Example files and usage

Example usage of conversion utilities

The following conversion utilities are available with libbsb. For Win32 the programs are available after unzipping the file package, for all other platforms the programs are built from source (see README for building instructions).

	convert from BSB	convert to BSB
TIFF	bsb2tif	tif2bsb
PPM	bsb2ppm	ppm2bsb
PNG	bsb2png	(not implemented)

TIFF conversion

To convert a BSB chart file to a TIFF image file:

bsb2tif australia4c.kap australia4c.tif

To convert a TIFF image to a BSB chart you need a template file containing all the cartographic information for the image. The template file is merely the ASCII text lines at the start of a BSB file, and for the conversion to work it must contain the correct image width and height in the BSB/ section (RA=width,height).

In this example I used the original BSB file as the template:

tif2bsb australia4c.kap edited.tif new.kap

Conversion to and from GeoTIFF files is planned but currently not implemented.

PPM conversion

Usage of bsb2ppm and ppm2bsb is similar to the TIFF utilities.

bsb2ppm australia4c.kap australia4c.ppm

ppm2bsb australia4c.kap edited.ppm new.kap

PNG conversion

Convert a BSB file to a PNG file:

bsb2png australia4c.kap australia4c.png

Conversion from PNG back to BSB is currently not implemented.

Example BSB files

australia4c.kap - version 3.0 BSB chart of low-res map of Australia
NOAA Raster Nautical Charts - version 3.0 BSB charts of US coastal regions (free download, see terms and conditions on NOAA site)