CompuServe Thread

If you are interested in the ultimate speed of display then you want to make sure that there is the least possible operating system between your application and the display hardware. If you are in a DOS world it is quite acceptable to take over the whole screen and write directly to the display hardware. This would not be acceptable in a windows environment, where people expect to be able to resize windows, minimize, etc. However I think that these considerations are relatively minor compared to a number of the other issues. 1. Unless your applications will be the only application residing on a PC I think the market is starting to require that the applications are Windows. ( As long ago as the end of 1991 both Word Perfect and Lotus were reporting lower profits, and stating that the reason was that they did not have Windows versions of their products. Many major corporations were saying "If it does not run with windows, then don't bother to show it to us") 2. Programming directly to the hardware is a thankless job, unless you can tell the customer that you only support a limited set of video adaptors. ( Not realistic if you intend to sell shrink wrap – OK if you are programming for a video information kiosk) 3. The hardware world is sensitive to the desire of windows users to have greater display speed, and they are spending much money creating faster display cards, better display drivers, and very often those solutions are specifically directed to windows. Similar accelerators are much less available for OS/2 for instance. 4. The beauty of Windows is that it allows your applications to be device independant. In other words your application does not need to think about all the different hardware out there. You simply program to the Windows API. I hope this helps.