You can create bitmaps using whatever tools you want—the only requirement is that the image can be displayed in Windows. You should create bitmaps in the same screen mode (VGA or VGA+) that you want Viewer to use when it displays the topics that contain the bitmaps.
Once you have the image displayed, you can copy it to the Windows Clipboard and paste it into a graphics editor such as BitEdit (in the MDK) or Windows Paintbrush. Use a graphics editor to clean up the image as needed and then save the image in an appropriate format. Viewer requires bitmaps to be in one of the following standard Windows formats: DIB (Windows device-independent bitmap), BMP (Windows Paintbrush), SHG (bitmaps with hot spots), or Windows metafile. The Convert program provided with the MDK can convert many types of bitmap files to one of the formats that Viewer supports.
Each bitmap you create must be saved as a separate file. Usually, you create a subdirectory of the project directory that contains all of the bitmaps for your title. For example, the USA Tour sample application bitmap files can be found in the \VIEWER\USA\DIBS directory.
In this chapter, it is assumed that your bitmaps have 16 or fewer colors. If you don't use Windows Paintbrush to create your bitmaps, the color palette in your paint program should have no more than 16 colors. If you need to display bitmaps with more than 16 colors, see Chapter 7, “Advanced Bitmap Techniques,” for more information.