Re: Rob: Reply about OW 1.4 full-screen issue
Well I reported it to them and replies just kept on coming (popular thread). The
Open Watcom maintainer Michal Necasek needed alot of convincing to accept that
they are different.
He and others said that the new Watcom graphics library makes calls to VBE (Vesa
Bios Extention) functions that may trigger full-screen under NTVDM.
He basically said that major modifications would need to be made in the graphics
library to "fix" this. So he really isn't willing to play with it, but welcomes
any changes others make in it; but messing with this could break backwards
compatability with all the Open Watcom versions down to 11.0c.
One person pointed this link to me:
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B812681&x=9&y=14
All interesting ideas. But then some people reported the full-screen problem
with Windows 98 (doesnt use NTVDM), so that may completely invalidate their
diagnosis; I'll test this on my Windows 98 laptop.
What I found interesting in the 11.0c release notes is this:
The graphics library now performs the VESA test before testing for
vendor specific graphics cards. This fix is intended to broaden
the number of graphics cards that are supported.
I'm thinking that maybe this has something to do with it.
Anyway, there seems to be a few solutions to the problem.
You can use the latest Open Watcom and the 10.6 graphics library and it will
produce windowed DOS programs. You can also ofcourse also use Watcom 10.6
altogether.
However despite the full-screen issue, there seems to be some fantasic
advantages with the newer Open Watcom graphics library.
1) Support for many many more graphics cards in SVGA+ mode.
2) Support for *alot* more video modes: upto 1600x1200 @ 32 bit color!
3) Bug fixes and video caching optimizations.
So basically putting the full-screen issue aside, you could very easily extend
DOS Euphoria's pixel graphics to true 32 bit color and super high UXGA resolution
and have support for the vast majority of graphic cards.
So there are choices here to make if you switch to OW in the future. You can
either avoid the full-screen issue or greatly enhance DOS Euphoria's pixel
graphics feature.
Regards,
Vincent
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