----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Latta" <lattam at mac.com>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 7:51 PM
Subject: Morphic questions


> I have some basic Morphic questions that relate to a potential project:
>
> 1) The current Morphs seem to use BitBlt.  Is there an effort to use
> Baloon?  Can I build my own morphs using Baloon?  I would like
> anti-aliased morphs.

I think Balloon (two L's!) is used above BitBlt.

> 2) What is the relative speed of BitBlt vs. Baloon vs. OpenGL?  Does
> Baloon use the hardware on Windows or Mac OS/X?

Only OpenGL is hardware accelerated. Sure that BalLoon and BitBlt could be,
though, they just aren't. Not even the CPU instructions are. (exuperation)

There are "philosophical attempts" at accelerating the first two using the
third. A portable VM code base using SDL is something I've experimented
with, and have interesting in continuing - using OpenGL as much as possible.
Window rotates, anti aliasing, Z ordering; Squeak can be faster that Windows
or X11. Apple is the only commercial display system (logically) using OpenGL
to accellerate obvious bottlenecks in window and display operations.
Shouldn't have to wait much longer... and Balloon3D is not acceptable for
basic hardware access and use. (Wouldn't Croquet have used it then) Not to
mention shader and lighting problems between accelerated and non-accelerated
renderers. It was made long ago... the most obvious change since then,
today, in PCs.. is graphics acceleration, and CPU extensions (64bit, vector
operations, etc). Squeak has not taken advantage of any of these or even
inched toward it.

"Squeak is a vision into the future [adoption motif], it just doesn't live
or occupy any space there yet."

-lyndon


> 3) Does the polygon morph deal with dragging line segments or other
> means to allow user control of line routing?
> 4) Can I control the layering of morphs?
> 5) The squeak books at Amazon looked old (3.4 or so).  Is there a
> current reference that covers Morphic as it exists now?
> 6) Can I anchor a morph to the outside of another morph, or only inside
> another morph?  If I want handles on a morph, do I need to place a
> parent morph to hold the handles and the morph being edited?
>
> Michael
>
>