"bitmap" to outline postscript

[(Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk>]

Hi Folks,

Does anyone know of a package that can take a "bitmapped" black-and-white
image and produce PostScript "outline" code which would draw the
equivalent?

Reason: I have an assortment of hieroglyhpic, cuneiform etc characters in
ancient scripts which I want to be able to use as scalable characters in
groff text. I can make images of these, for instance by scanning, as
bitmaps or similar. Given a PostScript graphic, I know how to use this in
groff as a "character" scaleable by the surrent point size. However,
the direct PostScript equivalent of a bitmap has a lot of bytes in it,
since it draws it dot by dot. If I took the time and trouble, I could
make individual PS equivalents by PS line or curve commands (which in any
case would scale snoothly) in far fewer bytes; but I would like to do this
in software.

Basically: given, e.g., the bit pattern

   000
  0   0
 00   00
 00   00
  0   0
   000

is there a program which would take this pattern and produce an
economical PostScript code which would operate by drawing two ellipses as
smooth curves and filling the space between them?

With thanks,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Date: 19-Oct-98                                       Time: 17:52:38
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