i've read the modenc and the docs here on these formats

i however can't seem to get it right.

could anyone here explain this :

i believe spans are basically the voxel data of a 1x1xvoxelheight columns , am i right?

+------------------+
� SKIP COUNT � 1 byte *can you explain this one? my guess is that this is the amount of empty voxels in the column before non-transparant/empty voxels show up.
+------------------�
� NUM. VOXELS � 1 byte *i assume this is the number of voxels contained in the span ?
+------------------�
� VOXEL 1 COLOUR � each 1 byte; palette colour index
+------------------�
� VOXEL 1 NORMAL � each 1 byte
+------------------�
� VOXEL 2 COLOUR �
+------------------�
� VOXEL 2 NORMAL �
+------------------�
...
+------------------�
� VOXEL n COLOUR �
+------------------�
� VOXEL n NORMAL �
+------------------�
� NUM. VOXELS � 1 byte; same value as previous declaration
+------------------+

then onto shp compression 3

excerpt from banshee's modenc article :
"
The compression 3 is quite easy to be understood. The colour #0 repeats many times in a SHP file, since it's the background (transparent) colour. Therefore for any instance of the colour #0, the next byte will be the ammount of times (until 255) that #0 repeats. Another thing that must be considered on the compression 3 is that the first 2 bytes of a line are not colours. They indicate the size (in bytes) of the line.

The compression 2 works similarly to compression 3, but there is no special treatment for colour #0."

right, every time you get a color index 0 byte, the next byte will say how often it repeats.
however, the first 2 bytes of a line that say how long it is ...what the hell is a line supposed to be in a shp ?