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From: rjc@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: The Amiga's Future
Message-ID: <1991Jun9.083656.8443@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 9 Jun 91 08:36:56 GMT
References: <5092@orbit.cts.com> <35@ryptyde.UUCP>
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In article <35@ryptyde.UUCP> dant@ryptyde.UUCP (Daniel Tracy) writes:
>Responding to the following:
>
>"dant@ryptyde.UUCP (Daniel Tracy) writes:
>>Responding to the following:
>>
>>"can you name any other system that has a totaly programmable display?"
>>
>>I can. The Macintosh! :-)
> 
> 
>oh really?  how is that?  The mac display is a standard 72 dpi.  no other
>resolution modes."
>
>You obviously aren't familiar with the Macintosh graphics device. Macintosh
>video is much more programmable than the Amiga's will ever be, for very good
>reasons. There IS no "standard" dpi. No video "standards", or modes, are
>needed in the Macintosh community.  Any monitor can be of any resolution,
>any number of pixels, independant of size, and the Macintosh will recognize

 Blah, blah. I've seen enough. You don't understand the poster's point.
The Mac display HARDWARE is not adjustable. Basically, whatever display
board you have is ALL you have. The Amiga can alter it's scan rates
on demand. Can you tell the Mac OS that you want a PAL screen for
output to a video tape? Can you tell the Mac OS you want a 15khz
screen for the new monitor you purchased? Can you even change the 
Mac's frame buffer location at any X,Y raster coordinates on the screen.
Can you have multiple screens with different reolution being displayed
at once? 


>to how Amiga's and IBMs view their monitors. On one of these machines, if
>you're given a monitor with more pixels, it doesn't "zoom out" and give more
>room. Instead, the picture you DO see (which doesn't change) is seen at 
>higher quality.


  BZZZT, you lose. On the Amiga you simply specify a window size of
-1,-1 (width, height) and it automatically expands the window
to full size. It doesn't "scale" all the text on the screen a bigger
size, but if I just bought a new monitor for more screen real-estate
why the hell would I want to have the new space be eaten up by
objects being made bigger.

 The AMiga display hardware is programmable (awesome games, awesome
video abilities, fast speed)

 The Mac display hardware is not ( slower screen updates, no
scanrate flexibility, no cheap genlocking, and shitty games to boot)

The Mac display software is more flexible, but the extra indirection
for DIG slows it down on weak machines (68000, 68020) especially on
the really big and colourful displays unless you have a risc system
driving it.
--
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