From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932075AbVHaS3x (ORCPT ); Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:29:53 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932363AbVHaS3x (ORCPT ); Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:29:53 -0400 Received: from [63.227.221.253] ([63.227.221.253]:23726 "EHLO home.keithp.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932075AbVHaS3w (ORCPT ); Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:29:52 -0400 Subject: Re: State of Linux graphics From: Keith Packard To: Discuss issues related to the xorg tree Cc: lkml , keithp@keithp.com In-Reply-To: <20050831063355.GE27940@tuolumne.arden.org> References: <9e47339105083009037c24f6de@mail.gmail.com> <1125422813.20488.43.camel@localhost> <20050831063355.GE27940@tuolumne.arden.org> Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="=-zNnLPhOHFcuLdGIX8t0Z" Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 11:29:30 -0700 Message-Id: <1125512970.4798.180.camel@evo.keithp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.2.3 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org --=-zNnLPhOHFcuLdGIX8t0Z Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 23:33 -0700, Allen Akin wrote: > On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 01:26:53PM -0400, David Reveman wrote: > | On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 12:03 -0400, Jon Smirl wrote: > | > In general, the whole concept of programmable graphics hardware is > | > not addressed in APIs like xlib and Cairo. This is a very important > | > point. A major new GPU feature, programmability is simply not > | > accessible from the current X APIs. OpenGL exposes this > | > programmability via its shader language. > |=20 > | ... I don't > | see why this can't be exposed through the Render extension. ... >=20 > What has always concerned me about this approach is that when you add > enough functionality to Render or some new X extensions to fully exploit > previous (much less current and in-development!) generations of GPUs, > you've essentially duplicated OpenGL 2.0.=20 I don't currently see any strong application motivation to provide this kind of functionality in a general purpose 2D API, and so it wouldn't make a lot of sense to push this into the 2D-centric X protocols either. When that changes, we'll want to explore how best to provide that functionality. One possibility is to transition applications to a pure GL drawing model, perhaps using glitz as a shim between the 2D and 3D worlds. That isn't currently practical as our GL implementations are missing several key features (FBOs, accelerated indirect rendering, per-component alpha compositing), but those things are all expected to be fixed at some point. The real goal is to provide a good programming environment for 2D applications, not to push some particular low-level graphics library. -keith --=-zNnLPhOHFcuLdGIX8t0Z Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQBDFfcKQp8BWwlsTdMRAgerAJ91ENXuAFRg0A5nY45gI+8qfc4gfwCgiGmD byDB6KE8I8K0+c2/1onyUWw= =c2Q1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-zNnLPhOHFcuLdGIX8t0Z--