Provided by: libprima-perl_1.28-1.2_amd64 bug

NAME

       Prima::gp-problems - Problems, questionable or intricate topics in 2-D Graphics

Introduction

       One of the most important goals of the Prima project is portability between different
       operating systems. Independently to efforts in keeping Prima internal code that it behaves
       more or less identically on different platforms, it is always possible to write non-
       portable and platform-dependent code.  Here are some guidelines and suggestions for 2-D
       graphics programming.

Minimal display capabilities

       A compliant display is expected to have minimal set of capabilities, that programmer can
       rely upon.  Following items are guaranteedly supported by Prima:

       Minimal capabilities
           Distinct black and white colors

           Line widths 0 and 1

           One monospaced font

           Solid fill

           rop::Copy and rop::NoOper

       Plotting primitives
           SetPixel,GetPixel

           Line,PolyLine,PolyLines

           Ellipse,Arc,Chord,Sector

           Rectangle

           FillPoly

           FillEllipse,FillChord,FillSector

           TextOut

           PutImage,GetImage

       Information services
           GetTextWidth,GetFontMetrics,GetCharacterABCWidths

           GetImageBitsLayout

       Properties
           color

           backColor

           rop

           backRop

           lineWidth

           lineJoin

           lineStyle

           fillPattern

           fillPolyWinding

           textOpaque

           clipRect

           All these properties must be present, however it is not required for them to be
           changeable. Even if an underlying platform-specific code can only support one mode for
           a property, it have to follow all obligations for the mode. For example, if platform
           supports full functionality for black color but limited functionality for the other
           colors, the wrapping code should not allow color property to be writable then.

Inevident issues

   Colors
       Black and white colors on paletted displays
           Due the fact that paletted displays employ indexed color representation, 'black' and
           'white' indices are not always 0 and 2^n-1, so result of raster image operations may
           look garbled (X).  Win32 and OS/2 protect themselves from this condition by forcing
           white to be the last color in the system palette.

           Example: if white color on 8-bit display occupies palette index 15 then desired
           masking effect wouldn't work for xoring transparent areas with cl::White.

           Workaround: Use two special color constants cl::Clear and cl::Set, that represent all
           zeros and all ones values for bit-sensitive raster operations.

       Black might be not 0, and white not 0xffffff
           This inevident issue happens mostly on 15- and 16-bits pixel displays. Internal color
           representation for the white color on a 15-color display ( assuming R,G and B are
           5-bits fields) is

            11111000 11111000 11111000

            --R----- --G----- --B-----
           that equals to 0xf8f8f8. (All)

           Advise: do not check for 'blackness' and 'whiteness' merely by comparing a pixel
           value.

       Pixel value coding
           Status: internal

           It is not checked how does Prima behave when a pixel value and a platform integer use
           different bit and/or byte priority (X).

   Filled shapes
       Dithering
           If a non-solid pattern is selected and a background and/or a foreground color cannot
           be drawn as a solid, the correct rendering requires correspondingly 3 or 4 colors.
           Some rendering engines (Win9X) fail to produce correct results.

       Overfill effect
           In complex shapes ( FillPoly, for example) the platform renderer can fill certain
           areas two or more times. Whereas the effect is not noticeable with rop::CopyPut, the
           other raster operations (like rop::Xor) produce incorrect picture. (OS/2)

           NB - has nothing in common with the fill winding rule.

           Workaround: Do not use raster operations with complex filled shapes

       Pattern offset
           For a widget that contains a pattern-filled shape, its picture will be always garbled
           after scrolling, because it is impossible to provide an algorithm for a correct
           rendering without a prior knowledge of the widget nature. (All)

           Workaround: Do not use patterned backgrounds.  Since the same effect is visible on
           dithered backgrounds, routine check for pure color might be applied.

   Lines
       Line caps over patterned styles
           It is not clear, whether gaps between dashes should be a multiple to a line width or
           not. For example, lp::DotDot looks almost as a solid line when lineWidth is over 10 if
           the first (non-multiple) tactic is chosen.  From the other hand it is hardly possible
           to predict the plotting strategy from a high-level code. The problem is related more
           to Prima design rather than to a platform-specific code. (All)

           Workaround: use predefined patterns (lp::XXX)

       Line joins
           Joint areas may be drawn two (or more) times - the problem emerges if logical ROP
           (rop::Xor) is chosen.(OS/2)

       Dithering
           Dithering might be not used for line plotting. (Win9X)

   Fonts
       Font metric inconsistency
           A font is loaded by request with one size, but claims another afterwards.(OS/2, X).

           Impact: system-dependent font description may not match to Prima's.

           Advise: do not try to deduce Prima font metrics from system-dependent ones and vice
           versa.

       Transparent plotting
           No internal function for drawing transparent bitmaps (like fonts).  Therefore, if a
           font emulation is desired, special ROPs cannot be reproduced. (OS/2, Win9X, WinNT)

           Impact: font emulation is laborsome, primarily because the glyphs have to be plotted
           by consequential anding and xoring a bitmap.  Full spectrum of the raster operations
           cannot be achieved with this approach.

