About the Graphics DDK

This chapter includes:

What you'll find in this guide
Assumptions
Typographical conventions
Technical support

What you'll find in this guide

The following table may help you find information quickly:

For information about:	See:
How the Neutrino Graphics Framework (GF) uses graphics drivers	Introduction to Graphics Drivers
Graphics drivers	Writing Your Own Driver
Updating existing drivers	Updating A Graphics Driver
The entry points your driver provides, and macros and data it uses	Graphics Driver API
Other useful functions	Libraries
How to debug a graphics driver	Debugging a Graphics Driver
Definitions of terms used in this guide	Glossary

You must use this DDK with QNX Neutrino 6.4.0 or later.

Assumptions

We assume you have a basic familiarity with graphics cards, concepts, and terminology (e.g. pixels, spans, blitting, alpha-blending, chroma-keying, and raster operations).

You'll also need sufficient hardware documentation for your graphics chip in order to be able to program all the registers. A working knowledge of the C programming language is essential.

Typographical conventions

Throughout this manual, we use certain typographical conventions to distinguish technical terms. In general, the conventions we use conform to those found in IEEE POSIX publications. The following table summarizes our conventions:

Reference	Example
Code examples	`if( stream == NULL )`
Command options	`-lR`
Commands	`make`
Environment variables	PATH
File and pathnames	`/dev/null`
Function names	exit()
Keyboard chords	Ctrl-Alt-Delete
Keyboard input	`something you type`
Keyboard keys	Enter
Program output	`login:`
Programming constants	NULL
Programming data types	`unsigned short`
Programming literals	`0xFF`, `"message string"`
Variable names	stdin
User-interface components	Cancel

We use an arrow (→) in directions for accessing menu items, like this:

You'll find the Other... menu item under Perspective-->Show View.

We use notes, cautions, and warnings to highlight important messages:

Notes point out something important or useful.

Cautions tell you about commands or procedures that may have unwanted or undesirable side effects.

Warnings tell you about commands or procedures that could be dangerous to your files, your hardware, or even yourself.

Note to Windows users

In our documentation, we use a forward slash (/) as a delimiter in all pathnames, including those pointing to Windows files.

We also generally follow POSIX/UNIX filesystem conventions.

Navigation buttons

At the top and bottom of our HTML docs, you'll see some or all of these buttons:

Use this button:	To move:
	To the previous part of the document.
	“Up” in the document: In a prose book, this typically takes you to About This Guide. In a reference book, it takes you to the listing of items that start with a given letter. For example, if you're looking at the docs for abs(), this button takes you to the listing of the functions that start with `A`.
	To the keyword index.
	To the next part of the document.

Technical support

To obtain technical support for any QNX product, visit the Support area on our website (www.qnx.com). You'll find a wide range of support options, including community forums.