CLOANTO SOFTWARE UPDATE


FILES BEING UPDATED

  - personal_ppc_blit.library


PROGRAMS USING THE LIBRARIES

  - Personal Paint version 7.0 and higher
  - ColorType version 3.1 and higher


INSTALLATION DIRECTORY

  - Default   : "PPaint:libs", "ColorType:libs"
  - Optionally: "LIBS:"
  (software checks both paths and uses the newer library if two are found)


ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

  - PBlit_ChipMem (Yes/No/Auto)


DESCRIPTION

This CPU blitting library is used by programs like Personal Paint when
the "Settings/Graphics/Amiga Blitter" setting is switched off.

This library automatically detects a CyberGraphX 40.100+ environment,
and informs the client software (e.g. Personal Paint) that it is safe to
allocate Fast RAM instead of Chip RAM even if the memory has to be
accessed by the graphics.library. CyberGraphX "clones", which have a
parallel system of version numbers, are detected and will not trigger
this condition, as this would currently crash the system.

This library uses the PowerPC CPU to emulate a 32-bit blitter, whereas
all libraries prior to version 2.0, like the original Amiga, worked with a
16-bit blitter model. This release is about twice as fast as the 1.x
libraries. In particular, a simulation of average blitter operations
of this PowerPC version tested on a PowerUP board with a 603e CPU running
at 150 MHz resulted in a software blitter more than twice as fast as the
AGA Amiga hardware blitter, with the advantage of not requiring precious
Chip RAM.

Additional functionality has been integrated in this library to better
support future programs.

To use this library, please update the library name in the "Startup_1.set"
program settings file. In no case should any of the library files be
renamed.

The automatic detection of a RTG environment supporting bitmaps in Fast
RAM can be overridden by setting the "PBlit_ChipMem" environment variable,
which  can be used to force the allocation of bitmaps in Chip RAM or
Fast RAM.

This blitting library requires the "ppc.library" to be present in the
system, plus a PowerPC kernel compatible with the version released by
Phase 5.

Version 2.3 fixes an incompatibility introduced by changes in the
software included with newer Phase 5 PowerPC boards. The original
library, which may be required for some older PowerPC configurations,
is included in the "old" directory.


NOTES

Visit the Cloanto web site at <http://www.cloanto.com> for the latest news.

Your feedback is very appreciated. E-mail: <support@cloanto.com>.

For additional technical and legal information on the files, please refer to
the documentation included with the original (commercial) distribution. In
particular, all files are Copyright © 1996, 1997 Cloanto Italia srl.

PERMISSION  UID  GID    PACKED    SIZE  RATIO METHOD CRC     STAMP     NAME
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ ----------
[generic]                  266     628  42.4% -lh5- a7a2 Dec  8  1996 PBlit_PPC.info
[generic]                13626   28732  47.4% -lh5- 3961 May  7  1997 PBlit_PPC/old/personal_ppc_blit.library
[generic]                 1479    2939  50.3% -lh5- 1393 Oct 21  1997 PBlit_PPC/PBlit_PPC.readme
[generic]                13177   27312  48.2% -lh5- d488 Oct 21  1997 PBlit_PPC/personal_ppc_blit.library
---------- ----------- ------- ------- ------ ---------- ------------ ----------
 Total         4 files   28548   59611  47.9%            Oct 21  1997