On Mon, 2004-08-09 at 13:31 +0530, Mandar Mitra wrote:
> > http://www.larvalstage.net/shares/Screenshot-7.png
>
> I got a "Not Found" message. Has this been taken off?
>
Hmm.. seems so. I am building the thing right now in my own box, I'll
try to put up a screenshot somewhere.
>
> > And the guy who took the screenshot is still raving about it on IRC -
> > and he tells me that it seems to be faster than normal X.
> > Right now, he has 70 windows open, and performance appears to be the
> > same.
>
> Quick question: "normal X" as opposed to the new version, or is there
> more to it?
This version has quite a large number of internal changes, as well as a
few very interesting new "extensions".
Quote from one of the papers on the new stuff going on inside X:
"With window hierarchy contents stored in off-screen buffers, an
external application can now control how the screen contents are
constructed from the constituent sub-windows and whatever other
graphical elements are desired. This eliminated the complexities
surrounding precisely what semantics would be offered in window-level
compositing within the X server and the design of the underlying X
extensions. They were replaced by some concerns over the performance
implications of using an external agent (the ``Compositing Manager'') to
execute the requests needed to present the screen image. Note that every
visible pixel is under the control of the compositing manager, so screen
updates are limited to how fast that application can get the bits
painted to the screen.
The architecture is split across three new extensions:
* Composite, which controls which sub-hierarchies within the
window tree are rendered to separate buffers.
* Damage, which tracks modified areas with windows, informing the
Composting Manager which areas of the off-screen hierarchy
components have changed.
* Xfixes, which includes new Region objects permitting all of the
above computation to be performed indirectly within the X
server, avoiding round trips.
Multiple applications can take advantage of the off screen window
contents, allowing thumbnail or screen magnifier applications to be
included in the desktop environment.
To allow applications other than the compositing manager to present
alpha-blended content to the screen, a new X Visual was added to the
server. At 32 bits deep, it provides 8 bits of red, green and blue along
with 8 bits of alpha value. Applications can create windows using this
visual and the compositing manager can composite them onto the screen."
> What window manager is he running?
>
He's running Metacity (GNOME)
Here's a few articles and papers on the new stuff, if anyone is
interested
1. http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/xarch_ols2004/xarch-ols2004-html/
2. http://keithp.com/~keithp/talks/fosdem2004/X-fosdem2004.html
-thanks-
-sdg-
--
Sayamindu Dasgupta (ààààààààà àààààààà)
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
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