OpenEuphoria

Re: Rob: Reply about OW 1.4 full-screen issue

• Posted by Robert Craig <rds at RapidEuphoria.com> Feb 24, 2006
• 486 views

Vincent wrote:
> 
> 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: <a
> href="http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B812681&x=9&y=14">http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B812681&x=9&y=14</a>
> 
> 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.

Thanks a lot for all your work on this.
This is very interesting information.
For now I'll stick with 10.6, but you've given me 
a better idea of the pros & cons.

Regards,
   Rob Craig
   Rapid Deployment Software
   http://www.RapidEuphoria.com