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From: john13@garfield.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Things to do with devices
Message-ID: <3866@garfield.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Aug-87 17:05:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: garfield.3866
Posted: Sun Aug  9 17:05:24 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Aug-87 04:53:02 EDT
Organization: CS Dept., Memorial U. of Newfoundland, St. John's
Lines: 54
Keywords: devices handlers

--
Chuck McManis, in an article I read a couple of minutes ago, suggested the
need for a SYNTH: and a MIDI: device. I would like to suggest a more
generalized series of devices that people could construct, ones dealing with
any form of I/O that a lot of people would like to do on the Amiga.

These include (and this is just off the top of my head, please add any that
come to mind):

MUSIC: - you send it write commands in an understandable form, specifying
         pitch, duration, optional pointer to waveform, etc and it plays it
         for you. You could use DoIO, SendIO and the like to either do a
         quick sound-effect or queue io requests for an entire song, useful
         if you wanted to recalculate the waveforms as you went.

ANIM:  - you give it the sorts of parameters that you can specify in the new
         IFF Anim formats and it does it for you. So you don't have to
         re-invent the wheel with each program, and the interface could be
         set up and documented in such a way that you don't have to be able to
         write DVideo or Animator to be able to use it.

DRAW:  - all the left-out functions like arcs, and the ones that require a lot
         of rastport-twiddling could go in here.

PRT:   - well, it exists, but it could be greatly improved in future OS
         releases. Maybe PRINT:, a superset of PRT:? I want to see an icon,
         like you get with most other windowing systems, and a Tooltype that
         says "I am a DPaint picture so when I am dropped on the PRINT: icon
         you should load sys:utilities/IFF_printer and print me". Come to
         think of it, why don't any programs that create icons let you specify
         the default tool, such as your favourite IFF viewer?

I can't think of any new forms of input that I am in need of, but I'm sure
there are some...hmmm...I have an old lightpen lying around...PEN:?

Now you may say that some of these functions, especially anim and draw, are
better suited to librarifying than devicification. I would like to see PD
anim and draw libraries too, but I think the Amiga's powerful device system
should be put to use so that more can be done just by sending clear text to
a named device. In the case of things like pointers, these could be easily
fprintf'ed under program control. Where you didn't have to access the system
structures like that, it would be highly useful to be able to create music,
animation, etc *without* a lot of programming overhead. Of course an ideal
device would optionally *create* the source code to do it all again later :-).

Just a thought - opposing views encouraged. Remember, libraries for programmers
and *equivalent devices* for non-experts or non-programmers.

John
-- 
"I would have promised those terrorists a TRIP TO DISNEYLAND if it would have
 gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the
 missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme."
				-- preliminary draft of Ollie's testimony