Re: Let's just build it and see how it works!

Around 21 o'clock on Nov 25, Jon Smirl wrote:

> Why is framebuffer access needed? Is it for common xserver operatations or the
> more esoteric ones? Maybe we can figure a way around this need with the existing
> GL API.

It's both a migration path so we don't have to port everything to OpenGL right 
away and a fallback for cases that OpenGL can't draw.  In particular, I 
need per-component alpha compositing to display text on my LCD monitor, 
and OpenGL just doesn't do that (yet).  

Given the existance of rendering modes not supported by OpenGL (per-channel
compositing, conjoint/disjoint operators) and modes hard to emulate
(planemasks), it seems more sensible to burden the X server with the
software fallback rather than writing a bunch of OpenGL extensions, plus it
gives us a trivial migration path today so that we can start playing with X
on OpenGL right away, rather than waiting for someone to spend a lot of
time writing X to OpenGL translation code.

Look on it as a special hack for a special process that can require 
special priviledges (although it would be nice to avoid those) and just 
tell me you'll do it :-)

-keith