Since Keith Packard’s XWin.org went live a lot of people seem to join the discussion on how to make XFree86 better. Some, even write some code! Gilbert Baumann writes: “I hacked an X server which uses OpenGL for what would be the graphics card driver. We render windows to textures and then assemble them on the screen getting translucent windows for free. Although currently not done, the idea is that we will use OpenGL for rendering the X primitives.” Check his screenshots!
Hack Modifies XFree86 to use OpenGL Backend
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Progressive, if experimental, already! Coolness…
Thank God Almight!!! True translucency at last! I must be honest, I was kind of afraid of this fork at first, but if it gets quality work rolling in, I’ll take it.
WoW! This is what I’ve been waiting for! X can’t do everything, they don’t have the developers for it.Using an excellent technology like OpenGL is a great idea!.
It’s also nice to see transparency and attractive window/menu dropshadows outside of KDE. KDE’s are also hacks and quite good, but its just not cool launching the GIMP without menu shadows while side by side there is Karbn with shadows.
Hopefully the Xfree team will unite, with the fork and create greater innovation, performance, organization etc. Than this could be implemented in a less hacked kind of way.
We should really help this guy out, sounds like hes got an ancient machine and an empty fridge. =( Too bad, I’m too young to work, if I had a job I would surely give him something.
BTW: Would you need 3d acceleration for thiss? I think the answer is yet, but just checking.
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I just thought i’d be the guy that said, Os X did this last year. And it truely rocks. Glad to see it spreading and would be really nice with kde and keramic.
Maybe he could call it “X Extreme?” 8)
In all seriousness, if an OpenGL back-end can do for X what it did for Quartz, it’s more than worth looking into. Now that video cards are shipping with huge amounts of texture memory (128 MB is not at all rare), use of this resource for stuff outside of 3D games is a really good idea.
I’m not a unix/linux expert so I’m not sure how to interpret this but I am aware that Apple did a similar thing with MacOS X and it sounds like the video card would be responsible for desktop rendering. This would free the CPU from rendering it giving applications and services more cycles. Better for performance and better looks. Everybody’s a winner!
I’d like to see growing and shrinking icons and windows a la MacOS X. It makes very smart use of limited desktop space by packing in elements we are not using but expands the view when we hover our mouse over an element of interest. When you think about it the possiblities are endless and this could propel Linux and other hardcore platforms passed MS windows in terms of desktop looks.
Is this the same thing MacOS X have? It is good to see the video card do the rendering rather than the CPU so that applications and services get more CPU cycles.
>need an easy way to send money or pizza
What he needs is a fully XFree86 OpenGL-compatible graphics card, as he writes in his site. He has only a TNT2 card and he can’t make good tests with this card…
maybe I’ll be able to help out with that…
this…. is awesome!!
I would like an easy way to send pizza, not money, as I have none.
No shortage of pizza.
I’m gonna see if I can send him my old Geforce 3
That is just drop dead gorgeous! This is an “Oooooh! Ahhhh!” piece that I’d love to run on my day to day desktop. I just feel better using a sexy desktop. Guh-row-uhl!
BTW: Would you need 3d acceleration for thiss?
I assume so, which is why I’m not too excited about it. Unlike Apple, X doesn’t have the luxury of assuming that everyone is running an OpenGL accelerated card. You can’t possibly ask that everyone buy a GeForce or a Radeon (and in many cases, buy a machine that can use a GeForce or Radeon) just to run tvm.
That said, I could see it as an optional feature, especially is XWin goes ahead with modularizing XFree86.
Well if you don’t have hardware acceleration then you would just use Mesa – which would use the CPU to render it (just like your cpu does now) – so it shouldn’t be that bad.
On the topic of stuff to give, I myself might be able to donate some stuff (including some time).
This looks vey promising.
Derek
…and a Linux user, I can say this is definitely the direction to go. If you’re interested in this, but haven’t seen something similar in action, do yourself a favour and find a Mac computer that supports Quartz Extreme (not just Quartz). Notice the different visual cues that it immediately brings to the table as far as UI is concerned. Icons that enlarge but don’t lose detail (because they’re vector graphics), as well as genie effects that tell you where you’ve minimized an application to in the dock. It’s truly stunning. If I’m not mistaken, normal Quartz is not hardware-accelerated whereas Quartz Extreme is. Hardware makes a huge difference – for the people without good 3D acceleration that are worried, you have reason to be. As a reference point though, my iBook has a Radeon Mobility 7500 with 16MB of memory and everything on OS X is smooth as butter. This is a cheap and relatively old GPU nowadays, so it may be worth it to upgrade your videocard if such a low-powered card can run this.
