I am happy to announce the first public release of the bit program,    an INTERACTIVE, FULL COLOR image viewer and editor based on SGI GL.    Besides typical touchup tasks, such as crop, rotate, smooth, etc,    bit offers some unique features not available in similar programs,    such as text and vector support and the separation of text and image.     The following is the relevant sections from the man page.     -----------------------------------------------------------------  Pre-Release of May, 1993                                       BIT(1L)  NAME    bit - Bitmap Image Touchup for SGI Workstations  DESCRIPTION   bit is an interactive full color image viewer and editor based on   Silicon Graphics GL. As a full color program, bit handles images of both   24bits and color index in a natural and efficient manner.    As an image viewer, bit allows list of images to be displayed in their   original type (24bits or color index) in any order and in any of the   many built-in styles of display. You can walk up and down the list using   mouse and keyboard, or you can let bit do the walk for you (The   SlideShow).  With the pan and zoom features, large images can be viewed   in full without being limited by the window or screen size.    As an image editor, bit performs a large number of image editing and   processing tasks accurately and efficiently. It keeps information loss   at any stage of the editing process at an absolute minimum by performing   subpixel sampling automatically while conserving the input image type   whenever possible to avoid unnecessary promotion and/or quantization of   input images. You can also cut a piece of an image and paste it into   another.  In addition, arbitrarily colored and sized text and simple   geometric figures can be rendered on top of an image for annotation with   the option to make them part of the bitmap or output separately to take   advantage of the higher printer resolutions (e.g. PostScript).    Bit can also be used as a graphical user interface to many existing   image processing programs by defining external bindings which in essence   turn command line oriented programs into bit subfunctions and can be   accessed by a press of a button, and best of all, the processed image   will be read back and displayed immediately. Convolution using exter-   nally defined matrices of arbitrary order can be performed dynamically   giving great flexibility in processing an image.  FEATURES    Bit performs all of its image manipulations interactively with a   continuous progress report, and once the processing is complete,    the processed image will be displayed.    Current features include    o Rotates an image by an arbitrary angle with the option of anti-aliasing     and filling the "rotated out" region with an arbitrary color.    o Scales an image by arbitrary factors in x- and/or y-directions with     the option of subpixel sampling.    o Renders text of arbitrary color, size or orientation on top of an     image with the option of rendering directly into the raster or saving     the text and raster separately, such as into a PostScript file, to     take advantage of a higher printer resolution. Besides normal text     strings, many predefined special symbols can be input conveniently as     in TeX(1), e.g., $\alpha$\small$\beta$ produces Greek alphabet alpha     followed by a slightly smaller Greek alphabet beta.    o Presents graphically the histogram of an image.    o Performs arbitrary 1-to-1 pixel transformation.  The transformation     function can be specified interactively and can be of arbitrary     forms. Further, the transformation can be applied to RGB channels     separately or simultaneously and to the entire image or a portion of     it. Many difficult tasks, such as thresholding, can be accomplished     rather easily by 1-to-1 transformation in combination with the avai-     lability of graphical histograms of the image.    o Places simple geometric figures (SGFs), e.g., arrows, circles, trian-     gles etc., of arbitrary color, size and orientation into an image at     arbitrary locations addressed either in absolute pixels or in some     user definable coordinate system units, with the option of rendering     directly into the raster or save the sgfs and raster separately (e.g,     PostScript file). All SGFs can be scaled in x- and y-directions     independently or simultaneously (this is how to get an ellipse from a     circle).    o Performs edge detection. In combination with image histograms and 1-     to-1 transformation, very accurate result can be obtained.    o Performs histogram equalization.    o Performs convolution with externally defined (square) matrices of     arbitrary order.    o Crops a rectangular portion of an image.    o Cuts and pastes across images.    o Magnifies any portion of an image by any amount.    o Displays a list of images in sequence with a user specifiable pause     interval between images. (SlideShow)    o Measures RGB intensities of a pixel at any location or all pixels     along an arbitrary line with the result presented as RGB intensities     or as an intensity vs. distance plot.    o Performs image type conversions.    o Converts image formats.    o Smoothes an image (Special convolution).    o Filters an image by external programs and read the filtered image     back and display it.    o Modify an individual pixel's RGB values.    o Performs FFT on the entire image or a portion of it and display the     resulting power spectra.    o Spray and brush paint in full color (unavailable in this pre-release).   SUPPORTED FORMATS       o  IRIS RGB, native to SGI IRIS       o  JPEG(JFIF) format       o  CompuServ GIF       o  PNM(Portable Any Map), including PPM, PGM and PBM.       o  XBM (X Window Bitmap)       o  TIFF       o  PostScript(Write only)  Hardware requirements: ---------------------------------------------------------------    Any SGI workstation that supports RGBmode(), including indigoes.  Where to get it: ---------------------------------------------------------------    anonymous ftp to monte.svec.uh.edu   /pub/bit/bitxxx.tar.Z    where xxx is the version number. Current version is 0.73     Read src/01Readme for installation instructions after unpacking  Acknowledgement: ---------------------------------------------------------------    JPEG support is based on the Independent JPEG groups's library Version 4.    FORMS library, developed by Mark Overmars, is used for GUI.    Both JPEG and FORMS library are included in this release.  ---------------------------------------------------------------   Bit is the program you will ever need to view and annotate   images; The built-in editing features will satisfy most of   your editing needs. In addition, the external filter and dynamical   kernel will utilize any program you already have. So try it   (and you will like it).