John Bridges is the co-author of the computer program

PCPaint PCPaint was one of the first IBM PC-based mouse-driven GUI paint programs, released in 1984. It followed after Microsoft Doodle, released in 1983 with the Microsoft Mouse version 1 drivers for DOS, and around the same time as Digital Research ...

and primary developer of the program

GRASP A grasp is an act of taking, holding or seizing firmly with (or as if with) the hand. An example of a grasp is the handshake, wherein two people grasp one of each other's like hands. In zoology Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of an ...

for Microtex Industries with Doug Wolfgram. He is also the sole author of GLPro and AfterGRASP. His article entitled "Differential Image Compression" was published in the February 1991 issue of

Dr. Dobb's Journal ''Dr. Dobb's Journal'' (often shortened to ''Dr. Dobb's'' or DDJ) was a monthly magazine published in the United States by UBM Technology Group, part of UBM. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers. When launched in 1976, DDJ was the fi ...

Early work

In 1980 Bridges started his programming career at the NYU Institute for Reconstructive Plastic Surgery as a summer intern, working with sophisticated programmable vector graphics systems. He wrote editing tools and also updated and debugged software used for early 3D x-ray scanning research. From 1981 to 1985 Bridges wrote the RAM disk drivers, utilities, cracking software, task switching software, and memory test diagnostics for Abacus, a maker of large memory cards for the

Apple II Apple II ("apple Roman numerals, two", stylized as Apple ][) is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The Apple II (original), original Apple II model, which gave the series its name, was designed ...

. In 1982, he started working for Classroom Consortia Media, Inc., an educational software company, developing and writing Apple and IBM graphics libraries and tools for their software. During his tenure there he created a drawing program called SuperDraw for CCM, and on his own wrote the core graphics code for what would later become

, as well as develop the GRASP GL library format.

PCPaint

In 1984, Bridges developed the first version of

with Doug Wolfgram for

Mouse Systems Mouse Systems Corporation (MSC), formerly Rodent Associates, was founded in 1982 by Steve Kirsch. The company was responsible for bringing the mouse to the IBM PC for the first time. History Mouse Systems' optical mouse, wired to a Sun works ...

. PCPaint was the first IBM PC-based mouse driven GUI paint program. The company purchased the exclusive rights to PCPaint, and John continued development until 1990.

GRASP

In 1985, Bridges' PCPaint code and Doug's slideshow program morphed into a new program, GRASP. GRASP was the first multimedia animation program for the IBM PC and created the GRASP GL library format. GRASP was originally released as shareware through Doug's company, Microtex Industries. However, version 2.0 and after were sold commercially by Paul Mace Software. Doug sold his shares of both PCPaint and GRASP to Bridges in 1990, and Bridges' work on GRASP continued through 1994, when he terminated the contract with Paul Mace Software. Bridges' work on GRASP included several toolsets and add-ons, such as Pictor Paint, ARTools, HRFE (High Res Flic Enhancement), and PC Speaker sound code that caused Paul Mace Software to be threatened with a lawsuit by RealSound because of the use of frequency modulation, upon which RealSound held a patent. A stripped-down version of GRASP 4.0 was also included with copies of Philip Shaddock's ''Multimedia Creations: Hands-On Workshop for Exploring Animation and Sound''.

VIDSPEED

In 1987, Bridges released VIDSPEED, a freeware program that tests the speed of graphics cards by " easuringthe throughput of writing constant pixel data to video memory over the bus in graphics modes." VIDSPEED was well received in the community and was recommended in at least two books, Patrick Killelea's ''Web Performance Tuning'' and Stephen J. Bigelow's ''Bigelow's Computer Repair Toolkit'', though Bigelow expresses concern over support and updates.

IBM Project

In 1986-87 Bridges authored a project for the

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Multimedia Lab which played back full color video in a 1/4 size window on the new IBM Model 30 (8 MHz 8086 CPU) which had the new MCGA 320x200 256-color video mode. Not only did it play full color video at such an early date in DOS history, but it did so smoothly on one of the slowest, most low-end IBM PS/2 models sold. IBM applied for a patent on algorithms he developed, though it was filed under the name of the project manager at IBM. Those same algorithms were later published in an article by Bridges entitled "Differential Image Compression", which first appeared in

in February 1991. It was later reprinted in that same magazine in July 2001 along with James H. Sylvester's 1993 article "Differential Compression Algorithms", which adapts Bridges' algorithms to generalized data, not just graphics.

IMAGETOOLS

Out of the IBM Project came IMAGETOOLS in 1987, a collection of high color (15bit, 24bit, 32bit) VGA/EGA image conversion and scaling tools. It was sold by MetaCreations Corp./Harvard Systems Corp (HSC Software).

PICEM

In 1988, Bridges authored a freeware image viewer program called PICEM. Other image viewers at the time were commercial. PICEM also allowed the user to adjust images' brightness and contrast and to save the image being viewed to other formats including the BSAVE (graphics image format). PICEM became popular enough that Microsoft offered tech help in using it in conjunction with

QuickBasic Microsoft QuickBASIC (also QB) is an Integrated Development Environment (or IDE) and compiler for the BASIC programming language that was developed by Microsoft. QuickBASIC runs mainly on DOS, though there was also a short-lived version for the c ...

VGAKIT

Also in 1988, Bridges released VGAKIT, the VGAKIT SVGA Programming Kit, as freeware. VGAKIT is an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

library for accessing extended graphics modes from DOS, which was not standardized before VESA VBE arrived. It was used in several open and closed source projects. The developer of UniVBE, a program that extended video cards' BIOS to become compatible with the new VESA VBE, said that Bridges "provided the information without which niVBEwould never have gotten started. The whole PC graphics community is deeply in his debt." Author

Michael Abrash Michael Abrash is an American programmer and technical writer. He has written dozens of magazine articles and multiple books on code optimization and software-rendered graphics for IBM PC compatibles. He worked at id Software in the mid-1990s on ...

, in his 1997 book ''Graphics Programming Black Book'', says "Little other than my DDJ (

) columns has been published about ( Mode X), although Bridges has widely distributed his code for a number of undocumented 256-color resolutions, and I’d like to acknowledge the influence of his code on the mode set routine presented in hapter 47" The codes to which Abrash refers are Mode X 360x480 256-color mode codes Bridges included with VGAKIT, and worked on any VGA, not just SVGAs. Abrash's DDJ articles were published circa 1991 before being compiled into ''GPBB''.

Pictor Paint and ARTOOLS

When GRASP 3.5 was released, it included Bridges' newest version of PCPaint, Pictor Paint. Version 4.0 included Bridges' ARTOOLS, which was a collection of image manipulation tools which included an early morphing utility that tracked all points in source and destination images, creating all the in-between frames.

GLPro

In 1995, Bridges created GLPro for IMS as the newest incarnation of Bridges' ideas behind GRASP updated for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. In 2000 GLPro became property of GMedia PLC, which closed in 2001. Bridges stopped all GLPro work at that time. A stripped-down version of GLPro was included with Conrad R. Brandt's book ''GLPRO Foundations 2000''.

AfterGRASP

In 2002, Bridges started work on a new program, AfterGRASP, designed to be backwards compatible with GLPro. Work is still continuing on that project.

Pictor PIC image format

The PICtor PIC image format is an

image file format An image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be co ...

developed by Bridges for

. It was also the native file format for

, and GLPro and was the first widely accepted

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

imaging standard.

References

External Pages

AfterGRASP Homepage

GLPro Mailing List Archive

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bridges, John Computer programmers Free software programmers Programming language designers Living people Year of birth missing (living people)