Re: Some perspective from the cheap seats...

On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 05:41:25PM +0100, Egbert Eich wrote:
> Havoc Pennington writes:
>  > IMHO, one thing X.org should do if it wants to reimagine itself is
>  > expand to include toolkit/desktop level concerns and establish
>  > contacts with toolkit and desktop developers. X should really be
>  > developed to meet the needs of the UI, not the other way around.  That
>  > goes from the top down: user -> apps -> desktop -> toolkit -> X -> OS.
>  > 
> 
> Havoc, 
> 
> I do agree with you. However you most not neglect issues t
> hat are not immediately visible from the UI point of
> view: you have to consider how you can map a funtionality
> you propose onto the HW. 
> 
> In the past this has not always been taken into consideration.
> I hope Mark Vojkovitch will give more details on this but
> to give you two examples:
> 
> * Alpha blended cursors have been added with no consideration 
>   for OpenGL.

What exactly is the problem with Alpha blended cursors ? Does the
hardware not provide a cursor overlay which would overlay all the same
if the framebuffer behind it is coming from 2D rendering or opengl
rendering ? I would think there would be more problems with the Xv video
overlay acceleration. Or do you speak about the software alpha blended
cursors only ?

By the way, i have the impression that my currently in developpment
driver has some problems with alpha blended cursors even in
unaccelerated and software cursor mode. It worked fine with a
mid-january cvs snapshot which was not using the alpha blended cursors,
but the 4.3.0 server segfaults when using alpha blended cursor when i
bring it to the bottom of the screen. And i didn't find any alpha
blended cursor disabling option.

Friendly,

Sven Luther