ronin

rōnin (浪人) was a type of samurai in feudal Japan who had no lord or master.

rōnin is a lightweight and versatile software capable of viewing many abandoned, obscure and long since forgotten image and animation formats.

rōnin supports over 280 animation, icon and image formats.

I've always wanted to write the viewer for old image files and learn how they are built from the inside.

To make a long story short, I started implementing the idea when I wanted to learn new programming language - Nim.

Some of the most prominent features:

Runs on variety of operating systems
Supports plethora of GUI libraries: GTK4, GTK3, GTK2, SDL2, SDL1.2, XCB, X11, etc.
Supports plethora of TUI displays: Kitty terminal, AA-lib, libcaca, etc.
Does not rely on specific libraries installed.
Does not rely on file extension (depending on the format).
Can display animations.
Can display images with rotating color palette.
Can display images with flash attribute set, etc.
MIT license.
All file formats are documented in detail with Latex.

rōnin runs on the following platforms:

Linux
macOS
BSD
Windows
browsers (JavaScript, WASM)

Road to freedom:

April – May, 2024 – feature freeze

June – July, 2024 – code release

Features I plan to finish/implement before code release:

Support Amiga image formats

Support Amstrad CPC image formats

Support MSX image formats

Support MSX2 image formats

Smart image scaling on window resize

Improve format detection algorithm

Integration with GIO

Native Windows API display

Export images to PNM

Javascript port

WASM port

Features I plan to implement in distant future:

Audio ouput

AmigaOS 2.x port

AmigaOS 3.4 port

AmigaOS 3.9 port

AmigaOS 4.x port

AROS port

Atari ST port

BeOS port

MorphOS port

Integration with several plugin APIs (Gnome File, etc.)

Build requirements:

Linux, BSD, macOS
Nim, version 1.6.0 or later
GNU make or nimble
Any C99 compiler
Building Windows port requires mingw-w64 compiler

In addition to displaying known files, rōnin can also identify them (a'la file):

user@host:~$ ronin -i *
24bit.gif:                                 PixArt image, 320 x 200, 24-bit RGB
abydos.gif:                                Kolor Raw image, 800 x 600, 32-bit RGBA
astron.gif:                                XGA image, 384 x 480, 16-bit RGB, 2:1 pixels
atari.gif:                                 Crack Art image, 320 x 200, 16 colors, RLE compressed
bunt.gif:                                  Funny Paint image, 320 x 200, 256 colors, 8 bitplanes
candle & quill.gif:                        Doodle! image, 160 x 200, 16 colors, uncompressed
dino.gif:                                  Artist64 image, 160 x 200, 16 colors, 2:1 pixels
dinos.gif:                                 IFF data, Atari ST ILBM interleaved image, 320 x 200, 16 colors, VDAT compressed
Disk.gif:                                  Amiga Workbench icon, 35 x 16, 4 colors, disk icon
elite.gif:                                 Koala Painter image, 160 x 200, 16 colors, 2:1 pixels, uncompressed
ER - Cat Burglar (2019)(CAFe 2019, 2).gif: ZX Spectrum CHR$ image, 512 x 192, 15 colors
example.gif:                               Alias PIX image, 1200 x 800, 24-bit RGB
frog.gif:                                  NEOchrome image, 320 x 200, 16 colors
lenna.gif:                                 KSS-Paint image, 160 x 160, 4 colors, 2:1 pixels
mandrill.gif:                              X11 Puzzle image, 512 x 512, 24 colors, 24-bit colormap
paint.gif:                                 Xim image, 640 x 480, 242 colors, 24-bit colormap, uncompressed
Rear Window (2013)(diver).gif:             Border Screen Multicolor image, 384 x 304, 15 colors
samurai.gif:                               IFF data, PBM planar image, 320 x 200, 256 colors, 5:6 pixels, ByteRun1 compressed
team.gif:                                  VBM (VDC Bitmap) image, 858 x 522, black/white, version 2
test2.gif:                                 Rembrandt image, 320 x 200, 16-bit RGB, 1
test.gif:                                  Atari 8-bit Graphics 2 image, 160 x 96, 5 colors
user@host:~$ _

rōnin (浪人)

What is it?

Why?

Features

Supported operating systems

Where's the source, Luke?

Roadmap

Installation

Usage