[AD] textmode ideas

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> "Vincent Penquerc'h" <Vincent.Penquerch@xxxxxxxxxx> Allegro Developer <conductors@xxxxxxxxxx>Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 10:14:18 -0000

<small-snip>

>> Or if we remove text_mode() and instead add an extra background_color
>> argument to textout() & co, then we would need a wrapper for 
>> this in the
>> old-style library. 
>
>I would not do that. I'd require one to draw a rectangle before. Drawing
>text is one thing, and having routines that do twelve things at a time
>seems odd. If we're going to break compatibility, I'd remove entirely
>the management of back color from text* routines. I think.

Please (if possible) don't require the user to draw the rectangle.  
The problem I forsee is when multiple drawing of a text line (i.e. when scrolling some text in a gui) can cause the text appear to 
flash in a strange way because of the difference in speed of the 
fill and the text drawing.  Do you know what I mean?  If not I can make an example.

This might only be a problem on slower platforms, but I'd like to see
Allegro performance degrade gracefully on slow platforms, and it really makes some situations look MUCH more visually appealing.

I know that buffering solves this problem, but buffering is such an
extreme memory hog and will kill performance especially on slower machines.

As far as the text output routines, I use in my Depui project a
foreground and background color in the text draw function and draw
text without background when fore == back.  This way you get both functionalities without using any confusing 'mode'.  Maybe you can
consider this when looking to improve Allegro's API.

Doug Eleveld


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