<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>GtkLife File Format</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">
</head>
<body>
<h1>File Format</h1>
LucidLife uses the GLF file format, which was developed as the native format of
the parent program GtkLife. This is a text-based
format similar to <a
href="http://www.mirekw.com/ca/ca_files_formats.html#RLE">RLE</a>. The
standard extension is .glf, although it is not required.
<p>
The specification is as follows:
<p>
<ul>
<li>DOS or Unix line breaks are acceptable.
<p>
<li>The file begins with the identifying line "#GLF <format version>". Current
version is 1.0.
<p>
<li>This is followed by 0 or more lines starting with "#D", which contain the
pattern description. Description lines may be of arbitrary length. Leading
whitespace (after #D) and trailing whitespace is ignored.
<p>
<li>Next is a header specifying the dimensions of the pattern:
<blockquote>x = $x, y = $y, width = $w, height = $h</blockquote>
$x and $y are signed integers which specify the upper-left corner of the
pattern (the center of the grid is 0,0). $w and $h are unsigned integers
specifying the dimensions of the pattern. Arbitrary whitespace is allowed
between terms.
<p>
<li>The rest of the file consists of an RLE encoding of the pattern. LucidLife
does not write RLE lines longer than 70 characters, though it will read
lines of any length.
</ul>
</body>
</html>
