Adrian Pederson wrote:

> Since there seems to be some interest in this type of tool, i would
> be willing to try making one, mostly for selfish reasons though.
> I have Borland C++, and Matlab for development platforms, the
> latter may be the easiest for doing the constrained interpolation.
> I could then compile the functions into a C program.
>
> My biggest question is where to start. What would be the best
> method for defining and drawing the contour map itself? Should
> it be created as some type of data file or an image map?
>
> Putting on my cs hat for a minute and abstracting the problem,
> i see that there needs to be a way to define closed or open
> paths and to have an associated height value for each.
>
> So taking the data file path, is there any preexisting app that
> would be good for drawing the contours and creating a file that
> would then be 'easily' convertible into an image. This could be
> something that would create the contours as segmented vector
> paths or (ideally) splines. sPatch jumps to mind, i think i just
> read some info on its data file structure.
>
> For the image map route, something like Illustrator, which i
> don't have (yet), could do a similar job. Just create the
> contours, give them the appropriate color(height value), save
> as tga, png...?, and run though the interp program.
>
> Ideas, comments...?
>
> Adrian Pederson
>
> >This function (constraining the height field boundary conditions
> >over contours and/or regions of finite area) would be extremely
> >useful for more than links.  There are many examples.
> >
> >One would be a road winding along a hillside.  It would
> >be nice to be able to specify the road, then to have the
> >landscape generator fill in a terrain which smoothly matches
> >the edge of the road.  Of course, this is backwards from nature,
> >where the roadbuilders must deal with the hill they are given.
> >But it would be good for generating scenes.
> >
> >I can imagine algorithms which might do a credible job at this.
> >The easiest implementation may be to manipulate tga files using
> >PERL -- the format is straightforward and PERL does a nice job
> >with file I/O.  It does takes a bit of work to learn, though.

  Perhaps since Taps progam Leveller, allows plugins a lot of the
work has already been done.  It might be worth contacting him and
see if there is a way to integrate what you want to do as a plug in
to his program.

K.Tyler

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