DRAW-INTRO(2)                                       DRAW-INTRO(2)

     NAME
          draw - basic graphics facilities module

     SYNOPSIS
          include "draw.m";
          draw := load Draw Draw->PATH;

          setalpha:  fn(rgba: int, alpha: int): int;

     DESCRIPTION
          Inferno's Draw module provides basic graphics facilities,
          defining drawing contexts, images, character fonts, and
          rectangular geometric operations.  See wmlib(2) and tk(2)
          for higher level operations, such as windows and menu han-
          dling.

        Pixels
          Images are defined on a rectangular region of an integer
          plane with a picture element, or pixel, at each grid point.
          Pixel values are integers with between 1 and 32 bits per
          pixel, and all pixels in a given image have the same size,
          or depth. Some operations allow images with different depths
          to be combined, for example to do masking.  Images have one
          or more channels: colour channels, greyscale channels,
          colour map indices, and others, as described in colour(6).
          Each pixel value contains a component of each such channel.
          All pixels in an image have the same size, or depth, and the
          same component structure.

          When an image is displayed, the value of each pixel deter-
          mines the colour of the display, according to the interpre-
          tation of the image's channels.  For instance, on `true
          colour' displays, the display image might contain red, blue
          and green colour channels, and each pixel value will have
          red, blue and green colour components.  For displays with
          only 8 bits per pixel or less, Inferno uses a fixed colour
          map for each display depth (see colour(6)). Facilities exist
          in draw-display(2) to convert between (red, green, blue)
          triplets and colour-mapped pixel values, but the mapping is
          often done automatically by the graphics operations when
          images with different channel structures are combined.

          Draw uses a standard representation of colour constants in
          calls to create coloured images or to initialise new images
          with a given colour.  This is referred to as `32-bit RGBA
          format'.  Each constant colour is represented as a 32-bit
          integer, with 8-bit red, blue and green colour components,
          and an 8-bit alpha component, in that order from most to
          least significant byte.

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          The RGB values in a colour are premultiplied by the alpha
          value; for example, a 50% red is int 16r7F00007F not int
          16rFF00007F.  The function Draw->setalpha performs the alpha
          computation on a given colour rgba in 32-bit RGBA format,
          ignoring its initial alpha value, and returning the result
          of multiplying each colour component by the supplied alpha.
          For example, to make a 50% red color value, one could exe-
          cute draw->setalpha(Draw->Red, 16r7F).

        Terminology
          Point    The graphics plane is defined on an integer grid,
                   with each (x, y) coordinate identifying the upper
                   left corner of the corresponding pixel.  The
                   plane's origin, (0, 0), resides at the upper left
                   corner of the screen; x and y coordinates increase
                   to the right and down.  The abstract data type,
                   Point defines a coordinate position.

          Rect     The type Rect defines a rectangular region of the
                   plane.  It comprises two Points, min and max, and
                   specifies the region defined by pixels with coordi-
                   nates greater than or equal to min and strictly
                   less than max, in both x and y. This half-open
                   property allows rectangles that share an edge to
                   have equal coordinates on the edge.

          Display  The type Display represents a physical display,
                   corresponding to a single connection to a draw(3)
                   device.  Besides the image of the display itself,
                   the Display type also stores references to off-
                   screen images, fonts, and so on.  The contents of
                   such images are stored in the display device, not
                   in the client of the display, which affects how
                   they are allocated and used, see for example draw-
                   image(2).

          Screen   The Screen type is used to manage a set of windows
                   on an image, typically but not necessarily that of
                   a display.  Screens and hence windows may be built
                   recursively upon windows for subwindowing or even
                   on off-screen images.

          Image    The Image type provides basic operations on groups
                   of pixels.  Through a few simple operations, most
                   importantly the draw image combination operator
                   (see draw-image(2)), the Image type provides the
                   building blocks for Display, Screen, and Font.

          Font     A Font defines which character image to draw for
                   each character code value.  Although all character
                   drawing operations ultimately use the draw primi-
                   tive on the underlying images, Fonts provide

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                   convenient and efficient management of display
                   text.  Inferno uses the 16-bit Unicode character
                   encoding, so Fonts are managed hierarchically to
                   control their size and to make common subsets such
                   as ASCII or Greek efficient in practice.  See
                   draw-font(2), utf(6), and font(6).

          Context  A Context provides an interface to the system
                   graphics and interactive devices.  The system cre-
                   ates this context when it starts an application.

          Pointer  The Pointer type conveys information for pointing
                   devices, such as mice or trackballs.

        More about Images
          An image occupies a rectangle, Image.r, of the graphics
          plane.  A second rectangle, Image.clipr, defines a clipping
          region for the image.  Typically, the clipping rectangle is
          the same as the basic image, but they may differ.  For exam-
          ple, the clipping region may be made smaller and centered on
          the basic image to define a protected border.

          The pixel structure of an Image is stored as Chans value
          Image.chans; the image's pixel depth in bits is stored as
          integer Image.depth.

          An image may be marked for replication: when set, the
          boolean Image.repl causes the image to behave as if repli-
          cated across the entire integer plane, thus tiling the des-
          tination graphics area with copies of the source image.
          When replication is turned on, the clipping rectangle limits
          the extent of the replication and may even usefully be dis-
          joint from Image.r.  See draw-image(2) for examples.

          The Image member functions provide facilities for drawing
          text and geometric objects, manipulating windows, and so on.

          Objects of type Display, Font, Screen, and Image must be
          allocated by the member functions; if such objects are cre-
          ated with a regular Limbo definition, they will not behave
          properly and may generate run-time errors.

          There are no ``free'' routines for graphics objects.
          Instead Limbo's garbage collection frees them automatically.
          As is generally so within Limbo, one can eliminate refer-
          ences by assigning nil to reference variables, returning
          from functions whose local variables hold references, etc.

     RETURN VALUES
          Most drawing operations operate asynchronously, so they have
          no error return.  Functions that allocate objects return nil
          for failure; in such cases the system error string may be

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          interrogated (such as by the %r format (see sys-print(2)))
          for more information.

     SOURCE
          /libinterp/draw.c
          /libdraw/*.c

     SEE ALSO
          draw(3), ir(2), prefab-intro(2), tk(2), wmlib(2), colour(6),
          font(6), image(6)

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