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From: scotty@l5comp.UUCP (Scott Turner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Program-independent rastports
Message-ID: <329@l5comp.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Aug-87 00:19:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5comp.329
Posted: Sun Aug 23 00:19:05 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Aug-87 07:26:31 EDT
References: <3878@garfield.UUCP>
Reply-To: scotty@l5comp.UUCP (Scott Turner)
Organization: L5 Computing, Edmonds, WA
Lines: 78
Summary: How do you do what you want to do?

In article <3878@garfield.UUCP> john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell) writes:
>--
>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)

All the above looks good till you take an eye to actually creating such a
draw: handler.

First, what do you think is going to happen when you type in draw:create...?
The CLI is going to try and load draw:create as a program and execute it.

Do you propose having the handler return a "dummy" program to run which will
then be passed the parameters? Because a) otherwise you'll get an error, nasty
for exec files b) the 320 200 32 df0:palette will NOT be passed to the handler,
they'll be passed to the program...

Alternate proposal:

touch draw:create/320/200/32/df0:palette
touch draw:load/df0:picture
copy df0:obj_description to draw:object
touch draw:arc/0/0/300/200

The /'s are needed so all params get passed to the handler.

But the above still isn't workable I think. the df0:palette and df0:picture
would be a problem due to the embedded :'s I think.

>dpaint					(edit *that screen* with dpaint)

OK, so we would give dpaint what for a filename so it can edit that picture?
draw:save?

But that violates the draw:load/filename concept... How about we fix that by:
copy df0:picture to draw:load?

That bags up one of them nasty :'s. But then another thought occurs to me. What
do we do with the screen info embedded in the IFF file? Like the color map etc

We also leave open:
copy df0:picture to draw:load/10/10/100/100/0/0

This would extract a rectangle 10/10/100/100 from the picture at 0/0 and
paste it into our draw:screen. We could slap on two more digits so we could
say where in the screen to slap it in at too eh?

While we're at it why not:
copy df0:palette to draw:create/320/200/32

Then we nail the last :.

>makeimage 10 10 100 25 "df0:image.h"	(grab section as C source code)

How about:
copy draw:savec/10/10/100/25 to df0:image.h

Which would also imply:
copy draw:save/10/10/100/25 to df0:image.iff

Which would also imply:
copy draw:savec to df0:alltheimage.h

And for the laser printer fans out there:
copy draw:savep to df0:image.postscript

Much nicer though would be to have named pictures so that multiple draw's could
be open at once.

Scott Turner
-- 
UUCP-stick: stride!l5comp!scotty | If you want to injure my goldfish just make
UUCP-auto: scotty@l5comp.UUCP    | sure I don't run up a vet bill.
GEnie: JST			 | "The bombs drop in 5 minutes" R. Reagan
		"Pirated software? Just say *NO*!" S. Turner