VectorWorks and NVIDIA/ATI drivers: a follow-up

"The newest video cards shipping with Mac G4s have problems displaying some elements of the VectorWorks user interface - notably those drawn using the XOR transfer mode - which causes serious usability problems. NVIDIA GeForce cards exhibit this problem 100% of the time and ATI Radeon cards exhibit intermittent problems. Using 256 colors can avoid the problem, but turning off the 2D Acceleration extension for the video card in question is the best workaround for both video cards.

With the NVIDIA card, this problem affects VectorWorks versions 8.0.1 through 9.0.0. With the ATI card, it affects versions 8.0.1 through 8.5.2. This behavior stems from bugs in the 2D acceleration drivers for these cards. We are currently talking to Apple about getting these problems fixed in the drivers. Other software is similarly affected by this class of bugs - for example AppleWorks 6.0.

The details of the problem seem to point to an incorrect implementation in the video drivers of XOR transfers when a color pen pattern (PenPixPat) is active in the graphics port. This is a relatively uncommon situation, but one upon which we rely fairly heavily.

We are developing a workaround which can avoid these bugs in the video drivers for many if not all of the situations in which our GUI is most affected. We intend to incorporate this change into our next maintenance release of VectorWorks 9. Until then, we recommend keeping your 2D Acceleration extension disabled while using VectorWorks.

We have no plans to release an update of VectorWorks 8.x.x. VectorWorks 8.x.x users must run with 2D acceleration disabled and wait for corrected video drivers from Apple, ATI, or NVIDIA. I have every confidence that there will be new drivers for these cards which fully resolve these problems, and we are doing everything we can to make sure that happens as soon as possible. We regret that you have as yet been unable to take advantage of the full speed of these new video cards with VectorWorks."