Translating Protocols

You should be able to draw Windows bmp files on the printer. The format for .bmp files is described below. You will write a Lua program to read the .BMP file and the program will write a postscript file which will draw the [login to view URL] .BMP file formatActually there are several different .BMP file formats, but the one I describe is the Monochrome bitmap format. It can only store pictures in two colors, usually black and white, since my laser printer can only print in black and I usually print on white paper..BMP files tend to be fairly large. They aren't a particularly efficient way to store pictures, although they are going to compare very favorably with the Postscript files you generate for this [login to view URL] order to save storage space, the authors of the .BMP format gave up easy human readability. Here is a description of the first few bytes of the file, disguised as a C struct declaration. #pragma pack(1)struct BMP_header {  char id[2]; /* this always contains the two characters 'B' and 'M'*/  int fileSize;/* total size of file */  int filler;  /* "reserved" -- usually zero */  int startOfData; /* byte number (starting from zero) of file where actual*/ /* bitmap starts */  int headerSize; /* believed to be always 40 */  int width; /* number of pixels in each row */  int height; /* number of rows of pixels */  short planes; /* number of "planes" -- believed to be always 1 */  short bitsPerPixel; /* number of bits per pixel.  1 for monochrome format. */ /* other possible values include 4, 8, 16, 24, and 32. */ /* But I don't describe variations in the rest of the file */ /* which may occur for other values of bitsPerlPixel than 1 */  int compression; /* I believe this value is always 1 for monochrome format*/  int bitMapSize; /* length of bitmap data in bytes  /* I think = (width * height * bitsPerPixel)/8 */  int hresolution; /* seems to be zero */  int vresolution; /* seems to be zero */  int colors; /* seems to be zero */  int importantColors; /* seems to be zero */  unsigned char palette[2][4]; /* There are two colors in the palette array (for mono- */ /* chrome .BMP files)  */                /*black is represented in the palette by the bytes 0,0,0,0 */ /*white by the bytes 255,255,255,0 */};The bitmap data follows, 8 bits per byte, row at a time, until all rows have appeared. If a bit is a zero, the color described by palette[0] is displayed; if a bit is a one, the color described by palette[1] is displayed. In the files I looked at, white was a one bit, and black was a zero bit.[I got this information from the Web, although I retyped it as a header file myself. A google search will reveal dozens of pages talking about .BMP files, and several conversion programs. Nobody will convert them the way I expect you to do it.]You'll want to turn this header declaration into Lua code, by reading the first two bytes as a string, the next four as an integer, etc. (See the sample code below.)TO read a binary file in Lua, you should specify "rb" in the mode argument of the [login to view URL](). Otherwise, Lua will try to treat spaces and newline characters specially, which will completely mess up your input if the binary pattern for those characters happens to appear by [login to view URL] than that, you can read a binary file byte by byte, just like an ASCII file. However, to make any sense of the file, you'll want to read it into a string, and use [login to view URL] to look at it. IMPORTANT: Lua programming and ghost script programming skills are REQUIRED of the freelancer. Please view the project clarification board for the attachments.