's the entire job 🫶

here's the tea about how the Applicon file is built: it holds three interleaved color separations — magenta, yellow, and cyan — and each one is offset 50 records apart within the same file. so they're all chilling in there together, just 50 records apart 🙈

ap-pix reads those three separations in parallel and smushes them into RGB pixels, and the color math is genuinely so satisfying:

  • a set cyan dot clears red 💙
  • a set magenta dot clears green 💜
  • a set yellow dot clears blue 💛

each scanline is 432 bytes (which is 3456 bits, iykyk), so the resulting pix file has scanlines of 3456 pixels ⭐

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -v — Verbose. prints wrote line N to standard error as each scanline is written, so you can watch the progress happen in real time 🔥
  • -h, -? — prints a usage message and exits. the classic "help me help you" moment 👑

🌸 EXAMPLES 🌸

Example 1. Convert an Applicon file and display it

$ ap-pix image.ap > image.pix
$ pix-fb -w 3456 image.pix

so this converts the Applicon file image.ap into a pix file, then displays the 3456-pixel-wide result on a framebuffer with pix-fb(1) 🖼️

⚠️ heads up bestie: the image width must be given explicitly, because the pix format does not store dimensions. pix-fb literally cannot know otherwise 😭 that's why the -w 3456 is there, don't skip it.

🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

brlcad(1), pix-fb(1), pix(5)

👑 AUTHOR 👑

BRL-CAD Team 💜

This software is Copyright (c) 1989-2026 by the United States Government as represented by U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

🍓 BUG REPORTS 🍓

Reports of bugs or problems should be submitted via electronic mail to devs@brlcad.org 📧

okay that's the whole page, mwah 💋 it's from the BRL-CAD crew (that's the source, and the manual name is AP-PIX(1) if you were wondering), and yeah — go convert some Applicon files, you got this 🌟

📦 where this page comes from