Warp wrote:
> Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>>         I think that's what kept me and many away from "serious" languages like 
>> C/C++ for a long time. No book I picked up covered what I thought should 
>> be straightforward: How do I color a pixel on the screen. Doing graphics 
>> seemed to be a lot more complicated.
> 
>>         I didn't have Internet access, nor did I know anyone who knew much 
>> programming, so no one pointed me to better ways to do graphics in C, 
>> nor was I aware of other languages where it may be easier.
> 
>   It's funny that even today graphics in C/C++ development (and in fact quite
> many other languages) is a difficult issue.
> 
>   What makes it ironic is that a large part of C/C++ programs out there are
> heavily graphical (most prominently the computer games), and seems like
> everybody just somehow manages to get the graphics done, but when you ask
> for a simple way of getting graphics, they will usually shrug and say that
> it's a bit complicated... (Because it *is* a bit complicated.)

If it is (and I can't believe that it's all that complicated), why is it??

> 
> 
>   Immediately when you started having different users with different
> hardware setups, the whole graphics programming stumbled on a huge problem.
> 
Maybe, but why are the graphics for Windows itself so complicated? It's a
single operating system running mainly on similar hardware. And again 
Pov-Ray does
it for images at lease. How does it do it? So it's complicated, even 
*hard*, surely
someone knows how it is done and can tell me, or tell me where to find 
out. *That*
was my original question on the programming news group which led to my 
original
post in this thread. Of course, the thread has been fun --and 
informative. :)

I've run on past suppertime! ;)

David


David

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Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>  I can sympathize with David. As a kid, graphics was one of the fun
> things about BASIC/QuickBasic. For someone new to programming, there are
> a lot of things you can do using language concepts with graphics, and
> it's a lot more interesting than writing a silly calculator program.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about (although it was Turbo Pascal for me
later, which fortunately did have 2D pixel graphics, almost as easy as the
BASIC for my homecomputer).

>  I think that's what kept me and many away from "serious" languages like
> C/C++ for a long time. No book I picked up covered what I thought should
> be straightforward: How do I color a pixel on the screen. Doing graphics
> seemed to be a lot more complicated.

When I was learning C, there was a project I really wanted to do that required
2D graphics output. But how to? I had access to both Windows and Unix machines,
but I had not the slightest clue where to start researching how to do graphics
output on either Windows or X.

Fortunately, I happened to know a bit about the PostScript printer language - so
guess what I did :P

(I later went to save some paper and toner though by going for GhostScript for
test runs ;))

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   Immediately when you started having different users with different
> hardware setups, the whole graphics programming stumbled on a huge problem.

Yup. DOS times were even worse than nowadays, as there was no accepted standard
interface to graphics cards at all (except for standard CGA/EGA/VGA modes,
which later graphics cards tried their best to remain hardware compatible
with); so essentially each program came with its own proprietary set of
graphics drivers, which fully supported only a selection of SuperVGA graphics
cards available - and new graphics cards in turn would come with disks
providing graphics drivers for only the most popular graphics-hungry
applications.

High-quality graphics games in the VGA/SuperVGA era would almost invariably run
in the famous VGA mode 13h (320x200 pixels at 256 colors) anyway, which worked
fine on virtually all SuperVGA graphics cards, but didn't really max them out
of course.

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On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:27:19 -0400, Warp wrote:

>  That kind of mocking attitude isn't really helpful.

Nor is it particularly helpful to mock the abilities of someone you've 
only just met.

This thread needs a whole lot of "lighten up, folks!".  Seriously.

Jim

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On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:56:03 -0500, David H. Burns wrote:

> The Commodore PET was one of those desk tops with a built in monitor. It
> had, I guess, a 16K ROM and 16K of RAM. (That's K) and
> programs we stored on a cassette tape.

The earliest PET computers had 2K of RAM in them, not sure what the ROM 
size was, but it wasn't big.

Those older models also had the "chicklet" keyboard - good for elementary 
students (which I was at the time), not so good for people with "grown 
up" hands.

Jim

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"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
> A convenient excuse anyway. "Everybody needs someone to look down on. If you
> ain't got nobody else, well help yo'self to me!" -Kris Kristofferson
> (quoted from
> memory) :)

"Jesus was a capricorn"

(Identified from memory... man, it's been ages since I've last heard that song.)

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> "clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> [snip basic info]
> 
> For BASIC fans, the Rolls-Royce of traditional BASIC:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_BASIC
> 
> This is the language in which I first learnt programming. Only available on
> 1980s-1990s Acorn computers in the UK (and parts of Europe), unfortunately, so
> not widely known. However, on those 8-bit and 32-bit platforms, it was a very
> complete inbuilt language, practically part of the OS. As well as named
> functions, procedures, debugging tools and a built-in assembler, it had very
> powerful graphics and sound abilities courtesy of its close alliance with the
> OS. There were even keywords for directly poking and peeking to memory
> (although that probably makes most people shudder these days!). It was often the
> easiest tool for writing multitasking desktop apps too... :)
> 
> 
> 
Thanks it sound to me like it was the way programming should have gone, 
I'll look it up.
A peek function would still be useful, but a poke function on a multi 
tasking system where
the operating system is in RAM ... well at best, you might reboot a lot.

BTW the PET instruction manual warned if you poked into the wrong area 
you might have to
reboot the computer. At that time, I had no idea what this meant and 
stayed away from poking
around until I realized all rebooting invoved was pressing the reset button.

David


David

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clipka wrote:
> "David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
>> A convenient excuse anyway. "Everybody needs someone to look down on. If you
>> ain't got nobody else, well help yo'self to me!" -Kris Kristofferson
>> (quoted from
>> memory) :)
> 
> "Jesus was a capricorn"
> 
> (Identified from memory... man, it's been ages since I've last heard that song.)
> 
> 
Me too. I have it somewhere on a reel to reel tape. I wonder how long it 
would take
me to find it.:)

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Warp wrote:

>> Ah, maybe this little monkey should just snope away and play in his own 
>> tree and
>> not bother the *real* men at work. ;)
> 
>   That kind of mocking attitude isn't really helpful.
If you really take it as mocking, I'm sorry. Of course it was tongue in 
cheek and
referenced earlier posts. :)

David

>

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:27:19 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>>  That kind of mocking attitude isn't really helpful.
> 
> Nor is it particularly helpful to mock the abilities of someone you've 
> only just met.
> 
> This thread needs a whole lot of "lighten up, folks!".  Seriously.
> 
> Jim
I *thought* my monkey comment was light. Maybe we have just harped on 
this same,
rather tangled, thread to long. :)

I ought to apologize for my typos and irregular lines. The keyboard on 
this Timex Sinclair
is rather small and my tail keeps getting in the way.

David

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