The DIB File Format

Interestingly enough, the DIB format did not originate in Windows. It was first defined in version 1.1 of OS/2, the operating system originally developed by IBM and Microsoft beginning in the mid-1980s. OS/2 1.1 was released in 1988 and was the first version of OS/2 to include a Windows-like graphical user interface, known as the Presentation Manager (PM). The Presentation Manager included the Graphics Programming Interface (GPI), which defined the bitmap format.

That OS/2 bitmap format was then used in Windows 3.0 (released in 1990), where it came to be known as the DIB. Windows 3.0 also included a variation of the original DIB format that under Windows has come to be the standard. Additional enhancements were defined in Windows ...

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