The display list (actually called so in Atari terminology) is a series of instructions for ANTIC, the video co-processor used in these machines. One of the earliest popular systems with true display list was the Atari 8-bit family. Systems that make use of a display list to store the scene are called retained mode systems as opposed to immediate mode systems. In modern systems, the commands need only be executed when they have changed or in order to refresh the output (e.g., when restoring a minimized window).Ī display list can represent both two- and three-dimensional scenes. įor a display device without a frame buffer, such as vector graphics displays, the commands were executed every fraction of a second to maintain and animate the output. This activity is most often performed by specialized display or processing hardware partly or completely independent of the system's CPU for the purpose of freeing the CPU from the overhead of maintaining the display, and may provide output features or speed beyond the CPU's capability. The image is created ( rendered) by executing the commands to combine various primitives.
A display list (or display file) is a series of graphics commands that define an output image.