Last modified on Mon Jan 15 13:25:10 PST 1996 by heydon

This directory contains a test of the "DblBufferVBT" interface. When
built, it produces a Trestle application called "StarAnim". The
program has a "Quit" button for exiting the application, and a "Run"
button for running the animation.

The animation demonstrates a discovery made by the mathematician Rida
Farouki: if you walk along the graph of the curve y = x^4 carrying a
beam that extends one unit in each direction, the inner tip of the
beam traces out a 5-pointed star.

For efficiency, the animation uses the "DblBufferVBT" saved buffer
facility. Each frame of the animation can be divided into three parts:
the background common to all frames (the black curve and the text),
the permanent paint that should be included in all subsequent frames
(the red path), and the ephemeral paint that should only be included
in this frame (the beam).

The background is painted only once at the start of the animation. On
each frame, the off-screen buffer is restored from the saved buffer,
the permanent ink is painted, the off-screen buffer is saved to the
saved buffer (so the permanent ink will be restored on the subsequent
frame), the ephemeral beam is painted, and finally, all the paint is
"sync"ed to the screen.

To see that the double-buffer is working efficiently, you can run the
"StarAnim" program under m3gdb. Interrupt the program and do:

  (m3gdb) set la m3
  (m3gdb) set DblBufferVBT.showSyncRect := TRUE

This will show the outline of the rectangle copied to the screen from
the off-screen buffer on each "sync" operation.