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1.4.1.8 Mediums

Graphical operations performed on panes must ultimately be carried out by the window system of the underlying host computer. This is accomplished primarily via communication with an underlying object called a medium . A medium understands how to implement CLIM graphics operations, such as draw-line , by calling the underlying host window system's graphics functions. A medium also contains default drawing options, such as foreground and background colors, clipping region, transformations, line thickness, and fonts. There are different medium classes to support different windowing systems; thus, there is one medium class for the X Window System and a different one for the Macintosh Common Lisp environment.

This host-specific behavior is kept in a separate medium so that the pane classes themselves will be host-independent. Thus, when you build a new pane class, you do not have to build one version with X graphics mixed in, another one for the Mac, an so forth.

CLIM application programmers will not usually deal with mediums directly. In most cases, panes will automatically be allocated a medium upon creation, and output directed to the pane will be appropriately forwarded to the medium. In situations where efficiency is a concern, you may choose to send graphical output directly to the underlying medium. There are also situations, particularly when a pane has infrequent output, when you may wish to have many "light-weight" panes that share a medium.


CommonLisp Interface Manager 2.0 User's Guide - 8 Aug 2003

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