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

Keith Packard wrote:
> 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).

Keith, can you point me to the code which does this now?  I have a 
strong hunch that you actually can pull this off with OpenGL as-is.


> Given the existance of rendering modes not supported by OpenGL (per-channel
> compositing, conjoint/disjoint operators)

What are 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 :-)

-Brian