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

Vadim Plessky wrote:

>On Sunday 30 March 2003 19:35, Marco Bubke wrote:
>|  Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>|  > Vadim Plessky wrote:
>|  >> On Sunday 30 March 2003 03:31, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>|  >>
>|  >> 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.)
>|
>|  But what are the advantages over OpenGL which I have anyway and which is
>|  here and hardware accelerated now? Render/Xr/Xc it loos to me like a
>|  subset of OpenGL. Is this a other sign of the NIH syndrom? The
>
>AFAIK, Render extension is pretty much different from OpenGL.
>I have cc'ed XSVg mailing list, may be Carl or other people familiar with 
>Xr/Xc/RENDER internals can provide more detailed explanation.
>  
>
So far I have seen Render looks to me very much like the blending modes 
in OpenGL. In the docs I have read that it shoul be conform to it too. 
OpenGL is also 2D. I don't seak about 3D here.

>It's also wrong to suggest that OpenGL is accelerated on all Desktops.
>I have ATI Rage Mobility (based on Mach 64, 2 year old notebook), and OpenGL 
>is not accelerated.
>Besides, OpenGL doesn't address many apsects of typical Desktop (like: 
>*static* rendering of anti-aliased text at small size)
>  
>
I can do AA font rendering on texture basis and with glDrawPixels and 
its fast. You don't must use geometry for that. You can paint directly 
to the framebuffer. What do you mean by static?

>|  differentation between  2D and 3D is IMHO not more nessesary. There is
>|  also OpenGL ES for the embedded sector. I think it's the better way to
>|  use OpenGL for drawing (plus a high level wrapper around it)  so there
>|  don't must be written two drivers. In this way you could mix 2D and 3D
>|  much more easily.
>
>Apple started to use OpenGL for UI in latest version on MacOS X (10.2- Jaguar)
>It's called somewhat Quartz Extreme.
>We (several people interested in SVG and vector graphics) have discussed 
>Quartz Extreme & Quartz some time ago, and common conclusion was that we need 
>to get PS-like, PDF-like API out & working first.
>Than we can extend it somehow to 3D.  
>
I don't say 3D. OpenGL is also 2D! The use of OpenGL in Quartz extreme 
isn't so sophisticated. AFAIK the render the windows to texture. The 
Rendering is still on the CPU.

>But getting SVG-based Window Decorations in TWM or Metacity is mor eimportant 
>for *current user* than 3D OpenGL-based animated buttons which he/she can get 
>in the future.
>
I'm not interested in this 3D stuff for animated buttons. I'm interested 
in the use for OpenGL als drawing API. So far I know SGI have sometimes 
implemented a Xserver in OpenGL and it was very fast.

Marco