cohen@cs.Buffalo.EDU (Alexander Cohen) (11/27/89)
I haven't heard much on the net about Apple's 32-bit Quickdraw init, I just recently dropped it in my system folder and was surprised not only at the ability for my paltry 256-color video board to display a 32-bit image dithered but the wonderful full color icon for the init! This is without that patch called, I believe Color Finder. Apparently the 32-Bit QuickDraw init allows the finder to directly display cicn's...pretty nice. Too bad it decreases available RAM by 120k, I'm already up to nearly a megabyte just for the system alone. ;-) Anyone else notice this? Is this still just beta-ware? Anyone know if there are any other advantages to this init? -Alex Cohen cohen@cs.buffalo.edu cohen@sunybcs.bitnet
ftanaka@Apple.COM (Forrest Tanaka) (11/29/89)
<13781@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> cohen@cs.Buffalo.EDU (Alexander Cohen) writes: +----- |I haven't heard much on the net about Apple's 32-bit Quickdraw init, I just |recently dropped it in my system folder and was surprised not only at |the ability for my paltry 256-color video board to display a 32-bit image |dithered but the wonderful full color icon for the init! This is without |that patch called, I believe Color Finder. Apparently the 32-Bit QuickDraw |init allows the finder to directly display cicn's...pretty nice. Too bad it |decreases available RAM by 120k, I'm already up to nearly a megabyte just |for the system alone. ;-) | | Anyone else notice this? Is this still just beta-ware? Anyone |now if there are any other advantages to this init? +----- 32-Bit Quickdraw, as it's name implies, specifies an Apple-supported way of using 16- and 32-bit video boards (24-bit video boards are really 32-bit video boards which don't use the upper eight bits for display purposes). But along with this come other capabilities. The main capability of 32-Bit Quickdraw is the off-screen support it provides. In the black & white only days, it wasn't that hard to make an off-screen bit map, but when Color Quickdraw and pixel maps came along, things became a little more complicated because you had to set up the color table and make sure everything works right at all available pixel depths. None of this is hard, but it's kind of a pain. 32-Bit Quickdraw will allow a developer to create an off-screen pixel map at any pixel depth, or the pixel depth of the deepest screen, using any color table--all in one call. It also supplies dithering of 16- and 32-bit per pixel images for displays of lesser depth, and if you shrink a 32-bit per pixel image, 32-Bit Quickdraw will do pixel averaging on the image so that it still looks pretty good. This also allows easy anti-aliasing. Also, there is better support for color palettes. The full-color icon is a hack, and I wouldn't worry about it. The Finder actually doesn't know how to display a full-color icon, but 32-Bit Quickdraw patches Color Quickdraw so that if the Finder is about to draw 32-Bit Quickdraw's usual black & white icon, the full-color icon is displayed instead. There's no way for any developers to do this with their own files. I believe the Macintosh IIci's version of 32-Bit Quickdraw doesn't have this "feature," and any new versions of 32-Bit Quickdraw that are released probably won't have it either. 32-Bit Quickdraw is not "beta-ware," in fact the version you have is 1.0 and is an official software release. It is in its young stages though, so 1.0 and the IIci's version are definitely not the last word. +----- | -Alex Cohen cohen@cs.buffalo.edu | cohen@sunybcs.bitnet +----- -- ******************************************************************************* Forrest Tanaka Macintosh Developer Technical Support Internet: ftanaka@apple.com Apple Computer, Inc. or: Forrest_Tanaka.DTS@gateway.qm.apple.com AppleLink: TANAKA Do extra-terrestrials Phone: (408) 974-1243 believe in God? *******************************************************************************
nilesinc@well.UUCP (Avi Rappoport) (11/29/89)
In article <13781@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> cohen@cs.Buffalo.EDU (Alexander Cohen) writes: > >I haven't heard much on the net about Apple's 32-bit Quickdraw init, I just >recently dropped it in my system folder and was surprised not only at >the ability for my paltry 256-color video board to display a 32-bit image >dithered but the wonderful full color icon for the init! This is without >that patch called, I believe Color Finder. Apparently the 32-Bit QuickDraw I heard that the way they did the color on that was a total hack, that they didn't follow the rules at all! "Do what we say, not what we do" -- Apple -- -- Help me justify my online bills: ask me EndNote questions, please! -- Avi Rappoport nilesinc@well.UUCP, Niles.Assoc on AppleLink 415-655-666 2000 Hearst, Berkeley, CA 94709