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From: tgross@dopey.prime.com (Tom Gross)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Practical Intro to PHIGS (new book)
Message-ID: <1442@cvbnetPrime.COM>
Date: 26 Apr 91 14:45:43 GMT
References: <1991Apr16.022646.6268@Stardent.COM> <24283@well.sf.ca.us> <1991Apr25.034649.3579@Stardent.COM>
Sender: postnews@cvbnetPrime.COM
Reply-To: tgross@dopey.UUCP (Tom Gross)
Organization: Prime Computer Inc., Bedford, MA
Lines: 27

In article <1991Apr25.034649.3579@Stardent.COM> jch@Stardent.COM (Jan Hardenbergh) writes:
>
>Deferral and Modification modes are not the penultimate to understanding
>PHIGS.  They are important to developing a tuned application, granted.
>So are things like how many structures you use and how big they are, how
>you navigate in structures, the edit mode you use, where in the
>structure you edit ( at the end? ).  And, ASAP should probably be the
>default - let those that know better change it.  We knew when we changed
>it back at Apollo that niave users would have to learn another thing -
>but a large customer said jump...
>

	Speaking as one who actually worked on the Apollo PHIGS product
	and was actually an employee of the company at the time this 
	particular decision was made, just for the record, when I was
	trying to figure out what the default deferral mode should be I
	initially thought "ASAP" because it came first alphabetically
	and I really didn't understand what BNIG, BNIL, and ASTI were
	anyway.  Jim Michener however suggested we make the default
	WAIT/NIVE on the grounds that it was better to let the application
	control when it wanted changes to the picture to occur.  Then
	I saw that Graphigs had made the same choice and I felt pretty
	confident it was okay.  There was no "large customer" involved
	in the decision and in fact there was no "large" domain/PHIGS
	customer at that time.

		-Tom Gross