The graphics library includes several routines that use the hardware
blitter to handle the rectangularly organized data that you work with when
doing raster-based graphics. These blitter routines do the following:
* Clear an entire segment of memory
* Set a raster to a specific color
* Scroll a subrectangle of a raster
* Draw a pattern "through a stencil"
* Extract a pattern from a bit-packed array and draw it into a
raster
* Copy rectangular regions from one bitmap to another
* Control and utilize the hardware-based data mover, the blitter
The following sections cover these routines in detail.
WARNING:
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The graphics library rendering and data movement routines generally
wait to get access to the blitter, start their blit, and then exit
without waiting for the blit to finish. Therefore, you must
waitblit() after a graphics rendering or data movement call if you
intend to immediately deallocate, examine, or perform order-dependent
processor operations on the memory used in the call.
clearing a memory area
setting a whole raster to a color
scrolling a sub-rectangle of a raster
drawing through a stencil
extracting from a bit-packed array
copying rectangular areas
scaling rectangular areas
when to wait for the blitter
accessing the blitter directly