“BTW: Would you need 3d acceleration for thiss? ”
I’d really love an answer to this aswell, I was just about to download it, and figured id read the comments first.
I have a voodoo 4mb, although i remember using GL on quake 1 so maybe it would work? I know it would be slow and possibly ugly but all I want is a few apps (like VIM) to use this.
I already hate the translucency of the console in Lycoris. I am not at all a purist or something, but text is ALL about how well you can actually read it. Translucency does the opposite. It is irritating. I don’t mind it for windows that are not actually being used, but I don’t want it in the active app.
I’m gonna see if I can send him my old Geforce 3
Thank you thank you thank you for supporting this guy. I would like to donate to him, but it is the end of the school year and money is always tight at this time of year (all the money made over christmas break and summer is spent).
Hopefully once I get some work done this summer I can send a couple of $$ his way.
I *NEED* this now. The hackish KDE transparencies I deal with now make me want to cry.
Yes, Voodoo1 and 2 should work (even if the Windows driver wouldn’t work accelerated on a window but only fullscreen, but in our case this should not matter – depends how the hack is doing it…).
Problem is that you will probably need more than 12 MB of graphics RAM to do this kind of thing, Apple is asking for minimum of 16 MB… And Voodoo1 only had either 4 or 6 MB depending on the model. So, even if your card might work with your hack, you will fast find yourself out of memory.
Also, it is better to have AGP for that kind of stuff… as in QuartXtreme…
So, I suggest you buy a cheap 32 MB GeForce or a 32 MB Matrox G400 second hand and you should be set…
Something __slightly__ offtopic:
After only a few weeks, xwin.org is far ahead of xfree86.org in terms of web design. Sure xfree86.org might be designed to render well in text-only browsers like lynx but even as a text-only site, it is a friggin’ nightmare to navigate. Well done xwin! I hope this is a sign of their commitment to xfree reform.
They didn’t design xwin.org. They just downloaded GeekLog, untared it, put it online and then they sat back.
I like the idea of supporting old hardware, but can we please have a few features for those of us with computers built in the last few years?
I get so tired of people slowing progress just because they want everything to work on a 486 with a 512K ISA video card.
When you can spend $199 at WalMart and get a massive upgrade for your system, I think it is time to move on.
Notice how even Windows eventually outdates hardware? Because the paying public wants to use the powerful hardware they just bought for better features.
A distro with more high end features like this, even with more limited hardware support, would be great. There are plenty of OS’s written in the last 10 years for those with older hardware.
Mutiny
From Pricewatch.com in US dollars:
ATI Radeon 32MB DDR – $36 shipped
Gforce2 MX440 64MB – $34 shipped
Or for those looking to jump into this decade…
GeForce4 Ti 4200 64MB – $92.50 shipped
ATI Radeon 9500 128MB – $130.00 shipped
It is not that hard and all these have very good drivers available.
Mutiny
.., so what?
It seems more of an irritation, rather than something useful.
good point…
why not put up the meager amount for one of those?
it is an example of the power that this modification gives to X.
hardware accelerated desktop graphics will speed up X greatly and allow cool effects.
I’m working on something to try to help him out.
I just wrote both Nvidia and ATI about his work. It would be to their great advantage to send him a new card.
They get great PR in the OS world.
They get to say that this advance was made with their hardware.
They know that it will work with their hardware.
They sell more cards because we may need upgrades for it to work to it’s fullest.
I made it clear that I was in no way affiliated with him and I was very polite.
If anyone else would like to write them, please tread lightly and be VERY professional and polite.
Mutiny
why not put up the meager amount for one of those?
Has NVidia released NetBSD/sparc drivers for the GeForce4 yet? Or should we just assume that everyone who wants X is running Linux/x86?
Subject: Please forward to the correct person
I only saw this link and have no contacts within your company.
Gilbert Bauman is making great advances to the X Window System. He is adding high end features not seen in other OS’s with the exception of possibly Mac OSX.
