hi,

some time ago I came across an animation of a fireplace on a website,
done with povray and DF3s, really nice, still managed to lose the
reference though :-(  anyway, that lead to a (fruitless) search for
software to work with DF3 files and, eventually, to a decision to
write my own "df3 tools".

the first tool, df3util, is now "feature complete"[1], documented,
and builds cleanly from a regular source tarball.  it is a "Swiss army
knife"-type utility, providing ten commands from the command-line.
quoting from the man page, the program can "copy, merge, and recode DF3
data, mirror, shift, and rotate it, and output informative summaries
of volumes and their contents", and more.

df3util uses a small 'C' language library "libdf3" to provide an API
for accessing DF3s.  df3util also requires "libpng", which should not
be a problem since povray uses that too.

I've attached the sources for both library and df3util, hoping that
people here will find the first instalment of df3 tools useful,
and will give me some feedback (and help) to make the code better.
the project is licensed under the GPL v3+.

there are still some problems:

o the code has been installed and tested on 64-bit hardware only,
  with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the same GNU/Linux
  distribution (Slackware 14.1).  I'm guessing it won't build at
  all on 32-bit machines (hoping actually since there are no
  guards/conditionals in the code for when (off_t) isn't large
  enough, etc).

o no homepage.  I have not yet found a suitable home for df3 tools.
  I'm torn between buying domain name + hosting (ideal, but requires
  monthly/annual payments) and putting the sources on chiselapp (a
  free fossil repository host, but small and future uncertain).
  if you know of other options, not involving github or sourceforge
  or loads of cash, please tell.

o no unified project build.  soon, I hope, there'll be a single df3
  tools package, but I'm still learning how to use the GNU autotools
  and progress is .. slow; for now, unfortunately, two tarballs.

anyway, the project is very much a wip, so please treat this as a
"beta" until I get on top of the homepage and things.

enjoy, jr.  (the jr hoping there won't be [m]any red-faced moments)

[1] the code contains still quite a few todo notes to self and
corners that need tidying.  also, following a recent mention of
R Suzuki's float extension in one of the povray newsgroups,
I plan to add support for reading 'dfd' data.  however,
without more specific information than is given on the website,
some functionality (like '[Cyclic]') may not get included.

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Attachments:
Download 'libdf3-0.2.0.tar.gz' (335 KB) Download 'df3util-0.3.0.tar.gz' (160 KB)