Re: [AD] No more video/system bitmaps

[Charles Wardlaw <kattkieru@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> I think he means that, when "Allegro-of-the-Future" handles
> multiple windows and multiple monitors, there are some 
> properties that would apply to a top-level window (title,
> position, ...) that don't apply to other bitmaps. So, 
> there should be a DISPLAY object separate from BITMAP.

Bingo.  I was thinking about the "Allegro-of-the-Future" yes; I assumed
that this was all part of that discussion. ^-^
Although personally, I think that the DISPLAY object should encapsulate
the video bitmap SCREEN object, or at least have a pointer to the
screen bitmap for that monitor.  I haven't looked at the next-gen
Allegro stuff yet, though, so I have no idea how it works.  In the
current allegro system I could see Displays and Screens as separate
lists populated by some functions.

This could be more than just a multimonitor thing too -- you could, for
example, have multiple displays on a windowed system being multiple
windows on the same screen.  I mean, each display would essentially be
a borderless window, anyway, so there'd be nothing to moving them all
onto the same physical monitor.  But as far as programming would be
concerned, the drawing calls would essentially be the same.

The point is anyway, games are going to start needing more and more
often to be able to have control over both displays on a multimonitor
system, as well as be able to get system metric information on those
displays, and having all that in the same structure would, IMHO, be a
Nice Thing.

> It uses a QuickDraw view, which is really a legacy API from
> OS 9 days. It's not been deprecated yet, but I expect it 
> will be. OpenGL is definitely the way to go for Mac graphics
> in the foreseeable future -> AFAIK there are no plans for
> Apple to go it alone, and invent the equivalent of Direct3D.

No, thankfully.  There'd be no point as I don't think there're really
any better ways than OpenGL, especially due to its cross-platform
abilities -- Apple's gotta push ports *to* its system, after all.

But you're right about quickdraw-- in 10.4 the Quartz 2D calls are a
hell of a lot faster than they were in 10.3 (in 10.3 it was still a
might quicker to use QD).  I can see it getting phased out relatively
soon.

Robert wrote:

> Automatic back-buffer management is a separate issue from 
> the display/bitmaps problem. You can have multi-plane 
> bitmaps that act as displays. In fact, that's what 
> AllegroGL currently does.

That's true.  I guess I'm rolling a lot of wishes into one. ;)  

- Charles