miner%ulowell.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA (11/27/85)
From: Rich Miner <miner%ulowell.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA> Several comments have been made regarding the portability of sources for the various systems we are using (ie. Amiga :-) , Atari :-l , MAC :-( ,...) If you desire to write portable code, it can be done! It might not always be easy, and it may not be the most direct way to tackle a problem, but through the use of STANDARDS (ugg) you can achive portability. In a previous note Keith Doyle had said: "The MAC Finder, GEM (ST) and Intuition (Amiga) are CHOCK FULL of special routines that do windowing, menus, graphics, text, mouse... agreed-upon- syntax 'C' librarys could be generated... but someone is going to have to do a heck of a lot of study of the different environments" I would rewrite that last statment as: ...and people (ie. ANSI X3H3) have done quite a bit of research in this area and produced such standard environments as GKS (The Graphical Kernel System), CORE, CG-VDI (Comp. Graph. Virtual Dev. Interface), PHIGS, etc.. Even if you did not move to one of these systems ( and since they are not yet available for the Amiga you can't) you can pick some set of generic routines to map graphics, windowing, input, and other device specific routines to. Then in your main code have calls to CREATE_WINDOW(), DRAW_LINE_2d()... If you keep all the device dependant code in the files for the generic routines, it is just a matter of re-writing those few files :-} for other target machines. I would suggest that you model your generic routines after an existing system those mentioned above have been SLOWLY developed over many years, and as a result have been well refined. I should add that the toughest obstacle will be device independent window environments. I know that ANSI has formed a small sub-group (X3H3.WIN) to look into standards for window environments, but I do not know if anyone else has completed a specification for a nice device independent system. Is anyone familiar with a good device independant window specification? Perhaps someone will come out with a real nice CG-VDI ( I have toyed with the idea ) and we can all use that. I welcome any comments or ideas you have on this subject, especially Amiga developers. Please send comments or *flames* directly to me, unless you feel others may be interested. If you have a favorite interface, (ie. CORE PHIGS) drop me a line and perhaps we can decide on a set of standard net routines. Who: Richard Miner "Thats not a bug (nor a slug), it's an Amiba!" Phone:(617) 452-5000 Ex. 2693 UUCP: ..decvax!wang!ulowell!miner ARPA: miner%ulowell.csnet@csnet-relay Plea: If you quote me, please don't > half of my letter, i've read it before!
jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (Jim Omura) (12/03/85)
Talking about standard regarding graphics, has anyone produced a
NAPLPS terminal package for either the Amiga or the ST yet?
Cheers! -- Jim O.
--
James Omura, Barrister & Solicitor, Toronto
ihnp4!utzoo!lsuc!jimomura
Byte Information eXchange: jimomura
Compuserve: 72205,541
MTS at WU: GKL6