1aaflip -- an ascii arted flic player for aalib
2Version 0.3
3This is modifies version of flip(flic animation file player, see bellow)
4that works in text mode.
5
6ORIGINAL FLIP README
7====================
8
9
10flip -- a flic file player for the Linux console
11Version 0.3
12By John Remyn
13
14This is a non-X flic animation file player for Linux. A VGA compatible card
15is required.
16
17Flic files can usually be recognized by the .fli or .flc extensions at the
18end of their filenames. Fli files are limited to a resolution of 320x200,
19while flc files can have any resolution.
20
21The binary requires svgalib to be installed (svgalib can be found at
22sunsite.unc.edu: /pub/Linux/libs).
23
24The default method of playing is to load the first frame of the animation
25sequence and display it. After this the remainder of the flic file is loaded
26into memory, and the animation starts. The animation ends when q or ctrl-c
27is pressed. There are some flags that control the way the flic file is
28handled:
29
30-a	Remove frames from memory after processing. Using this option
31        leaves more memory for other processes, but relies on the buffer
32        cache for continuous animation.
33
34-b	Process frames immediately as they are loaded. When using this
35        option the animation frames are shown as soon as the player has read
36        them, so you don't have to wait until the entire file has been
37        read. The disadvantage is that the animation becomes jumpy if the
38        speed set by the animation is higher than the speed of loading.
39
40-c	Keep the screen black while loading the animation. This conflicts
41        with option b, which can give interesting results.
42
43-f	This removes the clock synchronization. This is just for fun, so
44        you can show off the speed of your computer :-)
45
46-n <number>
47	Play the flic file <number> times.
48
49-s <delay>
50	Sets the delay between frames to <delay>*0.01 seconds. Option -s 0
51        is the same as -f.
52
53-	Causes flip to read the flic file from stdin. Using this with option
54	-a may cause trouble since backward seeks are done.
55
56Other options are:
57
58-v	Shows some information about the flic file being played.
59
60-?	Shows a bit of help.
61
62Flc files:
63Flc files with resolutions higher than 320x200 are now supported, out of the
643 files I could find, 2 work OK, 1 works almost OK.
65There are some considerations to be made when playing big flic files. If the
66file fits completely into memory, there are no problems. However when memory
67is short Linux swaps pages out of memory, which can happen while a frame is
68being decoded. This is not only slow but also results in very ugly
69animation. Animation improves when option -a is used, in which case there
70will be much less swapping (there still is a lot of disk/buffer-cache access
71going on though). Using option -b is also advisable since the animation
72won't be smooth anyway.
73
74
75Bugs:
76- X and Y offsets are not handled.
77- Flic files with resolutions smaller (or bigger) than the screen size are
78  probably not handled correctly, but I have yet to see one.
79- At least one of the flc files I have displays a few pixels of trash in a
80  place where they should definately not be. This could be caused by
81  incorrect handling of a page break. When I feel motivated enough I'll try
82  and fix it.
83
84
85Release history:
86
87V0.3a	Added support for FLC files with resolutions greater than 320x200.
88	(A real pain)
89
90V0.2a	Added decoding of DELTA_FLC chunks, so some flc files can also be
91	played. Changed the command line parameters. Removed some small
92	bugs.
93
94V0.1	First release, only just capable of playing fli files.
95
96
97John Remyn (author) (boogyman@xs4all.hacktic.nl may work soon)
98Harm Hanemaayer	hhanemaa@cs.ruu.nl (for mail)
99