For Mac OS X, what are Quartz and Quartz Extreme?
Quartz, along with QuickTime and OpenGL, forms the graphics layer in Mac OS X. Key parts of this 2D graphics system are based on Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) and make possible "on-the-fly" anti-aliasing, rendering, and compositing of PostScript graphics. Other parts of Quartz are responsible for drawing windows and other elements to the screen. Through Quartz, Mac OS X makes extensive use of transparency practical in its new graphical user interface (GUI), called Aqua.
In Aqua, windows display with drop-shadows that give the feeling of depth. Menus and dialog boxes can be partially transparent, default buttons can pulsate to give the user clues, and all on-screen text is anti-aliased. The Dock, an important part of the Mac OS X interface that displays icons at the bottom of the screen, has a magnification option that takes advantage of Quartz's ability to scale bitmapped images through vector calculations.
Quartz Extreme, introduced in OS X 10.2, is an enhanced version of Quartz that takes advantage of modern video cards to accelerate certain display functions and animations. With Quartz Extreme, the calculations for on-screen displays are shifted from the main processor to the graphics card, making the whole system more responsive.
Since Quartz is an underlying part of Mac OS X, software developers can take full advantage of its functionality in their applications, including the ability to save files easily as PDF, or convert files to PostScript for printing.
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Last modified on February 24, 2006.
