XAA vs. EXA in old hardware support

[Alan Cox]

Ar Llu, 2006-06-19 am 19:35 -0400, ysgrifennodd Adam Jackson:
> Psht.  Like xtank matters.

Jim can probably confirm the story but the story goes that the big
optimisation work on the X line drawing was originally done *for* xtank
8)

> EXA now decomposes line draws (and some other stuff) to iterated calls to the 
> driver's Solid fill routine. 

That only helps for horizontal and vertical lines (and for older cards
is generally slower there than writing to the frame buffer). Xtank is
just a classic example of where hardware line draw should be used and
why EXA should allow drivers to provide a line draw routine, at least
for the non alpha case.