Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!mcnc!decvax!decwrl!nsc!csi!jwhitnel
From: jwhitnel@csi.UUCP (Jerry Whitnell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Feeping Creaturism
Message-ID: <1451@csib.csi.UUCP>
Date: 11 Mar 88 21:16:22 GMT
References: <8802181921.AA19069@cory.Berkeley.EDU> <682@sandino.quintus.UUCP> <5295@utah-cs.UUCP> <732@nuchat.UUCP> <7599@apple.Apple.Com> <2122@polya.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: jwhitnel@csib.UUCP (Jerry Whitnell)
Organization: Communications Solutions Inc., San Jose, Ca
Lines: 46

In article <2122@polya.STANFORD.EDU> ali@polya.UUCP (Ali Ozer) writes:
|Finally, there's the issue of "smart-refresh" windows --- That was a shocker
|too --- To find that you have to refresh your window yourself! On the Amiga
|you are not only relieved of checking for input events the system can deal
|with, you are also relieved of having to redraw windows when they get 
|revealed. The system will keep the covered areas in its own bitamps
|and restore contents whenever necessary. Of course, if you want, you can still
|fall back to the "simple" refresh method of having the application redraw
|the window whenever it's necessary to do so --- Except, on the Amiga,
|where windows can be moved/depth arranged asynchronously with program
|flow, this would cause problems and you'd have to pay attention to 
|"refresh_window" type messages.

The main reason for the non-smart-refresh windows on the Mac is memory.
Remeber the orignal Mac was 128K, of which only 80K was available for
programs to run in.  Hence saving away the bit map was a very expensive way
to waste that memory.  Even today on my Mac II, the bit map for a screen-size
window (640x480x8) is approximatly 256K, 4 such windows and I've blown
the megabyte of memory the Mac comes with!  However, the programmer still
has the option of saving bit maps at window deactivation and restoring it
when it is reactivated, but it is up to the programmer to decide to use
memory that way.  I'm not familiar with the Amiga, so I'd like to know how
do you as a programmer handle the memory requirments for the bit maps for a
large number of windows?

|
|Having programmed both the Amiga and the Mac --- one thing is
|apparent to me: The Amiga tries to offload as much runtime processing
|from user programs as possible by making the programmer to specify 
|many options at initialization time (which most of the time means compile
|time). The Mac, on the other hand, lets you open a window real easily, in a
|few lines of code, but then makes you do all the grunge work at runtime.
|I guess the two are just different ways of looking at the world. In my
|opinion, in a multitasking environment, Amiga's method makes much more
|sense. 

The grunge work, however, is a couple of 100 lines of code that can be
done once and reused in other applications.  
|
|Ali Ozer



Jerry Whitnell				Been through Hell?
Communication Solutions, Inc.		What did you bring back for me?
						- A. Brilliant