Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!CORY.BERKELEY.EDU!dillon
From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Structured Graphics Standard
Message-ID: <8809090717.AA15695@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 9 Sep 88 07:17:43 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 33

:simple, relatively easy to implement (all we're missing is RoundRects
:and arbitrary regions - ok, the latter ain't so easy) - and there's
:400 zillion people out there using MacDraw.  The overall net response
:was "nawww, we can do better than that."
:
:Months later, we still don't have a standard for structured 2d graphics,
:and there are now 525 zillion people who already use the QuickDraw standard
:whether they know it or not, over in the Mac community.  All we need
:("all," he says!) is a quickdraw.library and a QUIK form for IFF, which
:just contains a binary duplicate of an apple qd file.  Heck, I'd do
:it myself, if I were not an Extremely Busy Person, and, more to the
:point, an inept programmer.
:
:Well, so whaddya think?  If the prevailing opinion is that the subject
:is dead, I apologize abjectly, and when I want to make a poster or
:graph for a laser printer, I will hide my face and sneak over to my
:roommate's Mac.
:
:thanks...
:		-Ranjit

	I wish there were too, but there isn't any single format that
is suitable for the job.  There are a thousand data structures and a 
thousand storage formats for lines alone, and each is well suited to 
a given range of applications (in terms of efficiency).

	For instance, some applications will want to store the points
as real numbrs (pick a format!), or as integers... but how big an integer?
Several applications need 32 bits / value, others need only 16.  Others
even less!  What kind of data structure?  Quad Tree?  Simple List?  Are
coordinates stored relative to local origins for objects?  What kind of
objects should be supported?  etc...

					-Matt