Re: A strawman proposal for X.org & XFree86.org

On Sunday 30 March 2003 14:16, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
|  Vadim Plessky wrote:
|  > On Sunday 30 March 2003 03:31, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
|  > |  Vadim Plessky wrote:
|  > |  > While many points in this proposal are valid, there are some
|  > |  > *untouched* questions:
|  > |  >
|  > |  > 1) wether Sun and other X.org members take *as commitment* duty to
|  > |  > develop support (or backport existing code from XFree86 CVS) for
|  > |  > existing and upcoming XFRee86 extensions, like RENDER, Xr, Xc?
|  > |
|  > |  Each individual member will support or not support the XFree86
|  > | extensions as their business needs see fit.  This is the situation
|  > | with every X
|  >
|  > That's fine with me.
|  > But:  *why* we should bother than in creating common codebase
|  > ("reference implementation") between X.org and XFree86.org?
|
|  To make it easier and more likely that the other vendors will use XFree86
| and contribute back to it.  The code base is already common - the point is
| to keep it that way and use resources more effectively than maintaining two
| copies of the same core code base.

That part is clear to me.
My question was regarding features present in XFree86 codebase and not present 
in X.org code.
In particular:  RENDER, Xr/Xc (with hope that that code would be in XFree86 
CVS pretty soon), RandR, FontConfig, FreeType (considering one common font 
rendering backend for all systems)

|
|  > XFree86's "business needs" are in Linux (*BSD, UNIX) Desktop, with
|  > majority of users splitted between KDE and GNOME and some minority using
|  > *pure X* with selected number of pure X applications.
|  >
|  > If we take traditional UNIX vendors (Sun, HP, Digital Alpha/now part of
|  > HP, IBM, SGI) - their priorities are in *server* market.
|  > So, basically they need pure X to run apps like Management Console, to
|  > configure Firewall, etc.
|
|  I can't speak for the other vendors, but GNOME & desktops (workstations &
| thin clients) are definitely much higher on Sun's X priority list than
| servers.  Sun may have other priorities on servers, but there isn't much
| call for X there, while it's really hard to sell a SunBlade workstation or
| SunRay thin client without it.

Question is how many people use SunBlade workstation or SunRay thin client on 
their desktop.
It can be that Sun sells such nice equipemnt in US, but here (in Russia) Sun's 
business is pure server business. The same situation in the most 
Eastern-European countries.
Don't get me wrong:  I wish Sun was selling SubBlade here. But it seems that 
is so difficult that local Sun office decided to ficus just on servers.

|
|  > I don't know what XIE, PEX, and Xprint :-)
|
|  Extensions that have been in the X.org code base for years that many
|  distributors don't bother to support.  (XIE & PEX are generally recognized
| as part of the "fat" that you want to trim these days as no one really uses
| them anymore.  Xprint is somewhat used - it's a seperate X server that
| "displays" by creating postscript and pcl print jobs, for simple addition
| of printing to an X application using the same API, much like MacOS &
| Windows printing. Mozilla can print to it, as can some versions of
| OpenOffice.)

Isn't CUPS designed to replace this?

|
|  At some point, someone thought each one was necessary, but no one made all
|  vendors support them if they saw no need to.

CUPS matured just recently.
But I still hope that SVG (with help of Xr/Xc/XSVG) would replace PS and PDF 
standards owned by Adobe.
So we would need just one rasterizer - SVG-to-pixmap.
You would use higher reolution for printer, and get nice picture.
Ghostscript is really legacy application and IMO it should be trimmed from 
typical Linux dsitribution.

|
|  > Render support is needed for anti-aliased fonts & icons, Xr/Xc support
|  > is needed for SVG (and later - PS and PDF) support.
|
|  You can get anti-aliasing, SVG, PostScript & PDF without any of those. 
| They just provide different ways to do it, that may be hardware
| accelerated.

AFAIK, none of current Desktops (neither GNOME nor KDE) uses SVG, PostScript 
and/or PDF for User Interface.
PS interpreter (GhostScript) stands separatly and causes a lot of issues, with 
no easy way to overcome those limitations.

|
|  > Som epeople mentioned that we need to through away Xlib in favour of
|  > Xr/Xc,
|
|  I've not seen that and I from what I've seen Xr/Xc aren't supposed to be a
|  complete replacement for Xlib - just a different rendering model. 
| (There's much more to Xlib than just the drawing routines.)

Than some Xlib-on-Xr/Xc library/wrapper can be written.

I will answer other part of your e-mail in another mail.

-- 
Best Regards,

Vadim Plessky
SVG Icons * BlueSphere Icons 0.3.0 released
http://svgicons.sourceforge.net