The features rely heavily on the graphic card, however he only has an old Nvidia TNT2 video card and is unable to create software that will really take advantage of the advances in video card technology your company has brought about.
It could be a great advantage for a company such as yours to help this person by donating a video card. The PR is an obvious benefit, however, as with gaming, advances in software features can sell many cards to individuals that would otherwise not have upgraded.
http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~unk6/transluxent/
Please think about this.
Thank you,
–my real name—
Not affiliated in any way with Gilbert Bauman
“Yes, Voodoo1 and 2 should work…. ”
Thanks Eugenia.
I gave the binary a shot and got all sorts of failures, Maybe i’ll run the make World and go to sleep.
On a side note I wish people would quit saying “get new hardware” we’re not all making 65K a year. some of us work at radio shack, mall, or are students, even the developer of this hack is trying to pay bills. $40 sounds cheap but so does the $100 you tell us to spend on more ram, the $200 on new processors, etc. We’re not suppose to pay 3 grand (what I payed in ’97 for a 233) every 5-6 years just to use computers. That might be why this is a fork and not merged into the tree.
Quote James Lanfear:
“Has NVidia released NetBSD/sparc drivers for the GeForce4 yet? Or should we just assume that everyone who wants X is running Linux/x86?”
Why assume that standard X will include this feature or that it is forced upon you?
It seems to have been written as a driver on top of your hardware driver. This should not change X much at all, except for those who can and do want to use it.
Mutiny
It’s a good thing for the future – and even now for a lot of people. Hardware vendors need encouragement from software developers to include things in their hardware, and gain a competative edge. Thus far OpenGL acceleration has been viewed merely from a gaming and/or 3D developing angle, and almost useless otherwise. Using the technology to enhance the desktop experience would encourage people, all people, to purchase accellerated cards – especially seeing as they’re not too terribly expensive on the low end. If linux can drive past windows aesthetically then I’m certain more people would give the beast a try at the very least. It may still suffer a hinderance in the ‘ease-of-use’ department, but Linux is coming along in that area. Get something like this going and enough hardware support, and you could start running a slogan akin to something like ‘Who says change isn’t pretty?’
I know a lot of people aren’t too anxious to see Linux on desktop computers. Honestly, I don’t mind – I’ll remain the same whatever the case. I’m sure we’ll always have slackware for those of us who want it clean, sharp, bloat-free and just the way we want it, Debian for the near-flawless mix of power, stability, and ease, Gentoo for those of us who love to squeeze every drop of power out of our hardware, among other things, and a hundred other distros I don’t have time or room to mention that cover the wide array of personalities and demands of people great and small.
Then of course there’s always BSD, but I thought not to mention it beyond this simply because I’m focusing on Linux:)
So Bring linux to the desktop, I’m all for it. Make it pretty. Make it easy. Let people be free.
Ahem… why do I always end up giving some motivational spiel whenever I want to make a simple comment? Ugh. Heh:) Owell. I think it’s great what they’re doing. Right on.
Quote Pros and Cons: “We’re not suppose to pay 3 grand (what I payed in ’97 for a 233) every 5-6 years just to use computers. That might be why this is a fork and not merged into the tree.”
But, would you have liked your $3000 computer you bought in 97 to only do what computers in 91 did? I didn’t think so.
That is how I feel these days. I have good hardware but only games and high end Windows apps to take advantage of it. And I don’t really play games.
Computers progress and if you can’t afford to upgrade or the feature is not important to you, don’t install it. Your computer will still be much more functional than the day you bought it.
But please don’t work against those of us who recently invested our money.
Mutiny
Not meaning to flame or gloat or promote (note I’m anonymous – no requests:P), and sorry if you were exaggerating, but I’d sell you a _good_ complete system for about $800 every 3-4 years, and I’m sure a lot of companies would as well. Prices go lower than that even, but I hate scrimping. The price/time curve isn’t so bad anymore, it’s still outrageous, but it’s much more livable than it was 5 years ago. Anyway, just my 2.
Why assume that standard X will include this feature or that it is forced upon you?<i/>
I don’t. I think it’s a good candidate for an optional module, as I believe I said up the thread. But it seems like a lot of people here [i]do believe it should be the default, and anyone who doesn’t like it is just running crappy hardware. The fact is the something that will only run on a small fraction of machines is not the future of X, at least not the near future. I’d rather focus on things that will benefit most, rather than provide eye-candy for a very few.
