What is GDI?

[Shadow12345]

GDI was mentioned in a prevgios post of my by jdinger, but I have never heard of GDI.

[jdinger]

GDI is Windows graphics device interface. It's the part of the Windows API that handles bitmap manipulation, HPEN's, HBRUSH's, etc. If you want more info go to MSDN and look up functions like BitBlt, StrechBlt, GetPixel, SetPixelV and objects like HBITMAP, HPEN, HBRUSH, HDC, etc.

I'm not sure about OpenGL, but the GDI comes in very handy when making utilities/tools to support DirectX apps (like blitting a bitmap image onto a DirectDraw surface during initialization, etc.).