Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!herald.usask.ca!alberta!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!udel!haven!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!noose.ecn.purdue.edu!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!jonabbey From: jonabbey@cs.utexas.edu (Jonathan David Abbey) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer Subject: Re: Intuition Image structure rendering utilities Keywords: rendered intuition image PostScript IFF Message-ID: <281@atacama.cs.utexas.edu> Date: 28 Mar 91 19:07:09 GMT References: <1214@muleshoe.cs.utexas.edu> <768@tnc.UUCP> <1991Mar26.154335.16403@fwi.uva.nl> <270@atacama.cs.utexas.edu> <777@tnc.UUCP> Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas Lines: 65 Okay, I've done some more thinking on this, and here's roughly what I've been thinking about: I've really become sold on the IPC way of doing this thing. Here's a general sceme I could envision: IFF ____________ PostScript____ \ TIFF_________ \ \ GIF ________ \ \ \ FLI _____v \ \ \ \ __________________ |-------------->|RENDERER MODULES|-------->IFF file ANIM ____/ ------------------ __________ _____ ^| | \ IFF / ______V______________ v \ IFF || |Display \______/ |IFF TO DISPLAY STRUCT| _________ |____/ | |Struct --------------------- |CLIPBOARD|--------|-|------------------------^ ___/ | --------- | \________________________/_____ | | _____________________/ v v _________|____/ ------- |Master Control|_------------------ |Display| -------------- \ ------- \ \ \_______ ------------|Program| ------- This gives the basic structure. Renderer modules would take commands from Master Control, which would handle requests from the program to provide rendering support. Renderer modules would have two paths of output. The first a direct dump to bitmap for purposes of high speed display directly in a program's bitmap or super bitmap. The second method would be generation of an IFF FORM which would be rendered to the display structure by a dedicated module. This would provide support for non-bitplanar displays or other non-standard displays that could arise in future systems. A new IFF to Display structure module would be written to support a new system. The IFF to IFF to DISPLAY path could take complete forms, or it could conceivably support open ended IFF files, with an END chunk indicating close of transmission. Things like DLTA chunks or CMAP chunks could be sent at a later time, while the display structure is publicly available. Extensions to this could include feedback (mouse clicks, and what have you) to the renderer from the program through the master control. A renderer could draw "gadgets" in the display structure and interact with the user if the program were to transmit mouse clicks taking place in the display structure through master control to the renderer. Master control would determine if there were a renderer that could go directly to display structure, or that it would be necessary for the renderer to dump to IFF and go through an IFF to DISPLAY module. This diagram does not have a printer involved, but an IFF to printer module could be added in a position analagous to the IFF to display module. For support of object based graphics files like PostScript, you could have something that would roughly fit in the diagram where the renderer modules are, which would convert an object oriented file to PostScript or vice-versa, which could then be output as a file or dumped to a PostScript printer. There is a lot of handwaving hidden in here, obviously. 8-) -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan David Abbey \"Take your place on the great Mandela" P,P&M the university of texas at austin \ jonabbey@cs.utexas.edu "Love me, love computer science/math?/psychology? \ (512) 472-2052 my Amiga" -Me