OS X- quartz or not?

[Alex Rice]

On Sunday, October 20, 2002, at 10:47  PM, Alex Rice wrote:
>
> Based on this anecdotal evidence I would venture that Rev apps on OS X 
> do already use Quartz thanks to Appearance Manager. Can someone who 
> knows Quartz well write a rebuttal for that item?

Never mind, I was confused about what QuartzDebug is showing. Here is a 
helpful explanation from a OS X-pert
--

From: "Erik M. Buck" <embassociates at qwest.net>
Date: Mon Oct 21, 2002  10:21:09  PM America/Denver
To: "Alex Rice" <alex at mindlube.com>, macosx-dev at omnigroup.com
Subject: Re: QuartzDebug question
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

  Quartz is two things.  It is a 2d vector drawing API and it is a 
"window
server".
- The 2d vector drawing is the aspect of quartz the most people think 
about.
This is where anti-aliased lines, transparent compositing, and PDF 
imaging
model with floating point coordinates lives. There are ties into the 
font
rendering technology here too.
- The window server is a process that owns the display frame buffer/back
buffer. Ultimately, all drawing goes through the window server unless 
the
full screen has been captured by OpenGL/Core graphics.  The window 
server
keeps applications from drawing outside their windows, provides drop
shadows, provides window layering, live window drags, manages flushes 
from
each application's window backing store into the back/frame buffer, and
swaps buffers (usually during the vertical blank when possible).

Quartz Debug primarily shows buffer flushes that are part of the window
server functionality.  Quartz Debug does not particularly tell you 
anything
about the drawing that took place to require the buffer flush.

I expect all drawing done by windowed applications to show up in Quartz
debug regardless of whether the drawing is done by Quartz 2d, Quickdraw,
OpenGL, or direct bit manipulations in a window's backing store.  How 
the
drawing is done will have little impact that is visible via Quartz 
Debug,
but of course it has tremendous impact on the quality of the graphics
produced.  Quartz debug is just showing that drawing/flushing took 
place.

> What can be deduced from this result in QuartzDebug? Is the app a
> first-class Quartz citizen? I guess the term "Quartz" encompasses a lot
> of different things. Just trying to find out if there are different
> levels of quartz rendering or if it's an all or nothing deal.



Alex Rice, Software Developer
Architectural Research Consultants, Inc.
alrice at swcp.com
alex_rice at arc.to