Message-Id: <199804122155.RAA07759@delorie.com>
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 22:49:13 +0100
To: djgpp-announce AT delorie DOT com
From: Shawn Hargreaves <Shawn AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk>
Subject: Announcing FreeBE/AF v0.4
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My apologies for announcing unfinished software here. I wouldn't
normally do this, but I'm keen to let people know this exists, and
hopefully drum up enough enthusiasm to make some more people start
writing drivers! So, with the understanding that this is still very much
alpha-quality code...

I've uploaded a new version of the FreeBE/AF graphics driver project to
http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/freebe/.

This is a free implementation of the VBE/AF API, which provides a way
for programs to use the hardware accelerated drawing features of most
modern graphics cards. VBE/AF acceleration is supported by the SciTech
MGL library, and by recent work-in-progress versions of Allegro. To use
these drivers with Allegro you will need to install the latest WIP
patch, available from http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/wip.html.

FreeBE/AF currently provides drivers for:

    ATI mach64. 
        Supports hardware scanline and rectangle filling, blitting and 
        masked blitting within the video memory, mono patterned fills 
        (experimental), and line drawing (experimental).

    Cirrus 54x.
        Supports hardware scanline and rectangle filling, blitting and 
        masked blitting within the video memory, mono and color 
        patterned fills, and hardware cursors (experimental).

    Matrox (tested on Mystique, should also work with Millenium).
        Supports hardware scanline and rectangle filling, mono and color 
        patterned fills, line drawing, trapezium filling (used for 
        polygon rendering), blitting and masked blitting within the 
        video memory, blitting and masked blitting from system memory to 
        the screen, monochrome character expansion, and hardware 
        cursors (experimental).


--
Shawn Hargreaves - shawn AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk - http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/
"Pigs use it for a tambourine" - Frank Zappa