INF: Display Drivers and Background Drawing to Memory Bitmaps

ID Number: Q74994

3.00 3.10

WINDOWS

Summary:

In the Microsoft Windows graphical environment, a display driver must

support all of its declared capabilities at all times, regardless of

the current video mode of the adapter. For example, when Windows is

running in enhanced mode, a display driver can be called to perform

graphics operations on a memory bitmap while a full-screen MS-DOS

(non-Windows) application is running in the foreground. This may occur

if an application developed for Windows is printing in the background,

and the graphics device interface (GDI) calls the display driver to

perform some imaging for the current page.

If the display driver relies on adapter hardware for certain graphics

operations, but cannot access this hardware due to the current video

mode of the adapter, then the driver must include "host side" drawing

to handle this case.

The 8514/A display driver provides an example of hardware operations

emulated in host code when drawing to main memory bitmaps. This source

code is available in the Windows Device Development Kit (DDK) versions

3.0 and 3.1.

Additional reference words: 3.00 3.10 DDKDISPLAY