Re: Interested in starting some basic development

[Christian Reiniger <warewolf@mayn.de>]

Magnus Norddahl wrote:

>> Abstraction? Will your svgalib or fbcon program also run on X or aalib or
>> render to a file without change to the binary?
>
>/dev/fb is supported by both the Linux kernel (2.1.x) and XFree86.

?? Programs accessing /dev/fbx won't run in an X window, right? libggi
programs run both directly on /dev/fbx and X (and some more). That's what I
meant.

>> And if you use libggi you *automatically* use all features (including
>> acceleration) of the underlying display mechanisms (X11, svgalib, fbcon,

>I don't know how much you've actually looked at the libggi api, but last I

Ok, I have to admit that it's long ago that I looked at their docs
(briefly) for the last time. But I'll do it now.

>checked, they had support for text mode gfx and framebuffer access - and
>nothing more.
[...]
>I cannot even create a new non-frontbuffer surface or have a hardware
>accelerated doublebuffer system (correct me if I'm wrong).

Hmmm, Did you have a look at ggiCopyBox () in libggi? Its description reads:
---
This is a area-to-area-blit, all in the same visual. Copy the box
described by x,y,w,h to the new location nx,ny. This automatically takes
care of overlaps and optimizes for the given target (e.g. uses HW-accel or
intermediate buffers as appropriate). 
---

Sounds like the thing you're looking for (well, you have to open a visual
containing some off-screen memory of course).

>When I say hardware accelerated surfaces, I mean
>Images/Sprites/surfaces/Pixmaps stored in videomemory and copied to the
>backbuffer (or framebuffer) using the display cards hardware accelerated

>> What course should they take? Their current course is to do things
>> properly. I think this is the best course.
>
>The problem with GGI is that they require throwing away all older graphics
>libraries and programs. I don't want to throw away my XFree86 - and I'm
>quite satisfied with svgalib's performance on my system. If I install GGI
>onto my system (the kernel part), I'm no longer allowed to run those older
>system - and that's just a too expensive price to pay.

IIRC that's the situation planned for the time when they have enough (and
good enough) gfx drivers. I don't think kgicon doesn't allow X or svgalib
to take over (look for "suidkgi" (I think) on their homepage). At least
that would be stupid.

And - I wasn't talking about KGI (the kernel part) all the time. I was
talking about libggi - and that's a totally independent thing.

Cu
	Christian
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