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From: gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: What is \"bitblt\" ?
Message-ID: <398@l5.uucp>
Date: Sun, 5-Jan-86 05:33:42 EST
Article-I.D.: l5.398
Posted: Sun Jan  5 05:33:42 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 6-Jan-86 03:31:24 EST
References: <976@brl-tgr.ARPA> <956@terak.UUCP>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 28

In article <956@terak.UUCP>, doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee) writes:
> Bitblt is pretty much restricted to Macintosh-class displays; monochrome
> with a resolution of 640x400 or so.

Hmm, it seems to work great on this Sun with 1152x900 monochrome display,
and I've seen it run OK on a Qubix with a 2Kx2K display (driven by a 68010
based Sun).  Where's the beer, uh, beef?

>                                      The AND|OR|XOR|NOT operators don't
> have any particularly obvious meaning in color; what is the result of
> (orange AND chartreuse)?

This is not quite true.  Given that you've set up your color map for it,
it can work quite well, e.g. in displaying a chip design using different
bit planes for different mask layers.

>                                       In color systems bitblt is neither
> simple nor powerful; it has all the qualities of a ghastly kludge.  With
> very few monochrome-only graphics systems being designed these days,
> bitblt's days are numbered unless someone can come up with an extension
> which will handle color as elegantly as bitblt handled black-and-white.
> -- 
> Doug Pardee -- CalComp -- {hardy,savax,seismo,decvax,ihnp4}!terak!doug

I would agree with this if somebody had already come up with the great
slices-dices-chops-and-scales paradigm for color systems, but the
techniques that make realistic Lucasfilm-style movies are way too slow
for ordinary mortals, and the rest mostly still use some form of bitblt.