4 ms·

I'm guessing the bmp format happens to look like ascii for certain pixels with certain colors. I wonder if this works in reverse. Maybe we can program the Mona

by rheide 16y ago

I'm guessing the bmp format happens to look like ascii for certain pixels with certain colors. I wonder if this works in reverse. Maybe we can program the Mona Lisa in C.

JoachimSchipper 16y ago
C code is too "random" to produce nice images. You can use the least significant bits to hold some data; Google "steganography" (this is just the most basic).
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  >C code is too "random" to produce nice images In a world where it is possible to compute a file that contains its own MD5, I wouldn't bet on this. Wish I could find the link, there was some feted programmer who had a friend that bet him such a thing was not possible. He proceeded to write an algorithm that found such a file by brute force. I wouldn't count on the eventual C being pretty though. See also: electronic musicians hiding pictures in their music http://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10 http://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    You're right: sane C code is too "random" to produce nice images. ;-)
    - JonnieCache 16y ago
      One hacker's insanity is another's pastime. http://www.de.ioccc.org/main.html http://www.de.ioccc.org/main.html
      - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
        Yeah, that's what I thought of too. Has it been done yet?
- RodgerTheGreat 16y ago
  In Java, source files can contain unicode escapes[1] of the form '\uXXXX' which are expanded prior to tokenization. In effect this gives you several options for what characters can exist in a given "pixel". I think that this, combined with careful application of whitespace and comments, should easily provide enough flexibility to make arbitrary code look roughly like a desired bitmap. [1] http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/lexical.doc.html#100850 http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/lexic...
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    Just \uXXXX (or C trigraphs etc) doesn't give you much to play with, and I'd say that selectively tokenizing Java is cheating.
- mrcharles 16y ago
  Example of a python script in a bitmap: http://www.bluh.org/codemap.bmp http://www.bluh.org/codemap.bmp Ultimately it's never going to be pretty if it's human readable as the range of bytes used will make a lot of greyish tones. C/C++ wouldn't look a lot different I doubt, but if you want you can grab my python script (PIL required) and pack some source files and see for yourself: http://www.github.com/mrcharles/codemap http://www.github.com/mrcharles/codemap (script has some bugs with alignment, but other than that, works)

by rheide 16y ago

I'm guessing the bmp format happens to look like ascii for certain pixels with certain colors. I wonder if this works in reverse. Maybe we can program the Mona Lisa in C.

JoachimSchipper 16y ago

C code is too "random" to produce nice images. You can use the least significant bits to hold some data; Google "steganography" (this is just the most basic).

JonnieCache 16y ago
>C code is too "random" to produce nice images In a world where it is possible to compute a file that contains its own MD5, I wouldn't bet on this. Wish I could find the link, there was some feted programmer who had a friend that bet him such a thing was not possible. He proceeded to write an algorithm that found such a file by brute force. I wouldn't count on the eventual C being pretty though. See also: electronic musicians hiding pictures in their music http://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10 http://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  You're right: sane C code is too "random" to produce nice images. ;-)
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    One hacker's insanity is another's pastime. http://www.de.ioccc.org/main.html http://www.de.ioccc.org/main.html
    - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
      Yeah, that's what I thought of too. Has it been done yet?
RodgerTheGreat 16y ago
In Java, source files can contain unicode escapes[1] of the form '\uXXXX' which are expanded prior to tokenization. In effect this gives you several options for what characters can exist in a given "pixel". I think that this, combined with careful application of whitespace and comments, should easily provide enough flexibility to make arbitrary code look roughly like a desired bitmap. [1] http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/lexical.doc.html#100850 http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/lexic...
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  Just \uXXXX (or C trigraphs etc) doesn't give you much to play with, and I'd say that selectively tokenizing Java is cheating.
mrcharles 16y ago
Example of a python script in a bitmap: http://www.bluh.org/codemap.bmp http://www.bluh.org/codemap.bmp Ultimately it's never going to be pretty if it's human readable as the range of bytes used will make a lot of greyish tones. C/C++ wouldn't look a lot different I doubt, but if you want you can grab my python script (PIL required) and pack some source files and see for yourself: http://www.github.com/mrcharles/codemap http://www.github.com/mrcharles/codemap (script has some bugs with alignment, but other than that, works)