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(4 edits)

I'm probably going to make a little alternative IDE for Decker as an OpenXTalk stack, and by that I mean I already started.
On mac,win,linux platforms OXT can call out to shell commands for stuff like imageMagick and ffmpeg.
It can also use embedded web ImageMagick (WASM) port to do image manipulation inside a Browser View Widget.
If running on macOS, OXT additionally has a wrapper library for some NSImage stuff with CoreImage filtering.
If nothing else it could expedite or offer fine controls for the lossy conversion to lookup palette images. 



Having Decker running in a browser view allows for tinkering around with the Decker html payload and then reloading it to test any modifications.

Also due to OpenXTalk having its roots in a Hyper-clone called MetaCard that dates  back to the early 1990s on Unix boxes, it also contains (still) a bunches of 16bit icon assets, as well as a set of 1-bit HC icons that a community member converted (I also made some SVG Path string versions of a few of those),  could add to the whole retro-ness.

That is some hardcore icon harvesting.  Rad!

(1 edit)

Yeah it is! 
Tinkering around with Apples NSNamed Images I found that modern macOS still includes icons from when Mac OS (OS X) was NeXT step, including the NeXT logo, gave me a little Easter-Egg finding chuckle.

Played around with 16 color images a little more, it's more frustrating than trying to make GIFs for a website in 1993, gifs have bigger color palettes and you could adapt the color table based on the original image. But this is restricted to only the 16 colors from 1987 Mac II, which here is a list of the RGB values of the Mac II system palette anyone is interested:
0,0,202
0,151,255
0,168,0
0,101,0
0,0,0
54,0,151
69,69,69
101,54,0
134,134,134
151,101,54
185,185,185
220,0,0
255,255,255
255,255,0
255,101,0
255,0,151

(1 edit)

And if anyone is using LiveCode or OpenXTalk IDE to mess around with Decker here's script for converting an image control contents to another image control with the required Mac II color palette:

on mouseUp
    export image "Original" to myVariable as gif with palette getDeckerMacIIPalette()
    --  set the text of another image control to myVariable to preview:
    set the text of image "16ColorVersion" to myVariable
    --  then you can save the new gif to a file with:
    --  where tFileName is a file path you provide must provide --
    --  open file tFileName for binary write;write myVariable to file tFileName;close file tFileName
end mouseUp
function getDeckerMacIIPalette
    get "255,255,255" & cr & \
   "255,255,0" & cr & \
   "255,101,0" & cr & \
   "220,0,0" & cr & \
   "255,0,151" & cr & \
   "54,0,151" & cr & \
   "0,0,202" & cr & \
   "0,151,255" & cr & \
   "0,168,0" & cr & \
   "0,101,0" & cr & \
   "101,54,0" & cr & \
   "151,101,54" & cr & \
   "185,185,185" & cr & \
   "134,134,134" & cr & \
   "69,69,69" & cr & \
   "0,0,0"
    -- the sorting of this list effects the resulting image
    sort it numeric by item 1 of each 
    return it
end getDeckerMacIIPalette

It's worth noting that Decker's 16-color palette can be customized via the Patterns Interface.

See also: the PalImport contraption.

(+1)

On that note, this may be useful, it's a 16 color palette designed for versatility, and in my experience does a decent job with dithering across a variety of photos. It desaturates them but often captures most of the frequency detail.

https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12795