vilkas@ultima.cs.uts.oz (Peter Sumskas) (05/02/90)
I have recently thought up a possible solution to a lack of standards in graphic boards for the amiga. Now everyone has been wingeing that a program written for one board wont work on another, but if the following is implemented, this may not be a problem. IF Commodore sat down with all the developers interested in producing graphics boards for the Amiga and built up a standard structure for handling the display of the boards at a software level, then implemented a library: let's call it graphicboard.library which was an agreed upon set of routines for standard implementations of the displays, then Every developer could write the routines underlying the graphicboard.library to take advantage of their own architecture whilst maintaining compatibility at the software level as all accesses are made through a standard library interface.... the same (equivalent) routine at the same offset from GraphicboardBase all accepting the same parameters. Then to get compatibility between programs that take advantage of graphic boards, all you would have to do would be to install the Graphicboard.library associated with the graphics card you have. The program would OpenLibrary() on it and would continue blissfully unaware of which graphics board it was actually making use of. Anyone who can think of problems (apart from the obvious: wanting to do something not supported by graphicboard.library) with this or suggestions foir it should post a followup. I am interested in other peoples opinions. And if a discussion leads to a workable standard and the right people hear about it... who knows what might happen? Regs. Iron Wolf ------------------------- "Maybe you think tomorrow's just a joke "It's a joke after joke, after joke, after joke" - Alphaville -------------------------