rounded screen corners

[techknight]

Ok, this might or might not be a dumb question.

But ive noticed on the powerbooks that they never have the rounded corners like the compact or other CRT based macs have.

I was wondering, if there is a system6/7 extension somewhere that allows rounded corners. I just like it better. dont ask me why, I just do.

 

[24bit]

All Mac emulator screens have rounded corners: MiniVMac, BasiliskII, SheepShaver, from System2 or lower to OS9.

My iMac with a Siemens TFT has rounded corners too (CRT is dead).

I guess the sharp corners are hardware related therefore - due to some cutting.

System7Today has a link to a homebrew screen res utility, its name escapes me right now.

Maybe its possible to set the PB´s screen, so that the rounding is visible?

 

[Gorgonops]

I guess the sharp corners are hardware related therefore - due to some cutting.

The rounded corners in Classic MacOS are entirely software. The framebuffer is perfectly capable of displaying square corners and you can prove it by booting something like Linux on those systems. I'm guessing Apple opted against rounded corners on Powerbooks because on an LCD screen there is explicitly no point in having them. (On a CRT monitor the distortion from the curved screen is most obvious in the corners, so Apple went with the rounded corners as an aesthetic choice. An LCD is equally sharp across its entire surface.)

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

The black pixels thrown up on CRTs by the screen buffer are plainly evident on the Menu Bar in any Screen Shot.

Never looked for it on an LCD, but I'd bet it's there.

 

[MacJunky]

You do not even need linux, a fullscreen game will use the corners too.

I would test with a movie but I do not have anything that is 1680x1050 on my beige G3 atm.

 

[Bunsen]

I never noticed before, but my OS X Tiger system on an external LCD has rounded corners - but only at the top where the menu bar is.

 

[bbraun]

I don't have any specific knowledge here, but I just started reading about it.

As has been pointed out, the rounded corners are still addressable/displayable, this can be easily demonstrated by moving a cursor to the black rounded corner region, and the cursor is drawn in that region just fine. It looks like rounded corners is an attribute of the Quickdraw GDevice structure, although trying to do a simple SetDeviceAttributes() on the main screen's GDHandle didn't seem to do anything. Maybe I'm not forcing a redraw correctly? Setting the attribute did persist across app launches, but would reset if Finder was restarted or if the powerbook went to sleep. So the rounded corners could be an attribute of the quickdraw device driver, but I'm not very familiar with QD drivers so I'm not really sure. Before anything boots on a powerbook (I'm testing with the 540c), the internal LCD screen still has squared corners while an external screen (not mirrored) has rounded corners. This also leads me to believe it's an attribute of the QD device driver. Perhaps this attribute tells QD whether to draw the World Rgn as a rounded rect vs. squared rect.

Some reading an old mactech articles seems to indicate by directly mucking with the menu region and gray region structures, you can change how the corners are drawn. This seems like a bit of a brute force method, and I haven't tried it so I'm not entirely sure it'll work like I expect.

 

[Bunsen]

Round Rects Are Everywhere!

 

[techknight]

I would just like to have my rounded corners back on the PB LCD screen.

 

[bbraun]

Give this a try. It's a little app that'll launch, make the rounded corners, and exit.

This is a hack, but it mostly works as long as you only have one display. It's a super trivial program:

It creates a roundRect region the size of the desktop, paints the corners black, and then sets the QuickDraw global visible region to the roundRect, preventing further drawing to those corners (unless an app sets their own visible region to include them, as fullscreen apps do).

 

[techknight]

nice. Ill hopefully give it a try, as i have to shift between 2 computers before I can get it on my PB, as this PC doesnt have a floppy drive.

I happened to notice my PB180 has 1 dead pixel. A dead pixel. hey i cant complain, because it doesn't have tunnel vision

 

[Scott Baret]

Speaking of being evident, watch the next time you start up your CRT-driven Mac. You'll see the round rects appear!!!

 

[techknight]

I finally got around to trying that utility. It does work. my PB180 now has rounded corners.