alibaba@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (73539000) (02/03/88)
--- What do people know about QuickerDraw? What does it improve/change? How does it work? Why? What does Apple think about it? Where can I get it? If you know any of the above, then you may have already won... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~ Alexander M. Rosenberg ~ INTERNET: alibaba@ucscb.ucsc.edu ~ Yoyodyne ~ ~ Crown College, UCSC ~ UUCP:...!ucbvax!ucscc!ucscb!alibaba~ Propulsion ~ ~ Santa Cruz, CA 95064 ~ BITNET:alibaba%ucscb@ucscc.BITNET ~ Systems, Inc~ ~ ~ Disclaimer: Nobody is my employer ~ :-) ~ ~ ~ so nobody cares what I say. ~ ~
mkb@ROVER.RI.CMU.EDU (Mike Blackwell) (02/04/88)
The way I understand it, Hertzfeld made the remarkable discovery that when you're in 8-bit mode, you never have to check if you need to do bit shifts, since you're always byte aligned. Saves a couple of instructions per pixel, which could be substantial. Why the color QuickDraw implementers didn't figure this out, though, is beyond me - operating in 8-bit mode is common, and should have been special cased in the first place. Mike Blackwell ... mkb@rover.ri.cmu.edu
kwallich@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (Ken Wallich) (02/05/88)
>What do people know about QuickerDraw? What does it improve/change? >How does it work? Why? What does Apple think about it? Where can I get >it? ---------- It is an init which patches some of the low level quickdraw routines with code that is supposidly faster than "original flavor" quickdraw. Andy Hertzfield claims up to 350% increase in performance "especially in drawing and selecting text". Well, since drawing and selecting text is near instantaneous (I am running it on a macII) I have noticed no increase in speed. I noticed around a 25% increase with some big quickdraw things, but were talking 15 instead of 19 seconds to draw a complicated picture on a 13" mac screen. Not exactly staggering. Perhaps with a 19" monitor... I found version .9 floating around on some BBS around here, perphaps version 1.0 will be faster. Apparently Andy talked to Scully about it at MacWorld, and Scully told Andy that it would be best marketed by someone else (Andy still doesn't realize that Apple doesn't like any of Steve's friends...) The Raster- Ops folks said that if Apple doesn't market it, they will. Andy thinks $75 bucks is a good price for it, however since it is <10K, is not copy protectable (it is an init), and doesn't blow you away, I think he is out of his mind, and at $75 it will be illegally copied faster than you can say "please insert the disk untitled". Version .9 also is not 100% quickdraw compatable, and I have noticed several programs which don't draw correctly with it in use (everything works ok, until you go into 256 color mode). Perhaps it speeds up an "ordinary mac", but mine is out on loan, so I haven't been able to test it there yet, and from looking at the startup icon (a rainbow effect), it may only be for a MacII (don't quote me on that!) -------------------- Ken Wallich *My views are mine, and mine alone* Consultant "Slimey? Mud Hole? my HOME this is!" DCI kwallich@hpsmtc1.HP.COM @Hewlett Packard ...hplabs!hpsmtc1!kwallich "If we weren't all crazy, we'd all go INSANE"
olson@endor.harvard.edu (Eric K. Olson) (02/05/88)
In a recent article Mike Blackwell writes: >The way I understand it, Hertzfeld made the remarkable discovery that when >you're in 8-bit mode, you never have to check if you need to do bit shifts, In early Mac II documentation, there are references to 16 and 32 bit modes. It's a pity these were eliminated, since the 24-bit cards now becoming available have a painful programming interface... Then again, a full 16-bit color lookup table would be about 524K. A 32-bit one would be about 34 Gigabytes-- perhaps these resolutions were never intended to be used with color-lookup tables. The same document referred to 1-1-1, 2-2-2, 4-4-4, and 8-8-8 chunky-planar pixel organizations (the 8-8-8 would have been perfect for the OpCode or SuperMac 24-bit cards). -Eric Eric K. Olson olson@endor.harvard.edu harvard!endor!olson D0760 (Name) (ArpaNet) (UseNet) (AppleLink)
lsr@apple.UUCP (Larry Rosenstein) (02/06/88)
In article <11540125@hpsmtc1.HP.COM> kwallich@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (Ken Wallich) writes: > >Version .9 also is not 100% quickdraw compatable, and I have noticed >several programs which don't draw correctly with it in use (everything >works ok, until you go into 256 color mode). Perhaps it speeds up an My understanding is that it only speeds up operations in 256 color mode. It doesn't do anything on a non-Mac II (a Mac I ?) or on a Mac II with less than 256 colors. -- Larry Rosenstein Object Specialist Apple Computer AppleLink: Rosenstein1 UUCP: {sun, voder, nsc}!apple!lsr CSNET: lsr@Apple.com
dhac@ur-tut.UUCP (Darren Jay Hacker) (02/07/88)
[munch, munch, munch...] >>What do people know about QuickerDraw? What does it improve/change? >>How does it work? Why? What does Apple think about it? Where can I get >>it? >---------- >It is an init which patches some of the low level quickdraw routines >with code that is supposidly faster than "original flavor" quickdraw. >Andy Hertzfield claims up to 350% increase in performance "especially ... >I found version .9 floating around on some BBS around here, perphaps ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >version 1.0 will be faster. Perhaps you could upload it to comp.binaries.mac, oe e-mail me/us a copy! I'm sure that if version .9 is impressive to some of us, we may actually go out and purchase a copy when it becomes "released"! I do a lot of graphics stuff on my SE, and anything that speeds up screen output is a boon for me! I only have net and FTP access so I cannot peruse any BBS's at this time... So, if uploading/mailing does not violate any (c)-laws, then please share it! Darren Jay "DJ" Hacker ============================================================================= Darren Jay Hacker Internet: dhac@tut.cc.rochester.edu "The fault, dear Brutus, UUCP: dhac@ur-tut.UUCP \ / ,|. is not in our stars, (or) ...{ames,cmcl2,decvax,rutgers} X ( | ) but in our software !rochester!ur-tut!dhac / \ `|'
wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu (Pierce T. Wetter) (02/11/88)
In article <801@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> mkb@rover.ri.cmu.edu (Mike Blackwell) writes: >The way I understand it, Hertzfeld made the remarkable discovery that when >you're in 8-bit mode, you never have to check if you need to do bit shifts, >since you're always byte aligned. Saves a couple of instructions per pixel, >which could be substantial. Why the color QuickDraw implementers didn't >figure this out, though, is beyond me - operating in 8-bit mode is common, >and should have been special cased in the first place. > More likely is that Hertzfeld realized that its silly to pack the 1,2,4, and 8-bit modes together. A faster way is to make each pixel a byte but only 1,2,4, or 8 are significant. This way rather then toggling bits you can simply blow away the byte which is much faster. The 24-bit boards have this problem as the present quickdraw is unable to simply set all 24bits by doing a long word write, rather is sets each in turn. Arrgh! rampant sillyness Pierce Wetter wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu "When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut." -------------------------------------------- wetter@tybalt.caltech.edu --------------------------------------------