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Graphics Engines

The Graphics Engine includes elements at all three of the lowest levels, from physically displaying things on a monitor to providing high level graphics routines such as fonts and animated sprites.

QuickDraw

Operating systems that support QuickDraw: Macintosh (QuickDraw and QuickDraw GX), Rhapsody (QuickDraw GX), and Macintosh OS X (Enhanced QuickDraw)

“Graphics are an important part of every Macintosh application. All graphic operations on the Macintosh are performed by QuickDraw. To draw something on the screen, you’ll often call one of the other parts of the [Macintosh User Interface] Toolbox, but it will in turn call QuickDraw. You’ll also call QuickDraw directly, usually to draw inside a window, or just to set up constructs like rectangles that you’ll need when making other Toolbox calls. QuickDraw’s underlying concepts, like those of the Resource Manager, are important for you to understand.
“Graphics include text as well as pictures. To draw text, QuickDraw calls the Font Manager, which does the background work necessary to make a variety of character fonts available in various sizes and styles. Unless your application includes a font menu, you need to know only a minimal amount about the Font Manager.” —Inside Macintosh, Volume I, page I-11^b4b

Display PostScript

Operating systems that support DisplayPostScript: NeXT, NeXTSTEP, OpenSTEP, and Rhapsody

Intuition

Operating systems that support Intuition: Amiga^e95

OpenGL

Operating systems that support OpenGL: AIX^e112

X Window

See also listings of X Window, which serves as both a graphics engine and a graphic user interface.

one level down

font management

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