Re: SDL vs GGI

[Pierre Phaneuf <pp@ludusdesign.com>]

Alexandre Courbot wrote:

> > If GGI get a similar level of "support" by the distributions (just
> > including the package, that is), tell me what would be the advantage of
> > GGI over Svgalib?
> 
> Short answer: you don't need root rights to run your programs. That way
> Quadra won't crash. :)

Sorry, that's if you have "real GGI". Here, all I got to work was the
Svgalib target. Crash crash.

And if the "real GGI" does the same mistake (because it is only a
package in the distribution and is not pampered at installation like the
X server is) and thinks my Matrox G200 is a Tseng card or some other
stuff like that, the same thing is probably going to happen. Crash
crash.

> > If the advantage is that it at least work in X, then
> > tell me why I wouldn't use Xlib instead and gain the ability to pop
> > multiple windows and support cut & paste?
> 
> I tried to program with Xli, and I gave up. Too hard.

I must be a masochist. :-)

I don't know, it doesn't feel hard to me. You've got surfaces, some are
local (XImage), some aren't (Pixmap, Window), and you've got a blitter
(XCopyArea, XPutImage). The X server does its best (which is not much
with XFree86 before 3.9.x, but still better than Svgalib) to do what you
ask him quickly.

X sucks, but for *other* reasons. The fact that it doesn't optimize the
local case any further than a Unix domain socket is very painful. But
Unix has its limits too it seems. What would be cool would be a special
kind of shared library that would have shared data between all of the
programs using it and that could have special rights to the hardware
while in it (or maybe it could use GGI!). But we don't have that.

Direct rendering is one way to step aside of some of X limitations, as
is the GLX pipeline.

-- 
Pierre Phaneuf
Ludus Design, http://ludusdesign.com/
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you. Then you win." -- Gandhi