#new PAR.EXE
The PXP is just a control panel to access the different settings in
the driver down below. The limitation is of PARDRV, not the PXP. The
problem of supporting multiple (simultaneous) reads and writes is
that the file must be converted in its entirety before sending either
way. In other words, when you copy a Targa file over to the PAR, the
driver will read the entire file in its buffer. When the copying is
done, it will convert to YUV and then send it over to the PAR. If a
second read or write request arrives while one is being processed,
there is no "second" buffer to load and convert this image. DOS isn't
multitasking. If it were, all I had to do was to wait for the first
request to finish. Having several buffers is a little impractical as
each buffer is at least 1.1 Meg. The only simple solution (simple
when compared to almost impossible) is to handle YUV files directly.
For that a new driver would have to be written. This driver would
know nothing about Targas. Just raw YUV files. That way, no buffers
would be needed. The driver would also be much smaller. The draw back
is that no software out there knows about YUV files. It would be
simple to handle 3D Studio (through a BXP) but that's about it.
By the way, this is all up to DPS, not me. I will do whatever they ask
me to do (well, almost) but it is very unlikely I will write
something of this magnitude "just for fun". So, when you say "I can
only hope that Gus will one day modify the PXP…", I can't do
anything about it.