Raster scan proceeds left-to-right (increasing X) across scan lines, then top-to-bottom (increasing Y) down columns of scan lines. The coordinate system is in units of pixels, where (0,0) is the upper left corner. The raster is typically organized as bitplanes in memory. The corresponding bits from each plane, taken together, make up an index into the color map which gives a color value for that pixel. The first bitplane, plane 0, is the low order bit of these color indexes. A scan line is made of one "row" from each bitplane. A row is one plane's bits for one scan line, but padded out to a word (2 byte) boundary (not necessarily the first word boundary). Within each row, successive bytes are displayed in order and the most significant bit of each byte is displayed first. A "mask" is an optional "plane" of data the same size (w, h) as a bitplane. It tells how to "cut out" part of the image when painting it onto another image. "One" bits in the mask mean "copy the corresponding pixel to the destination". "Zero" mask bits mean "leave this destination pixel alone". In other words, "zero" bits designate transparent pixels. The rows of the different bitplanes and mask are interleaved in the file (see below). This localizes all the information pertinent to each scan line. It makes it much easier to transform the data while reading it to adjust the image size or depth. It also makes it possible to scroll a big image by swapping rows directly from the file without the need for random-access to all the bitplanes.