Graphics on Amiga Unix???

[Randell Jesup]

In article <1991Feb11.031630.15334 at stb.info.com> michael at stb.info.com (Michael Gersten) writes:
>In article <992 at amix.commodore.com> ford at amix.commodore.com (Mike "Ford" Ditto) writes:
>>For now, X is the "portable" way to do graphics; there may be GKS or
>>some similar library later.
>
>Wait a sec...you mean that there is no access to layers.library or
>intuition.library?
>
>Is there any good reason why a unix process can't link against
>a library that has the same calling interface as these two creatures
>and supports the same features? Granted, it may be as simple as a
>library that does IPC to a program that has the ROMS as part of its
>program space (which would actually be useful as it would then take
>up MUCH less space than X, and be usable in a 2 meg configuration).

	Getting any of the AmigaDos ROM code to run under Unix would
require MAJOR rewrites of at least the lower-level code such as exec.
(The higher-level you go, the less that needs rewriting, but the more
modules below it that need to be).

	I don't think the current Unix kernel has any equivalent to
(for example) WaitBlit.  Most Unix resource locking I've seen in the
past was done as files, a rather high-overhead operation for low-level
interleaved access - fine for high-level exclusive long-term access.

	I could be wrong, if so the Unix guys will correct me.

-- 
Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering.
{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup at cbmvax.commodore.com  BIX: rjesup  
The compiler runs
Like a swift-flowing river
I wait in silence.  (From "The Zen of Programming")  ;-)