Re: Why run xserver on the OpenGL API?

Keith Whitwell <keith-CdwZJljFklH+2FeEXyspIVaTQe2KTcn/@public.gmane.org> wrote:

> > If you grant that it's interesting to move the X server to the OpenGL
> > API, please grant that it may be worth breaking some of the GL
> > abstractions to make the effort more likely to succeed.
> 
> Just re-iterating that I don't have an objection to this as an
> intermediate step.  I don't see it as desirable in the long run,
> but to get things working in the short to medium-ish term, I don't
> see a problem with this. 
> 
> It will always be a nasty hack, though...

Also bear in mind that the only way to eliminate this 'hack' would be for 
the OpenGL back end driver to be able to accelerate *everything*. For 
that you need both complete hardware support *and* a complete driver. If 
you want to make it easy for a driver writer to get up and running, you 
will need the ability to start with a software only driver and slowly add 
functionality until the entire driver is in hardware. So direct 
framebuffer access for the software engine will enable this, allowing 
developers to get up to speed a lot more quickly.

Regards,

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

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