Prometheus Truecolour (OpenPTC) is a third-generation standard for cross
platform low-level graphics access. A lot of design experience has gone into
it to provide one of the cleanest APIs available for this kind of purpose.

OpenPTC will provide you with a frame-buffer to draw into. You can choose
that buffer to use a pixel format convenient for you, OpenPTC will convert
it to the video modes on the target platform, using highly optimised
x86 and MMX routines where available. This is achieved using the HERMES 
((c)1998/99 Christian Nentwich et al) pixel conversion library. 

OpenPTC 1.0 is available for X11, GGI (Linux), Win32, DOS and JAVA. Work for
other platforms is in progress. All implementations of PTC come with full
source code and may be used free of charge even in commercial projects.