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From: rokicki@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Tomas Rokicki)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Program-independent rastports
Message-ID: <492@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Sat, 15-Aug-87 15:40:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocky.492
Posted: Sat Aug 15 15:40:22 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Aug-87 11:37:46 EDT
References: <3878@garfield.UUCP>
Reply-To: rokicki@rocky.UUCP (Tomas Rokicki)
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 26

$ 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)

Will Bill Hawes' REXX, most of the above is a 60-line program in C.  It
simply opens a message port and waits for messages; parses them and does
does what they want.  If you add an IFF reader, then get get the images.
Add a REXX message port to Dpaint, and you get the dpaint command.  (Or
some sort of command line option.)  And once you have int installed, it
is accessible from anything with a REXX message port, including the
interactive REXX listener!  Willy wrote a very short and very impressive
demo program for the Amiga using about 60 lines of REXX, his screenmaster
code described above (our `draw: device'), and REXX.

If you are interested in REXX (which you should be), please call Bill
Hawes at 617 568-8695.

-tom