                         UPGRADE-L TO THE K3BC SSTV

        Be sure to write down the previously  determined values for LT3,
     BS, BL, and BP  before  uploading this  and as  a first step insert
     them in SYS CONFIG in the new programs.  I have changed the BS, BL,
     and BP values in this  revision to match  what seems to be the cur-
     rently most common values.

        At the Dayton SSTV meeting,  John Langner made a plea for estab-    
     lishing standards  for SSTV modes.  This led me to go back over the    
     100's of pictures I have received and saved  to see what the varia-
     tion was. Since all the pix in this system are saved in raw (as re-
     ceived)  format instead  of a screen format,  we can manipulate the
     data bytes years later to optimize picture rendition. The major va-
     riation I found was in Scottie pictures. It was enough so I decided
     to readjust my system to a best fit with the average of the Scottie 
     pictures in my large data base.  You can best see what the improve-
     ment is by comparing a Scottie 1 picture as it is being received in
     real time  with it's appearance  when  repainted at pix completion.
     There will be some cases where the repaint will be worse, so I have
     retained the old TSS program (as OLDTSS) for viewing them.   [There
     is a high probability that the program sending this picture had our 
     original program as it's basis----remedy is to send  them a copy of
     this revision]. 

        Now this change is in both receive and transmit,  so the Scottie
     pictures you may have already created yourself need to be converted
     to the new standard.  Use the  OLDTV2TV.BAT  program to convert the
     old S1 pictures to Martin 1.   I prefer to keep all new pictures in 
     M1, but if you want them in S1,  use the new TV2TV to convert back.
     We haven't integrated this  Scottie  change into TGA or TV2TIF yet,
     but in the few  cases  you might use these for Scottie pix  you can
     use TV2TV and OLDTV2TV to get the proper output.

        To improve the operability of the TVT program, we have made Mar-
     tin 1 as  the default  choice for choosing mode pixes to draw from.
     Also, I found myself often  sending successive  pixes from the same
     picture group, so,  to avoid having to type out the same file cons-
     traint every time,I made the default choice for the file constraint
     be the same pix group as before. That is, if the file constraint is
     once typed as "aus"  then I will continue to have  Australian album
     pages presented by defaulting until I decide to change it.  You can 
     go back to the full set of all pixes by answering  "?"  to the file
     constraint question.  We also set the  file constraint to a maximum
     of 4 characters to avoid problems at first bootup.Over 4 characters
     activates the full set of all pixes.

        Trucolor viewing was added to most of the ancillary programs (if
     it made sense) like QD, TIF, TG, TJ, TJ, VT, etc.

        One observation  from viewing  presentations of other systems at
     Dayton. While I hear some gratuitous (and ill-informed) opinions on
     the use of the "old" GWBASIC (many don't know this was the last bit
     of programming Bill Gates did himself)  I noted that no program was
     faster than ours,  particularly in things like painting thumbnails,
     and many were much slower (some, painfully so).   This results from
     our core modules being written directly in  machine code instead of
     in a higher order language with it's necessary "lard".  Perhaps not
     all of the progress in programming has been forward.

                                                Have fun,
                                                Ben Vester, K3BC
     June 6,1996
