Re: Why run xserver on the OpenGL API?

Around 10 o'clock on Nov 25, Jon Smirl wrote:

> I'm not proposing getting rid of X; X is a collection of many things. What I am
> proposing is the OpenGL be raised to the status of being the primary graphics
> API in xserver and that it is an opaque API. That means that things like render,
> Cairo, etc would be built on top of it instead of the 2D X API.

Yes, that's what I'd like to see -- the X server using OpenGL instead of 
per-card graphics drivers. 

To make this a trivial transition, it would be of great benefit to have an
OpenGL extension that allowed the server direct access to the underlying
frame buffer (with suitable locking to avoid conflicts).  This provides an
obvious migration path without the long delay needed to get basic
functionality usable, and also ensures that weird X-ish things that just
can't be easily mapped to GL primitives can be done with no worse
performance than we see today. To be sure, this is a kludge, but I think
it's justified as an imperfect means to a desirable end.

Cairo already has a GL backend; performance of that will surely encourage 
people to take advantage of it where available.

-keith