God I hate HTML.
Regarding the icon stuff being mentioned and vector graphics.
Gnome from 1.4 supported svg icons and kde 3.1 has supported svg icons as far as i know mac doesnt actually support true svg. Instead it has loads of icons at different res’ not the same as svg which is completely scalable with no distortion. But thats not the job of x to begin with.
Also as to icons expanding on mouse roll over etc. kde has been doing that for time. NOthing new except osx does a much better job of it.
BUt these aint really related to xfree86 this is stuff u can ask for from the de’s,
I am truely sorry for the mix up.
I too think that this should be optional. However, just as with XFree 3.x and 4.x, a decision will eventually have to be made as to when to break and start fork.
XFree3.x still runs. If those features are enough, keep using it. It simply seems that keeping older hardware working is hurting progress.
In most respects, we are still only using the hardware to the extent Windows 95 did almost 10 years ago! That is really sad.
To put things in perspective, in the same amount of time we went from Apple II’s and Atari 400’s to Windows95, Amiga and Mac.
No wonder the computer hardware buisness is in the crapper right now. There is no software to push the hardware sales. The OS’s are stagnant.
Mutiny
ANd finally if any of u are into the opengl rendered desktops check out enlightenment e17 – its still not been released has been in development for some time. But its completely opengl rendered and unlike e16 its a complete window manager / de.
One other thing check out http://slicker.sourceforge.net
check the conceptual drawings. Now thats what you call cool. and its being worked on now.
Having proper translucency in x. Instead of the hacks which to be honest even on my xp 1800+ (oc’ed to 2000+) and nvidia gef 4 run like dog shite. Would be fantastic.
Im sure this fork will bring about alot of change and a lot of whats being asked for from the de’s to keep their evolutions marching at a fast rate. Lets not forget how much of a vested interest companies like redhat and suse have in this.
No doubt the rest will soon be playing catch up.
Has NVidia released NetBSD/sparc drivers for the GeForce4 yet? Or should we just assume that everyone who wants X is running Linux/x86?
No they haven’t and no, don’t expect them any time soon. With all due respect, but NetBSD is a nichemarket, it is not viable for a company to support all platforms out there, that they support linux and FreeBSD is encouraging enough if you ask me. For all those people that don’t have the full 3d-enabled driver there is still the old way of rendering after all.
one question. I have seen transparent xterms before in other linux distribution. how did they do that before with no opengl?
one question. I have seen transparent xterms before in other linux distribution. how did they do that before with no opengl?
The Xrender extension can do it in software
Mutiny I get your point and if it were true that development is being held back on a large scale id agree with you but. I can’t
run KDE, Gnome, Windows XP, Photoshop.. shall I continue? I’m not trying to complain, I compleatly understand this and it makes sense.
I run fluxbox or wmaker and I’m fine with that, but I can assure you KDE, Gnome are not making large cutbacks, to make either of these fully functional you need what 500mhz, 128-256? that’s not
so bad those system speeds came out in what..2000ish? I just like to see the option available for either user, kinda like media player 6.2 is still included even though media player 9 is out.
Using hardware accleration to do basic graphics operation is a good idea. It reminds me another project which was already in this way…. It’s called directfb.
I don’t think they are truely transparent windows.
They achieve a transparent effect by grabbing the screen behind the window and using it as a texture for the bacgkround of the window. This is purely my thoughts as I have no idea how it is coded.
To give each window transparency through OpenGL instead would take large amounts of CPU time off an deposit it on the rather underused 3D cards that sit in most machines today.
If you don’t have a 3D card, then you won’t get the effects I guess. A 3D card will use the new driver whereas 2D cards (or poorer or unsupported 3D cards) will not. Simple . . . I think!
Will excellent font rendering be able to be shelved off to the graphics cards too?
Cheers
Dunk
the pentium 450 & 500 came out in mid 99. Good call on 2000ish.
1) OS X isn’t that impressive! All it does is use OpenGL for the compositor, not for actual Quartz2D drawing. That makes Quartz “Extreme” useless for anything but using up texture space on your graphics card and enabling the transparency/drop-shadow/genie effects. While this X server doesn’t do more than that just yet, the goal is, at least, to move the core drawing operations over to OpenGL. In the meantime, check out the EVAS demo at enlightenment.org. It is a canvas library that can use accelerated OpenGL as a drawing backend.
