Around 23 o'clock on Aug 21, Eric Christopherson wrote:
> Hi, Keith et al. I was just wondering if there's more information on the > PostScript-like extensions; I wasn't able to find much on the web other > than the fact that they're being worked on, and I joined this list to find > out, but since I joined no one's discussed it. There isn't another "postscript-like" extension. What we've got is a simple image-compositing based rendering extension (Render). This provides a very primitive geometric environment to clients; you can draw anything you like as long as it's composed of trapezoids or triangles. Instead of some complicated new X extension, what Carl Worth and I are working on is a client-side library (Xr) which exposes an API copied from the drawing API seen in PostScript. You construct a path from line segments and cubic splines and then either stroke or fill it. We've got lines working just fine; splines have been prototyped (in Nickle, not C), so they should be integrated as soon as Carl gets back to work. Instead of using Render directly, Xr is built on top of another new library, 'Xc' which exposes Render functionality but will provide client-side emulation for X servers without the extension. Because the Render extension is so primitive, it's relatively easy to implement all of it's functionality within the client, the only effect on the application will be a significant loss of performance. This means you can use Xr in your application development without worrying about what extensions the X server provides. > Specifically, I was wondering if the new project intersects at all with the > DPS extension project, or whether they could cooperate in some way. I believe applications should ditch DPS and use Xr instead; DPS is a really bad idea. But, my opinion hasn't carried much weight in this argument before. What could be done is to make the client-side DPS emulator use the Render extension, either through Xr or directly to improve performance. > (As an aside: If someone knows who actually is in charge of the DPS project, > please let me know; I'm on their mailing list too but it's pretty much dead > and I've already asked there.) As far as I know, Juliuscz Chroboczek is still hacking on the DPS clone based on GhostScript, but he's currently doing extremely useful font hacking; I'd rather he not get sidetracked with DPS until PCF is only a horrible memory. Keith Packard XFree86 Core Team HP Cambridge Research Lab _______________________________________________ Render mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/render
