[Fresco-devel] [Fwd: Lots of Video drivers. (te quieres hw acceleration?)]

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> I have read most of the stuff on the berlin projects web sight (well I
> shouldn't say most, but a lot of it) and I really don't know what to
> think of it, in particular, I like everything but the SVG that just
> doesn't make cence, pixel based is a good thing. It might just be the way
> I think about things. If you could explain why, or because you are
> probably quite busy, tell me where I can find why, I could possibly change
> my mind about the next bit.

Several reasons:
* Device independence: Do will never need to write a printer driver etc., you 
just rerender what is on the screen to a Postscript DrawingKit and dump that 
output to the printer. Application writers won't need to spend time on trying 
to get WYSIWYG right... it is there allready. That's the killer argument for 
me.

* pixel-based does not make use of your hardware. With all those nifty 3D 
accelerator cards it would be nice to actually use them for something else 
but computer games;-)

* Code reuse: Lots of applications need vector-based rendering. So why not use 
it in the server? Apps not needing vectors usually don't care one way or 
another...

* Eye candy: Imagine 3D windows, dropshadows, VRML-models zipping over your 
screen, etc. Not really important of course, but people will love it;-) All 
this 3D stuff is not really possible with pixelbased systems.

* And finally: It's more natural to measure things in mm (or inches for you;-) 
then in pixels. It's is just wrong for the windows to shrink whenever I go 
from 1280x1024 pixels to 1600x1200. When I print a A4 page on a 300dpi 
printer I don't exspect it to be twice as big as on a 600dpi printer either.

Something I find really interessting is that both Apple (OpenGL-based 
rendering in Jaguar) and Microsoft (DirectX based rendering in the next 
version) head into the direction we have been going for a while now while 
most people of the free software scene argue that pixel-based rendering is 
fine. It can't be that the free software people don't like eye candy... so 
what causes this?

- -- 
Gruss,
Tobias

- ------------------------------------------------------------
Tobias Hunger           The box said: 'Windows 95 or better'
[email protected]                      So I installed Linux.
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