[Xorg] Re: X on OpenGL

[Jon Smirl]

--- John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-07-10 at 23:45, Andy Sy wrote:
> > I certainly would have to defer to the judgement of those who are
> > more familiar with the API and the its implementation efficiency on
> > different cards, but considering how ironic the fact that it is an
> > API which was expressly developed to rely on an external 2D window
> > manager and is now being used to implement one itself, I believe
> > many would need more convincing as to its appropriateness.
> 
> OpenGL was partitioned to be independent of the windowing system
> because OpenGL is a rendering system ONLY and because OpenGL 
> needed to co-exist with existing windowing systems on various
> platforms.
> 
> A windowing system includes as one its many roles the task of
> rendering. Assigning the task of rendering for a windowing system
> to a rendering API which is windowing system neutral is completely
> consistent with the design goals of OpenGL.

Think of X as a full screen app. This app then draws the windows using
the OpenGL drawing API. All of the clipping, compositing, etc is
handled in the X server.

Another way to look at it is to think of XAA as an API which supports
full screen drawing.  Then X is implemented on top of XAA. OpenGL will
just replace XAA.

In reality things are more complex, but this is a simple way to think
about it.

=====
Jon Smirl
jonsmirl at yahoo.com


		
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