Name			: BMPSpam
Filename:		: bmpspam1.zip
Version			: 1
Date			: February 19, 2001
Author			: Rich Whitehouse
E-mail			: thefatal@telefragged.com
Web site		: http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/

Additional credits	: All of the wonderful people in #mm (on
			  irc.gamesnet.net).

This is a small program which reads Windows bitmap (.bmp) files
and converts them into text files which are essentially just big
chunks of text that you can paste into IRC as graphical spam. The
program supports images that are 256 colors, and are sized at
16x16, 32x32, or 64x64. It's also recommended that you use the
included ircpal.pal file on any image you run through the program.
You can do so with Paint Shop Pro, PhotoShop, and likely a number
of other image editing programs. See the documentation for your
specific image editing program for information on how to do that.

Anyway, here's an example of how to create a spam chunk from your
bitmap file:

1. Make sure the file is 256 colors, and sized at 16x16, 32x32,
or 64x64 (if it is not, the program will give you an error when
you try to load the bitmap).

2. Make sure the image is using ircpal.pal as its palette. That
file is included with this program, and as mentioned above, you
can use a number of image editing programs to load it as your
image's palette.

3. Start bmpspam.exe. Click the "Generate spam file" button. An
open file window will come up, so select the .bmp file you're
going to convert. Depending on the size of the image, it may
take a little while to process (during which time the program
will not respond). Just wait a little while. After it's done,
a save file window will come up. Choose the location and type
the file name and the output will be saved into the specified
text file.

4. Open up the next file. You'll see what essentially looks like
a bunch of nonsense. But, of course, it isn't. Get on mIRC and
go to your favorite channel (or perhaps a private one, since
not everyone likes being flooded by giant spam chunks). Copy
the top line from the text file and paste it into the channel
text box and send it. You'll see pretty colors come up in the
channel window. Then paste the next line, and the next line, and
keep pasting lines until you've pasted each one all the way down
to the bottom of the text file. Now you are done, and before you
you have a nice happy block of bitmap spam. HOORAY!!!

As a side note, the program is not perfect. Sometimes it will
have problems with certain images due to the way bitmap files
tend to change the order in which pixels are stored. This can
pretty much always be changed by changing the color palette a
little bit, however, so you may want to keep that in mind. I
couldn't really find any really good documentation on the actual
.bmp file format, so there's probably stuff I didn't take into
account when reading pixel data (which explains the little pixel
alignment problem that I just mentioned). Other than that, though,
I think everything is pretty much fine.

COPYRIGHTS/ETC.
---------------
You may not distribute or alter this program in any way without my
direct permission.