2) Hardware acceleration for primitives has existed since Win 3.1. What we’re talking about is using OpenGL acceleration for 2D rendering. I think this is the way of the future, if only because it relieves graphics cards makers from having to worry about simultanious 2D/3D rendering. On the flip side, a lot of people are worried that many cards won’t have the rendering quality necessary to display good-looking 2D in 3D mode.
My only concern is how this impacts single-application display performance. If I’m running a windowed OpenGL app like a 3D modeler, will it slow down the frame rates? In the past, consumer level 3D cards haven’t been that great about sharing the renderer between multiple contexts. This is fine if you only have one OpenGL app to run, but when the desktop needs to do 3D, then you hit some snags. NVIDIA hardware seems to be pretty good about it though. I’ve tested 6 running instances of glxgears (admittedly I should have used something more complex), and total throughput peaks at around 3 instances, and isn’t hit by more than 10-15% off maximum at 6 instances.
Trust me, you will be very lucky to get 15 FPS, whilts using up 100% CPU time using Mesa for this. I know, I have tried this sort of thing myself. The Mesa option is no option.
I am glad somebody actually understands what Apple did (and did not) do with their OpenGL solution. As is usual for Apple, they market it as if everything is happening on the GPU, when only a small part right at the end of the process is on the GPU.
$50 or 100 is not easy money for everybody. In places like India and China where average income is about $ 500 a year, it can make a lot of diff.
Wouldn’t it be better if X detected old hardware and turns by default off features that require heavy CPU / GPU power?? i.e can’t X switch off these features on Slow hardware while it stays on by default in newer hardware???
That way other advancements of XFree can still be passed on to users with Old hardware. Millions of users out there would REALLY REALLY appreciate it.
There may be a hell lot problem to do something like this, but its just a suggestion
Software can’t update your hardware.
For this reason your old hardware uses and will always use XFree3 or 4.
[Personnaly I think the “recycle your old piece of crap into a linux machine” is just crap.
I tried to replace my aunts win95 by an old linux (mandrake 8.2, Suse7.3 couldn’t get a working X server) but the machine was on its knees. All she wanted was to have access to her email (evolution or kmail): it took 5 minutes to boot up to it…]
Of course Linux runs on all architectures and everyone wants to have access to the new stuff but the eyecandy we are talking about here is and should be only for modern desktop oriented systems (ie. pentium class systems).
So people with old hardware please quit winning and holding linux back in the ice age you already have everything you need.
I think it’s about time some linux people take the beos approach of supporting newer hardware first and forgetting about the old stuff (at least that’s what a beos user told me).
In most cases developpment for anything that is over three years old is wasted time.
I wouldn’t want to put too much hope into just a hack. There is much more speed to be gained elsewhere and we should aim for an integrated approach if we are going to fork X. Stick a fork in it, it’s done.
The idea is that we see OpenGL as our hardware. So we just took the vanilla XFree sources and implemented TransluXent as a new hardware.
So it’ll be compatible with any platform X runs, given an OpenGL implementation and proper drivers. What I can say is ‘cool’
It would be good if NVidia and ATI could contribute code to XFree86/XWin/X-whatever to improve default drivers; OpenGL’ed X for everyone out of the box…
Here is a list of mirrors:
http://solem.cs.man.ac.uk:8006/cgi-bin/mirror.pl?get=http%3A//w…
I would suggest picking up a 3dlabs Oxygen, even the low end ones that are are a couple hundred do opengl quite nicely.
in india, such a card would pull in less than 100. Remember, with the shift in income, comes the shift in price.
Since when is old hardware holding back linux development?
Linux Kernel runs on everything. From a 32 Mhz CPU to a big iron with 32 CPUs . Does it not??????????????? And did it make the Kernel any worse??? I don’t think so. In fact, probably as developers work to make their programs run faster on slower hardware, it gives them a all round improvement even on newer machines. (In a few months from now , we’ll be running Linux on about 12 machines, because Pro/E came out with a Lin version. Its not about money, belive me, for a one year, one seat, Pro/E AMC, u can get a new box of latest MS-Win+MS-Office+may other goodies or we can buy a new workstation. We are switching cause we want good clustering for ANSYS sw + All other benefits that Linux offers)
I remember about two years ago we had just created this video in MPG format which was slighty out of Win2K standards aka bigger than 640×480 pixels. We found frame slippage / overlap when playing it. The machine was pretty decent with 800 Mhz and 512 SD with Riva TNT2-32MB. Quite costly back then. It had the latest drivers from nVidia running too.
