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+## Copyright (C) 1994-2012 John W. Eaton
+## Copyright (C) 2012 Carnë Draug
+##
+## This file is part of Octave.
+##
+## Octave is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
+## under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+## the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at
+## your option) any later version.
+##
+## Octave is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
+## WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+## MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
+## General Public License for more details.
+##
+## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+## along with Octave; see the file COPYING.  If not, see
+## <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
+
+## private function for the ind2something functions which have a lot of code
+## in common
+
+function [x, map] = ind2x (name, x, map)
+
+  ## Check if X is an indexed image.
+  if (ndims (x) != 2 || (isfloat (x) && ! isindex (x)) ||
+      ! ismember (class (x), {"double", "single", "uint8", "uint16"}))
+    error ("%s: X must be an indexed image", name);
+  endif
+
+  ## Check the color map.
+  if (! iscolormap (map))
+    error ("%s: MAP must be a valid colormap", name);
+  endif
+
+  ## Do we have enough colors in the color map?
+  ## there's an offset of 1 when the indexed image is an integer class so we fix
+  ## it now and convert it to float only if really necessary and even then only
+  ## to single precision since its enough for both uint8 and uint16
+  maxidx = max (x(:));
+  if (isinteger (x))
+    if (maxidx == intmax (class (x)))
+      x = single (x);
+    endif
+    x      += 1;
+    maxidx += 1;
+  endif
+
+  rm = rows (map);
+  if (rm < maxidx)
+    ## Pad with the last color in the map.
+    pad = repmat (map(end,:), maxidx-rm, 1);
+    map(end+1:maxidx, :) = pad;
+  endif
+
+endfunction