Re: NetBSD graphics stack [WAS: Re: Internet services and US vs EU jurisdiction]

"Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult" <[email protected]> Wed, 27 May 2026 15:14:11 +0200
Newsgroups gmane.os.netbsd.general
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On 2/17/26 16:26, [email protected] wrote:

>> By "DRM" you mean direct rendering manager or digital restriction management
>> ?
>>
> 
> Direct Rendering Manager (

good :)

> I have crossed your messages when working initially on X11 modules in
> the Xorg distribution and it is sure for me that NetBSD and others
> have to worry about the X11 stuff because I guess Oracle will
> eventually pull the plug (the most active still present developers for
> userland X11 are, if I'm not mistaken, Oracle's employees).

You mean things like Xlib et al ?
We're ready fork any second, when that becomes necessary.

> I'm the developer of kerTeX, a distribution of TeX and al. 

Oh, cool. How does it relate to LaTeX / tetex ?
Is it compatible ? (doing lots of docs with it)

> What people
> generally don't know is that METAFONT is a rasterizer. This does mean
> that for 2D stuff, one has with TeX and al. almost already everything
> to go from graphical primitives, including glyphes, to a rasterized
> image.

Yeah. I've actually thought of adding something like that as an X11
extension. The idea is uploading meta-graphics as resources, which then
can be used as replacement for pixmaps or render-pics (eg. also as
window background) - and the server then will render it automatically
when needed.

> My plan is to go the fullway with what I have already, extending DVI
> to add some things that will make the format more self sufficient and
> borrowing the rasterization routines from METAFONT to go from static
> pages described in DVI to raster images.

Uh. Sounds like a cool idea.

> The plan is also to make the DVI format GUI usable for an interface
> description.

DVI for GUIs ? Hmm, do you mean just the layouting or even active
elements like widgets ?


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Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult
Free software and Linux embedded engineering
[email protected] -- +49-151-27565287