And……… to my suprise it ran smoothly with Mplayer on Mandrake. You should have seen the faces of my colleagues then. We found that it ran smoothly on even slower hardware running Lin. Linux earned pretty much respect in my office after that
I felt the reason for it could have been that Open source developers extracted the max juice from the HW. It is one of the strongest points of Open source. In fact I read some article recently which was praising Open source model saying that while MS and Intel and many others focused on following Moores law, open source guys were focused on optimum utilisation of resources.
Also we are seeing corporates cutting down IT spending and lengthing the replacement cycle of their hardware. Even if hardware gets cheaper, this trend may continue henceforth. And then users will really appreciate if the new software can still run on their old hardware….
“””””””””Wouldn’t it be better if X detected old hardware and turns by default off features that require heavy CPU / GPU power””””””””””””
The video runs smoothly on MS Win XP today, on old hardware…… even on a 233 Mhz MMX(Actually, I learnt that XP had improved graphics and tried out the video on it,,, just for the sake of it)
“””””””””””””it took 5 minutes to boot up to it””””””””””””” 2.6 Kernel may come out with soft suspend. The 233 Mhz MS -XP box regains life from hibernate mode in a little more than half a min (Yes, just about 40 Secs) and I do hope 2.6 will be able to beat that.
Till then… why dont to try running Gentoo on your Aunt’s Box?
My 10c
in responce to: (sorry dont know how tags work and dont want to figure it out atm) ANd finally if any of u are into the opengl rendered desktops check out enlightenment e17 – its still not been released has been in development for some time. But its completely opengl rendered and unlike e16 its a complete window manager / de.
the thing with enlightenment is that once again a new api is introduced. with this xserver, nothing changes except the server code and everything else takes advantage of opengl. with enlightenment (as far as i’m aware) you have to use apps that are built for their toolkit. so comparing this new xserver to enlightement is wrong.
I cant believe no one has thought of this earlier
Just wanted to add that this is a great idea. For those people that are complaining that they do not have hardware accelerated PC’s – you do not have to use this server. You can still use a X11 server that is based on software rendering and still run the same software. and please correct me if i’m wrong.
I don’t. I think it’s a good candidate for an optional module, as I believe I said up the thread. But it seems like a lot of people here do believe it should be the default, and anyone who doesn’t like it is just running crappy hardware. The fact is the something that will only run on a small fraction of machines is not the future of X, at least not the near future. I’d rather focus on things that will benefit most, rather than provide eye-candy for a very few.
Longhorn is solving the issue of older machines by having two graphics mode. One is a GPU rendered (I’m assuming DirectX?) mode, the other is the classic processor draws mode. Autodetection of hardware capababilities are used to choose the mode automatically (although I would imagine there is an option to force a mode). A lot of talk in the forum on xwin.org is about using this in a similar way.
I for one would vote for that. I think most users would want this on as default if their hardware were capable. Having it turned off automatically for those with older machines is a nice touch as well.
We’re not suppose to pay 3 grand (what I payed in ’97 for a 233) every 5-6 years just to use computers.
Next time just don’t buy top of the line. Nowadays if you drop a grand on a computer it will last you like three years fine. By the time you hit that three grand part you will have reached the better part of a decade. If you want to go cheaper than a grand you still could, but would probably sacrificing performance.
Also, I do not make $65,000 a year. I am a student and make $200 a month. I feel your pain. Last year I was using a TNT2 just like this fella. However, over the summer I got a good job so I could finally upgrade! Oh GeForce 4, how I love thee
.
OSX could do genie effects, drop shadows, transparent windows, etc. long before Quartz Extreme was added. Quartz Extreme just takes off some of the load.
OSX icons are not vectors btw, they are large bitmaps scaled down. And OSX is not the only OS that has the possibility of scaling icons that don’t lose quality. With the right software even XP can do it. There is even a 3d accelerated dock for XP not too far off from being released.
