Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!mtxinu!taniwha!paul
From: paul@taniwha.UUCP (Paul Campbell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: 8/24 GC and New Applications
Message-ID: <860@taniwha.UUCP>
Date: 1 Jun 91 05:30:49 GMT
References: <16613@helios.TAMU.EDU> <858@taniwha.UUCP> <16688@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Reply-To: paul@taniwha.UUCP (Paul Campbell)
Organization: Taniwha Systems Design, Oakland
Lines: 68

In article <16688@helios.TAMU.EDU> mkh6317@zeus.tamu.edu writes:
>In article <858@taniwha.UUCP>, paul@taniwha.UUCP (Paul Campbell) writes...
>> 
>>Depends on what you mean by 'dramatic'
>
>If you attended the IIfx and GC roll-out or saw the video of it, you
>know what I mean.  Two examples especially caught my eye.  A color
>version of the diatom line drawing program and dragging a lassoed 
>bitmap region in a color (24-bit?) paint-type program.  The crowd, to
>a person, gasped "oh-wow".  Thats what I mean by dramatic.

But neither of these two things use GWorlds - and besides acceleration of
both vector drawing and lassoed dragging of 24-bit bitmaps were already
available from 3rd parties at the time the GC was rolled out

>>>Are there ANY presently available programs which support the GC
>>>card?  Do we know of any forth-comming programs which will support
>>>the GC card?  If not, then the GC is an incredible rip-off.
>
>>Umm, how about: the menu manager in system 7, the standard controls in system 7.
>
>No, as you point out later, menu drawing is fast enough.

What I mean is that they (sort of) use GWorlds - you asked if there
were any applications that used them I pointed out that there are
parts of the OS that do (but that it doesn't necessarily give you a massive
speedup

>> 
>>There are a number of programs that use gworlds, mostly they are new high-end 
>>color programs, 
>
>Could you name one?

I know of a video editor that is, but as it hasn't yet been released
I can't name it .....

>The IIfx and GC were introduced at the same time although the GC didn't
>actually ship until much later.  I appears though that the benefit of
>the GC is still "pie-in-the-sky".  I feel that the roll-out demonstration
>must have been horribly misleading.

Actually I have to disagree, I don't think that the demos were misleading,
if you have used a 24-bit card before people started selling accelerated
24-bit cards they were almost unusable - the demo of dragging a 24-bit
chunk in a paint program was exactly the sort of thing that you couldn't
do accurately before acceleration became available. Scrolling on a 24-bit card
before acceleration was so slow that people would only put their boards in
24-bit mode only when they really needed it for a particular application.
I'm typing this on an accelerated card which does 24-bit acceleration but
not 8-bit - when I switch it back to 8-bit I really notice how much SLOWER
it is.

On the other hand vector drawing is great - if you have vectors to draw - but
if you look at almost every Mac desktop the only vectors you will see are
horizontal and vertical which can be sped up in different (faster) ways from
arbitrary diagonal lines.

I really should announce my biases here - I design graphics accelerators
for one of those 3rd parties ... 

	Paul Campbell

-- 
Paul Campbell    UUCP: ..!mtxinu!taniwha!paul     AppleLink: CAMPBELL.P

My son is now 2 months old, in that time he has doubled his weight,
if he does this every 2 months for the next year he will weigh over 300lbs.