Re: [AD] Docs and set_gfx_mode

[Evert Glebbeek <eglebbk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Right. You shouldn't need to set a mode twice just to get something you 
> want. Plus, as I brought up before, you can't really use a function to 
> check when dealing with GFX_AUTODETECT[_FULLSCREEN|_WINDOWED] since you 
> can't know which driver you get until it's first been detected, and then 
> inited. If either fail, it tries another with the same parameters (it 
> does this for sound drivers it seems.. not sure about gfx).

Same for graphics. Maybe we should have a detect_gfx_driver() similar to 
the detect_digi_driver() and detect_midi_driver() functions?

> This is a case point that Allegro should just allocate as much VRAM as 
> possible, and just use the driver method for creating video bitmaps. Of 
> course, there's two problems with this... DOS (maybe? not sure)

Since your program owns the whole computer in DOS, it probably isn't a 
problem there.

> and X. 
> Doing that would mean you couldn't do any fake VRAM surfacing, like the 
> X11 drivers do.. emulating more VRAM by offsetting drawing operations 
> with an enlarged memory bitmap. Their might be some ways around it, but 
> IMO it's not at all worth it and we're better off just waiting for the 
> new gfx API (how is that going to handle virtual screens, btw?).

Right now, it's just a wrapper around the existing graphics drivers, so it 
has the same issues currently. I'd love to get rid of this, of course, but 
haven't thought of a good way to do this. Of course, the easiest would be 
to simply disallow video bitmaps completely under X and have no virtual 
screen...

Evert