On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 02:26:04AM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> People were saying that ten years ago. They were wrong
> then, and I suspect they are wrong now. Too many people
> think X11 == XFree86. XFree86 is an *implementation*
> (arguably two with kdrive) of X11.
Even ignoring kdrive, I'd call it two implementations in one.
After all xfree86 is still basically a "bolt-on" to the old standard
X11R6.
There are still TWO SEPARATE APIs for doing 2d drivers.
There's the stock-standard
Xserver/hw/{standard-driver-here}
(eg: Xserver/hw/sun)
and then there's
Xserver/hw/xfree86/drivers/{xfree-extensions-driver-here}
I havent studied the ramifications of supporting both those models in
detail, but just the fact that xfree is still essentially a bolt-on
product, strikes me as a Bad Thing, for a "nice, clean" implementation of
an X server.
> > I agree that X is very complicated to work on. Mozilla
>
> 2D XFree86 is *easy* to work with. It took me a day to learn
> how to write input drivers, ...
Funny. It took me a lot longer, because
- first I followed the x consortium docs on how to write an XINPUT
module...
- found it was lacking a bit from how the "standard" X11 framework wanted
things to be
- found that was slightly different from how the average XFREE86
input module was implemented
- found neither of the two were exactly like how Xsun did XINPUT
modules...
Okay, the last one isnt exactly relevant to this discussion ;-> but
serves as grist for the mill of "there aint no truely standard X server"
> Since XFree 4.0 you don't have to touch the core code, you
> don't have to duplicate a ton of stuff and you don't need
> to know zip about DDX, MI and the other core layers.
Sounds nice. Too bad the core itself hasnt been cleaned up to unified
the card driver models more.
Oh, and for what it's worth... "implementation of an X server" still isnt
what most people care about to run (2d) programs.
Most people care about "Can I compile something that expects libX11.so" ?
Which really means, for 95% of users out there, all you "really" need,
is a lookalike for libX11.
I had basic X11 apps compiling on (durnit, have to verify 6809 vs 68000)
(searches google...)
Damn.. Too far back. Some time in 1988, I think. Anyhow, I believe
I had some X11 apps compiling and running on a 6809, running OS9 on a computer
with 512k of memory (64k max addressible at a time)
You think I had an X server running? ha-ha. Nope, progs just care about
the X11 lib.
So for the "X on top of OpenGL" afficionados... you could get away with
just writing a libX11 clone on top of a direct OpenGL implementation
like Embedded Mesa or something.
Skip the whole server fiasco entirely.
Mind you, you'd need to cobble together some kind of window manager behind
the scenes. My old hack relied on a native window manager to take care
of that sort of thing.
-------------------------------------------------------
This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek
Welcome to geek heaven.
http://thinkgeek.com/sf
_______________________________________________
Dri-devel mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
