8.7 Transferring Images between Client and Server

Xlib provides functions that you can use to transfer images between a client and the server. Because the server may require diverse data formats, Xlib provides an image object that fully describes the data in memory and that provides for basic operations on that data. You should reference the data through the image object rather than referencing the data directly. However, some implementations of the Xlib library may efficiently deal with frequently used data formats by replacing functions in the procedure vector with special case functions. Supported operations include destroying the image, getting a pixel, storing a pixel, extracting a subimage of an image, and adding a constant to an image (see section "Manipulating Images").

All the image manipulation functions discussed in this section make use of the XImage structure, which describes an image as it exists in the client's memory.


typedef struct _XImage {
	int width, height;		/* size of image */
	int xoffset;			/* number of pixels offset in X direction */
	int format;			/* XYBitmap, XYPixmap, ZPixmap */
	char *data;			/* pointer to image data */
	int byte_order;			/* data byte order, LSBFirst, MSBFirst */
	int bitmap_unit;		/* quant. of scanline 8, 16, 32 */
	int bitmap_bit_order;		/* LSBFirst, MSBFirst */
	int bitmap_pad;			/* 8, 16, 32 either XY or ZPixmap */
	int depth;			/* depth of image */
	int bytes_per_line;		/* accelerator to next scanline */
	int bits_per_pixel;		/* bits per pixel (ZPixmap) */
	unsigned long red_mask;		/* bits in z arrangement */
	unsigned long green_mask;
	unsigned long blue_mask;
	XPointer obdata;		/* hook for the object routines to hang on */
	struct funcs {			/* image manipulation routines */
		struct _XImage *(*create_image)();
		int (*destroy_image)();
		unsigned long (*get_pixel)();
		int (*put_pixel)();
		struct _XImage *(*sub_image)();
		int (*add_pixel)();
	} f;
} XImage;

To initialize the image manipulation routines of an image structure, use XInitImage().

To combine an image with a rectangle of a drawable on the display, use XPutImage().

To return the contents of a rectangle in a given drawable on the display, use XGetImage().

To copy the contents of a rectangle on the display to a location within a preexisting image structure, use XGetSubImage().

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Christophe Tronche, ch@tronche.com