RAS_FORMATS(1NCAR)

💖 RAS_FORMATS 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the RAS_FORMATS(1NCAR) page from the NCAR VIEW manual — yes, that NCAR VIEW, the one with the raster tea 🫖✨. sit down, hydrate, and let's talk raster formats.

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🌈 NAME 🌈

ras_formats — literally the whole lore on raster formats that NCAR Graphics and NCAR View can handle. that's it, that's the job 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

Abekas A60, AVS, Generic Binary, HDF, HPPCL, NRIF, Sun, SGI, and XWD.

look at that lineup. it's giving roster reveal 👑

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the vibe: NCAR Graphics and NCAR View apps are all built on top of one shared library, and that library is the one doing all the reading and writing of raster imagery. main character library behavior, honestly.

the rundown below shows exactly what support exists for every format. important though — a format can be writeable without being readable, and a compressed image can be readable without being writeable. they're not the same thing, don't get it twisted 😭

by default, a raster image gets written as compressed if possible. and for the apps that figure out the raster format by peeking at the filename, or that let you pass a -ifmt or -ofmt, you use the extension listed below without the "." in front — so you'd say hdf, not .hdf. no cap, the dot is not invited to the party 🙈

• Abekas A60 (.a60) — encoding RGB24, input Yes, output Yes, compression None
• AVS (.avs) — encoding RGB24, input Yes, output Yes, compression None
• HDF (.hdf) — encoding Indexed-8, input Yes, output Yes, compression In/Out
• HDF (.hdf) — encoding Direct-24, input Yes, output Yes, compression In/Out
• HPPCL (.hppcl) — encoding Indexed-8, input No, output Yes, compression Out
• NRIF (.nrif) — encoding Bilevel, input No, output No, compression None
• NRIF (.nrif) — encoding Indexed-8, input Yes, output Yes, compression In/Out
• NRIF (.nrif) — encoding Direct-24, input Yes, output Yes, compression In/Out
• Sun (.sun) — encoding Indexed-8, input Yes, output Yes, compression In
• Sun (.sun) — encoding Direct-24, input Yes, output No, compression In
• SGI (.sgi,.rgb) — encoding Direct-24, input Yes, output Yes, compression In
• XWD (.xwd) — encoding Indexed-8, input Yes, output Yes, compression None

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💀 CAVEATS 💀

bestie, listen. not every format and encoding that's supported for output is supported for input — the software keeps separate input and output drivers for each format/encoding pair. two different guys. different job descriptions. periodt.

and for all the formats listed below, only 8-bit pixels and 8-bit run-lengths (where applicable) are supported. that's the whole range, okay, we're not doing more 🌸

also, real talk about HDF's "advanced" compression option: experience indicates you should only use it if you consider random pixels an advanced-appearing image. 😭 iconic warning, honestly.

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🎀 SEE ALSO 🎀

• rasview(1NCARG)
• rasls(1NCARG)
• rascat(1NCARG)
• rasgetpal(1NCARG)
• rassplit(1NCARG)
• Hardcopy: NCAR Graphics Fundamentals, UNIX Version

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright (C) 1987-2009 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

The use of this Software is governed by a License Agreement.

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💜 this was brought to you by NCAR, dated February 1993 — yeah, the vintage is vintage, and it still ate 🍓✨ go read your rasters, love you, bye 🫶