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Hey, at least Win 2.x allowed overlapping windows. Recall that Win 1.0x only permitted tiled windows. The PC graphics ecosystem was crap at the time (VGA was i
by canucker2016 2y ago
Hey, at least Win 2.x allowed overlapping windows. Recall that Win 1.0x only permitted tiled windows.
The PC graphics ecosystem was crap at the time (VGA was introduced around the time of Win 2.x shipping).
from the OldNewThing blog, https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20100625-00/?p=13613 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20100625-00/?p=13... :
the Color Graphics Adapter, better known by the abbreviation CGA...
...320×200 color mode ...or 1:2.4 in 640×200 monochrome mode. Windows used the monochrome mode because the colors available in color mode were pretty useless. You could have black, white, hot pink, and aqua; or you could have black, brown, orange-red and green (no white!).
...next major advancement in display adapter technology was the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA), which brought you a stunning 16 colors in a 640×350 grid with an aspect ratio of 1.83:1. But for the step forward in terms of color, you also took a step backwards into the insanity of planar video modes. EGA memory was arranged in planes, and what’s worse, each plane had the same memory address! You had to use other registers to program the video card to tell it which plane you wanted to talk to when you accessed a specific memory address.
For many of the Mac developers, like Bill Atkinson, Mac OS was their second version of GUI OS, after working on the Lisa.
And the Intel 8088's segmented memory architecture is more mental work than the flat address space of the Motorola 68K (all those data and address registers on the 68K are nice too).
The pre-Win 3.0 fonts were ugly. That's why I ignored Windows and developed for the Mac.
- nkali 2y agoI suspect that Windows used monochrome mode to squeeze 78 characters per line, not because the colours were "useless". CGA graphics is tricky, but it can look at least as pretty as contemporary ZX Spectrum: https://media.tech.lgbt/media_attachments/files/112/481/028/640/927/455/original/0064bf0493df25c5.png https://media.tech.lgbt/media_attachments/files/112/481/028/... Not very many people cared for CGA, though.