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From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re:  Bank switched CHIP RAM?  (Re: 24 Bit Video ..)
Message-ID: <15057@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 10 Oct 90 21:10:53 GMT
References: <1990Sep28.022138.19237@zip.eecs.umich.edu> <1990Sep30.233751.3244@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <1990Oct3.194556.7031@lth.se> <106878@convex.convex.com> <1990Oct8.211957.2528@lth.se> <lron.1045107@easy.HIAM>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 36

In article <lron.1045107@easy.HIAM> lron@easy.HIAM (Dwight Hubbard) writes:

>Yes, it would also make the system more flexible since it would
>be possible to send commands to the device directly.  Can you
>see drawing a picture on the screen by typing: copy xxxpic to gfx:

That might be kind of cool.  And in fact, you could write such a GFX:
filesystem, though of course that's not the same thing as pure device
independent graphics -- you don't want the overhead of a filesystem type
server to do all your graphic commands (then again, the X Windowing system
does it kind of similarly).  I suppose you would want the GFX: device to
support multiple devices.  A preference editor might set up the default
for GFX:, maybe as a window on Workbench.  You could pick a display card
simply by name; maybe "GFX:BuiltIn" for the standard Amiga graphics,
"GFX:A2410" for that ULowell card, etc.  I suppose the best thing for such
a device to do would be for it to speak in a high level graphics language
that's byte stream rather than function call based.  Just like with disks,
there would be a device driver under the GraphicsSystem, and for higher
performance you could look up the particular graphics.device based on the
filing system name for the unit.  Kind of weird, but interesting.  Based on
the fact that it's all done in byte streams, you could do things with filters,
like:

	type pic.ilbm | ilbm_2_gfx | GFX:Builtin/640/400/4

Or somesuch.  Similar filters could handle PHIGS, PostScript, whatever, with
enough effort.  You don't want GFX: to speak ILBM as a native language, but
something much higher level, so you can send it "draw a circle", "fill this
rectangle", etc. type commands.

>-Dwight Hubbard,                      |-Kaneohe, HI

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
	Standing on the shoulders of giants leaves me cold	-REM