       Kerning
           Prima do not use text kernings, nor encourages underlying platform-specific code to
           use it - primarily because of its complexity.  From the other hand, sometimes glyph
           position cannot be determined correctly if no information for the text kerning is
           provided. (Win9X)

       Fractional text position
           If the font glyphs have fractional widths, it might be observed that letters may
           change their position in a string.

           Example: A set of glyphs has width of 8.6 pixels for each symbol.  If the string
           "abcd" is drawn at position 0, then black part of "d" starts at 25th pixel, but if
           "cd" is drawn at 17th, as it supposed to be if the integer arithmetics is used, it
           starts at 24th pixel. (OS/2)

           Solution: Do not rely to Drawable::get_text_width information, because it always
           returns integer value, but to Drawable::get_font_abc, which returns real values.

       Text background
           If a text is drawn with non-CopyPut raster operation, text background is not expected
           to be mixed with symbols - however this is hardly reachable, so results differs for
           different platforms.

           Text background may be only drawn with pure ( non-dithered ) color (Win9X,WinNT) - but
           this is (arguably) a more correct behavior.

           Advise: Do not use ::rop2 and text background for special effects

       Internal platform features
           Font change notification is not provided. (X, OS/2)

           Raster fonts cannot be synthesized (OS/2, partly X)

   Raster operations ( ROPs)
       Background raster operations are not supported (X,Win9X,WinNT) and foreground ROPs have
       limited number of modes (OS/2,X). Not all ROPs can be emulated for certain primitives,
       like fonts, complex shapes, and patterned shapes.

       It is yet unclear which primitives have to support ROPs, - like FloodFill and SetPixel.
       Behavior of the current implementation is that they do not.

   Arcs
       Platforms tend to produce different results for angles outside 0 and 2pi. Although Prima
       assures that correct plotting would be performed for any angle, minor inconsistencies may
       be noticed.  If emulating, note that 2 and 4-pi arcs are not the same - for example, they
       look differently with rop::Xor.

   Palettes
       Static palettes
           Some displays are unable to change their hardware palette, so detecting 8- or 4- bits
           display doesn't automatically mean that palette is writable.(X)

       Widget::palette
           Widget::palette property is used for explicit declaration of extra color needs for a
           widget. The request might be satisfacted in different ways, or might not at all. It is
           advisable not to rely onto platform behavior for the palette operations.

       Dynamic palette change
           It is possible (usually on 8-bits displays) for a display to change asynchronously its
           hardware palette in order to process different color requests. All platforms behave
           differently.

           Win9X/WinNT - only one top-level window at a time and its direct children ( not
           ::clipOwner(0)) can benefit from using Widget::palette. System palette is switched
           every time as different windows moved to the front.

           OS/2 - not implemented, but in principle the same as under win32.

           X - Any application can easily ruin system color table.  Since this behavior is such
           by design, no workaround can be applied here.

   Bitmaps
       Invalid scaling
           Scaling is invalid (Win9X) or not supported (X). Common mistake is to not take into an
           account the fractional pixels that appear when the scaling factor is more than 1. This
           mistake can be observed in Win9X.

           Workaround: none

       Large scale factors
           Request for drawing a bitmap might fail if large scaling factor is selected.
           (OS/2,Win9X,WinNT).  This effect is obviously due that fact that these platforms scale
           the bitmap into a memory before the plotting takes place.

Platform-specific peculiarities

   OS/2
       Some ROPs are ambiguous - SRCTRANSPARENT, for example. Some times they work, some times
       they don't. The particular behavior depends on a video driver.

       Circles cannot be drawn using an even diameter.

       Fast GDI operations on HWND_DESKTOP may be delayed, thus GetPixel may return invalid pixel
       values.

   Windows 9X
       Amount of GDI objects can not exceed some unknown threshold - experiments show that 128
       objects is safe enough.

       No transformations.

       Color cursor creation routine is broken.

       Filled shapes are broken.

   X
       No transformations

       No bitmap scaling

       No font rotation

       No GetPixel, FloodFill ( along with some other primitives)

       White is not 2^n-1 on n-bit paletted displays (tested on XFree86).

       Filled shapes are broken.

       Color bitmaps cannot be drawn onto mono bitmaps.

Implementation notes

   OS/2
       Palettes are not implemented

   Win32
       Plotting speed of DeviceBitmaps is somewhat less on 8-bit displays than Images and Icons.
       It is because DeviceBitmaps are bound to their original palette, so putting a DeviceBitmap
       onto different palette drawable employs inefficient algorithms in order to provide correct
       results.

   X
       Image that was first drawn on a paletted Drawable always seen in 8 colors if drawn
       afterwards on a Drawable with the different palette. That is because the image has special
       cache in display pixel format, but cache refresh on every PutImage call is absolutely
       inappropriate (although technically possible).  It is planned to fix the problem by
       checking the palette difference for every PutImage invocation.  NB - the effect is seen on
       dynamic color displays only.

AUTHOR

       Dmitry Karasik, <dmitry@karasik.eu.org>.

SEE ALSO

       Prima