Re: Native mode handling

Michael Torrie <torriem-1ghGyg2U9Gn2fBVCVOL8/[email protected]> wrote:

> I'm intrigued by this post.  

It wasn't supposed to go to the list, but somehow I messed up ;-) I will 
try to keep this short, but email be privately if you have any more 
questions to keep this off the list, since it is a bit off-topic.

> Will the snap drivers be modified to run with Keith Packard's
> kdrive server and libs?  Or will your drivers implement his
> extensions on the normal XFree86?  Either way sounds cool to me.  

We are working on other projects right now (wrapping up the PowerPC 
port), but the short answer is yes. We are planning to add support for 
Keith't Kdrive X server using the SNAP drivers at some point. Right now 
it seems the project is still in it's infancy and has a lot of core 
development going on, so I don't think now is the time for us to invest 
in working with this. 

> Although I would prefer open source drivers for X generally,
> having these drivers produced by a 3rd party such as yourself
> indicates to me that they will be higher quality than binary-only
> drivers from the manufacturers (such as nvidia) since you have a
> vested interest in seeming them work well.  

We like to think so ;-). The intent of our SNAP DDK (to be released 
shortly) is that it will allow Open Source drivers to be developed if 
that is what people want. 

> The only question I have (and this is not related to freedesktop
> much) is will your drivers work on PPC like a PowerBook? 

Our PPC port is coming along nicely, but at this point we are not 
supporting Mac hardware. The primary reason is the need to support Open 
Firmware, and we just haven't got that part done yet. Once we do get that 
done so we can bring up Mac based cards, we should be able to support 
Linux/X11 on PowerBooks with SNAP.

Regards,

---
Kendall Bennett
Chief Executive Officer
SciTech Software, Inc.
Phone: (530) 894 8400
http://www.scitechsoft.com

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