Lightning Lines

Beyond pixels: Lines
In this article, we make a jump to the first dimension - Lines. Here, we examine axial lines and how to draw them.

Arbitrary Lines (Bresenham)
This article briefly touches on the idea of lines that are not constrained to being axial. It gives an implementation of the Bresenham line drawing algorithm and times it against the axial lines. This article provides an introduction to arbitrary lines.

Fixed Point Y-Major Lines
This article provides an introduction to fixed point math and applies it to lines. Fixed point math is used in many different areas of computer graphics. A blazing fast routine that draws lines that are Y-Major (taller than they are wide) is developed.

Fixed Point X-Major Lines
This article delves into the area of X-Major lines. It shows the derivation of run-length line drawing and some neat assembler tricks. With this final piece, we can write a general line algorithm.

Suming it all up: The "Line" procedure
This relatively short article explains how to create a wrapper around all of the line procedures developed thus far. Using it, you do not have to know in advance what flavor of line you are trying to draw. It automagically selects the fasted way to draw the line that you want.

Clipping Lines
The age old problem of clipping lines is addressed in this article. I first present pixel clipping theory and support routines for the GraphPro library, and then move on into line clipping territory. The Cohen-Sutherland algorithm is used to clip lines.

Transparent Clipping
Some of this clipping stuff is useful, but having to use an extra "C" with each command is irritating. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just turn off or turn on clipping, and use the same calls to draw with and without clipping?