Welcome to the homepage of Zzipp (pronounced "zippy"), a package of image processing/analysis/display commands containing extensions to that excellent scripting language Tcl and its graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit Tk.
Zzipp has two principal programs, zzxi and zzi, which each house a new Tcl command called, respectively, "zzx" and "zz". Each is structured as a Tk-enabled Tcl interpreter with a command extension and a separate script which sets up the program's GUI. Each has internal commands which can be called as a single Tcl command; each of these commands corresponds to a C function which can be called from a C/C++ program, too, if needed.
zzxi and its GUI are used to load Zzipp images and examine them at the pixel level quickly and conveniently.
zzi's GUI offers interactive display and thresholding capabilities, but more importantly it accepts text commands to drive the image processing. Most of these commands perform their operations under the direction of an arbitrary region-of-interest set up by the user. In practice, it has been found that if you can say precisely what it is you want to do in a few sentences, several zzi commands will accomplish the job. The greatest benefit comes when a process has to be repeated on a number of images, whether 10, 100, or 10,000, because the commands are easily embedded within templates of scripts written in Tcl and provided in this distribution. The scripts are conveniently executed through the GUI or from the Tcl command line prompt. Currently, there about 200 internal commands within zzi which provide logical operations at the bit level, arithmetic operations in floating-point, morphological operations, and feature extraction and analysis. Using facilities provided by Tcl, it is easy to produce tables in text form of the data obtained; such tables can be read into spreadsheets, if desired.
Zzipp currently operates on images which are 512 pixels square, with 8-bit pixels, without header or trailer, that is, "raw" images; it can be recompiled to operate on raw images of other sizes, e,g,., 1024 square x 8-bit, but it hasn't been tested in this form. Public domain tools are available to convert images of other sizes and formats into and out of Zzipp format, and there are utilities in Zzipp to assist in moving raw images in and out of Zzipp format.
Zzipp should be particularly useful to researchers who must collect numerical information from multiple batches of images each containing multiple images.
The Zzipp package contains source code but no binaries; it needs but does not contain Tcl/Tk libraries, which you will have to obtain yourself, probably from www.scriptics.com.
The package contains a Manual/Tutorial in PDF format, along with a directory containing series of images which accompany the Tutorial. (These images contribute the largest single directory in the package; soon I may split them out for separate downloading to make it less burdensome for beta-testers to get revisions.)
At the moment, Zzipp has been ported to these systems:
Here is a document describing one user's procedure for porting Zzipp to OpenBSD.
I'll be happy to help port Zzipp to other systems.
I have developed and used Zzipp to manipulate and analyze thousands of digital micrographs in biomedical research over the past 5 years, so this suite has passed extensive alpha-testing. However, beta-testing is needed to correct mistakes, improve the interface, identify gaps in functionality, and so on. If anyone is willing to invest the time and effort needed to learn to use Zzipp, I am willing to help at every step.
Please do give me feedback on your experiences with Zzipp. I'll be happy to
help with installations and applications to the extent of my ability -- and
availability. I'd be particularly interested in hearing about real-world problems
that I could include in planned expanded Tutorials and Application Examples.
(If you'd like to confer about image processing/analysis problems that have
to remain confidential, just say so and I'll put on my other hat.) Please direct comments or questions to < Eben Oldmixon> eben@ids.net. Thanks.
Download Zzipp.3.1.01.tar.gz.
THIS RELEASE HAS BEEN ALPHA-TESTED EXTENSIVELY, BUT IT HAS NOT BEEN HAMMERED UPON BY BETA-TESTERS. WE WOULD SINCERELY APPRECIATE ALL FEEDBACK FROM ANYONE WHO TRIES ZZIPP. WE ARE ALSO VERY WILLING TO HELP ANYONE GET STARTED WITH ZZIPP, WHETHER INSTALLING IT OR USING IT.
The software package known as "Zzipp" ("ZZ Image
Processing Package") available on this site is freeware. However, the copyrights
to its code, documentation, and other files are held by and shall remain with
Eben H. Oldmixon. It is our intention that Zzipp be available under the same
conditions stipulated in the "copyleft" of the Free Software Foundation.
Zzipp is offered as a service, but no claims are made as to its suitability
for your application. Since you have the complete source code to Zzipp's programs,
it is your responsibility to use Zzipp in such a way as to cause no harm to
your data or system. Eben H. Oldmixon will not
ask for any part of the benefits that Zzipp may bring you, so, to be fair, neither
will he be responsible for any part of the damages that its use may cause. (That
said, it has been a lot of fun writing and maintaining Zzipp, I and my colleagues
find its programs tremendously useful, and it has behaved well on all our systems.)
Last modified: 000403eho