Difference between DisplayContext, displaySurface & displayBuffer?

Normally working on graphics and display, we are encountering wordssuch as Displaybuffer, DisplaySurface & DisplayContext? what is the differen开发者_C百科t between these terms?

It depends on the system these are general terms and are often interchanged. But in general

A DisplaySurface is a surface you'd perform operations on i.e. draw a line, circle etc on. A display surface is the physical screen surface you are writing on.

But, although you'd write on a display surface in many cases you'd have a display buffer so that when you draw on the surface, you actually draw on the display buffer so that the user doesn't see the drawing happening and when you've finished drawing you flip the display buffer onto the surface so that the drawing appears instantaneously

A display context is the description of the physical charecteristics of the drawing surface e.g. width, height, color depth and so on. In win32 for example you obtain a device context for a particular piece of hardware - a printer or screen, but then you draw on this device context so it is also the display surface. Likewise you can obtain a device context for an offscreen bitmap (a display buffer). So the terms can blur a bit.