Around 16 o'clock on Sep 23, David Dawes wrote:
> I always wondered why depth switching was part of the RandR extension. The original idea was that size and depth would have to be switched simultaneously to fit video card memory constraints. > I think that RandR should do what it's name suggests: resize and rotate, > and the various depth switching and visual emulation problems/features > be handled separately. Visual emulation is separate from RandR, and has been implemented a couple of times already. Given that visual emulation is a good idea in some environments, is it also a good idea to be able to change which visuals are expressed in the hardware configuration? PseudoColor emulation on TrueColor is pretty expensive when applications start performing colormap animation tricks. RandR attempts to resolve this by allowing the mapping between sets of visuals and the hardware to change on the fly. It's by far the most complicated part of the spec, and would require visual emulation code plus the ability to switch the hardware configuration around. That's a bunch of work that we're not going to be able to do anytime soon, without a sample implementation, we risk adopting an unworkable standard, a fate much worse than not adopting any standard. I think we can be careful enough with the existing spec that depth switching could be folded in if needed in the future. > > a chance to plug the necessary > >hooks into the regular XFree86 server to support resize immediately. > > That's definitely what is needed for RandR to be useful to most of this > audience. The daunting task of providing an SI for depth switching held up the decision to move forward with resize. Size switching should be relatively easy given the internal structure of XFree86. Drivers using XAA may even be able to provide rotation, although I haven't investigated that very far. Keith Packard XFree86 Core Team HP Cambridge Research Lab _______________________________________________ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
