On 05/05/2005 06:24:04 AM, Jack Carroll wrote:
Here's one possible reason.
Some video card applications, such as desktop publishing,
don't
require any acceleration whatsoever. The simplest possible logical
interface that will let the X driver write to a high-resolution
framebuffer
is enough. The image sharpness and color accuracy of the analog back
end
are the only things that market cares about.
Software-only rendering was discussed at a talk by Keith Packard, long time X guru, at LinuxConf 2005 a fortnight ago. He said it's just not workable anywhere outside the PDA market. Modern GUIs spend a lot of time shuffling pixmaps - windows, icons, etc - around, and without hardware acceleration this is viewed as unacceptably slow by the majority of desktop users. (As PDAs get bigger screens, they'll go the same way.)
Desktop publishing also requires serious image processing these days, and preferably anti-aliasing as well.
Hugh Fisher
DCS, ANU
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