AFAIK though only Gnome at the moment uses svg icons.
Anyway, it’s nice to see xfree86 get this too. Now they just need to make the window managers take advantage of it for it to be a real benefit beyond just making a window transparent.
Why exactly was this mentioned in the same breath as the potential XFree86 fork? The fork has *not* happened yet, and may or may not happen. The stuff this guy has started working on in definately interesting (although another group has been doing this already; can’t find the URL right now), but if you read the stuff on his web site you can see clearly that is has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the fork in XFree86!
Most developers in the XFree86 community would like to avoid a fork in XFree86 as much as possible. Shame on you Eugenia for not showing some kind of journalistic integrity and simply stirring the pot with this post.
Why does this matter?
What he’s doing is GREAT.
More importantly, what he’s doing seems to only matter on the actual X that’s doing the rendering of it.
Everyone seems to be freaking out over whether it will affect their hardware or not, or be required or optional.
I see no reason why this particular stuff would affect interoperability. Have old hardware? Fine, use XFree86. Got new? Fine, use this new fork. From what I can tell, NOTHING has been done yet to change any of the internal network communication and protocols whatsoever. That said, there is NO reason I can see that I can’t run X apps on the old XFree86 and have them display on the newer one. It’s the X running on the machine doing the displaying that’s different. One system says draw a box and fill it with this info. It NEVER said HOW this needs to be done, just that it’s done.
You’re beating a nonexistant horse. It will only become an issue when they start working on the protocols and internal communications. As long as the new fork can understand the old one and can speak to it without any problems, who cares?
It’s when that breaks that we have a problem.
Get a radeon 9100. It’s the fastest card out there with open source drivers that support the T&L engine. And it’s dirt cheap, under $70 for a basic one. Also it has both excellent 2d and 3d quality compared to the nvidia offerings.
crazy i wasnt trying to compare the xserver moving to opengl rendering and enlightenment. E is still a wm/de and will have to be run on top of x or whatever. I know that i was just posting about what the de’s/wm’s are getting into.
Yeah thats about what the translucency hacks right now offer. Thats why they run dog slow aswell generally cos it has to constantly take snapshots of background and superimpose onto window which is shite. If u look at macosx or even windows xp with transparancy on youll notice you see the icons and the other shit beneath the window with the current hack (i think mosfet was the one who first designed for kde completely software driven) u dont get the full detail of whats behind the window. i can take screenshots to show what i mean if any one wants to see.
“I see no reason why this particular stuff would affect interoperability. Have old hardware? Fine, use XFree86. Got new? Fine, use this new fork.”
The point is that there *is not* a fork at this point, and the XFree86 developers are trying to find out a solution *without* resorting to a fork. This guys work is not a fork either; his stuff is simple some patches to the regular XFree86 4.3.0 source code tree.
The point is that us XFree86 developers are trying to avoid a fork in the code, so the last thing we need is journalists to come along and state things like ‘the new fork is obviously working’ when we don’t even have a fork yet! Get the facts straight when you report things.
The only things worse than overlapped windows are translucent overlapped windows. Next!
Well, it was posted by the author on xwin.org, hence the header reads: “Since Keith Packard’s XWin.org went live a lot of people seem to join the discussion on how to make XFree86 better. Some, even write some code!“, so i also don’t see why all the fuss is about.
The site was taken out by slashdot. ( http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/17/0728212&mode=th… )
How is it done?
The idea is that we see OpenGL as our hardware. So we just took the vanilla XFree sources and implemented TransluXent as a new hardware. Graphics are rendered to textures using the existing cfb code. Each top level window then consists out of a number of textures which are composed together on the screen. In this phase we can easily apply alpha blending.
Although this initially was thought as a mere hack to provide translucent windows it is clear that this should evolve into an X server which uses OpenGL to implement the graphics operations. For more information about future plans please refer to the Future page.
How can you help?
I need food for further development of this Xserver. So if you are in the position to fund a free software project, consider funding a next generation X server.
Also I need hardware as my poor TNT2 lacks pbuffer support and CopySubTexImage is buggy, making it virtually impossible to develop actual OpenGL rendering of X graphics primitives.
Gilbert Baumann
Ettlingen, Germany
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/student/D.A.Taylor/tw4.jpg
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/student/D.A.Taylor/tw2.jpg