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From: john13@garfield.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Program-independent rastports
Message-ID: <3878@garfield.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Aug-87 15:25:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: garfield.3878
Posted: Wed Aug 12 15:25:56 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Aug-87 12:07:41 EDT
Organization: CS Dept., Memorial U. of Newfoundland, St. John's
Lines: 35

--
As far as my suggestion for a Draw: device goes, my dream would be to use it
as follows:

draw:create 320 200 32 df0:palette	(create custom screen)
draw:load df0:picture			(loads iff file into custom screen)
copy df0:obj_description to draw:	(plop on some pre-calced polygons)
draw:arc 0 0 300 200 etc		(send various drawing commands)
dpaint					(edit *that screen* with dpaint)
<exit dpaint, the screen stays open>
<do more stuff to screen from CLI>
makeimage 10 10 100 25 "df0:image.h"	(grab section as C source code)

It seems to me that screens which can be altered by many programs, and don't
close when the programs exit, could be very helpful. Especially with a lot of
graphic tool utilities; and if these utilities are keyboard oriented, why
write a program that accepts keyboard input in a flexible manner 
when we already have command history and editing, aliases, environment
variables, etc available through the regular system interface? 

Why not "copy *.object to draw:" or "draw:merge $pic1 $pic2 xor"? This may
sound like a pipe-dream, but the features of DPaint II would have seemed that
way to me a year ago. This way, you get to keep the convenience of the CLI
and its utilities, while using drawing routines that sit quietly around in
the filename space, taking the requests as they come.

And anything generated this way would be *much* more responsive to being
redirected to, say, a 300 DPI laserprinter. Like the one at work :-).

John
-- 
"She's sort of a 'pit baby', with interlocking jaws. We feed her on chicken 
parts."
"But baby-fighting has been outlawed, hasn't it?"
	-- Tracy Ullman describing her infant daughter to David Letterman