Rasterman's New Toy: EVAS 198
renai42 writes: "Rasterman gave a very interesting speech about his new EVAS canvas software at Linux.conf.au this week. This LinuxToday.com.au article gives a fair idea of the gist of the speech. EVAS is interesting stuff for the Linux community - a hardware accelerated X desktop with anti-aliased fonts and alpha blending." They've been claiming that the next Enlightenment will be the fastest WM around thanks mostly to EVAS.
Totally Offtopic Side Note 1: I find it amusing that LinuxToday.com.au snatched my X icon: I always thought it was probably the crappiest Slashdot icon, and I never dreamed anyone would want to take it. My policy on Slashdot Icons has always been steal whatever ones you like, but credit us when you use 'em, and its not a big deal, but its just funny to see who takes what.)
Totally offtopic sidenote 2: while we're talking about toys, check out Jubei, my MAME front end I've been poking on in my enormous amounts of free time.
Woohoo!!!! (Score:1)
WOW! I cannot wait it! (Score:1)
Later i met saw(fish/mill) and forgot about my experience with enlightenment.
If ever enlightenment gets faster i will happily switch back! (By the way i have to check it again now my machine has 192M ram as it had 64M before)...
Thanx rasterman keep good work!
Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:5)
Sawfish seems to me to be about 2-10 times faster (purely subjective) than Enlightenment. Can that gap be bridged by hardware? Of course, but it still doesn't make E efficient.
X Render Extension. (Score:2)
Windows vs. XFree86 & WM's (Score:1)
This being said, I think that XFree86 has some (minor?) performance issues when compared to Windows, but if use of hardware acceleration is introduced, at least we can compare the speed on an equal playing field.
GLUI (Score:1)
Antialiased fonts and alpha blending ? (Score:1)
desktop (Score:3)
Think different (Score:2)
Rasterman's New Toy: EVAS
Thought that Rasterman had gone out and picked up some of those oh-so-cool Evangelion figures?
Re:What's wrong with Berlin? (Score:1)
You didn't read the speach, did you? Nor, apparently, did you even read the full Slashdot intro that was given... If you had, you would have realized that this is simply a desktop for X, not a whole new windowing system.
Ranessin
Excellent news. (Score:1)
I'm glad to hear that the project is still alive and doing so well and that this issue is being resolved. He's always been very passionate about E and no matter what window manager you use, you have to appreciate this kind of enthusiasm he has for his project. It's this kind of attitude that helps to continually drive the whole Linux community forward.
I knew it. :-) (Score:2)
And of course, other than just for the sake of shear beauty, using 3D accellerators to draw interfaces makes perfect sense. Most companies that make accellerated cards put a LOT more effort and design consideration into the accellerators, but not so much into the 2D accelleration. As a result, 3D graphics are rendered more quickly on just about all cards. Let's use that power for more than just games! :-)
Enlightenment's backdrop config (Score:1)
I've experienced various ranges of performance between E and Sawfish. I've had E beat Sawfish at theme changes and window operations sometimes.
What I can't stand is the Gnome Background Config.
Why is everyone so bloody afraid of heirarchial structures? I love being able to install a symlink to wherever Propaganda.debs choose to install themselves and have it all be reflected in a menu without a lot of fuss. Face it traditional config GUIs make you do more work.
Re:Excellent news. (Score:1)
What I'm really looking forward though is the font anti-aliasing. It's almost embarrassing to show screenshots of KDE and Gnome desktops with all the jagged fonts all over the place.
Re:X Render Extension. (Score:2)
Actually, really, I suppose it's not much to do with X Render anyway, and is more like the GLUI tollkit mentioned in this comment [slashdot.org]. (GL is actually rather good for pixely 2D stuff).
Then again, maybe I'm letting him off easy 'cause he's an ex-Amiga hacker like myself (only he's better, of course.)...
His archival screenshots ( 1 [rasterman.com] 2 [rasterman.com] ) of his amiga desktop from back in the day (early '90s)really illustrate how far behind Unix was on the GUI side
of things when the Amiga was at its peak - I had a similar looking desktop, and, boy, twm was a big step backwards...
Geez (Score:1)
Annnnyways...I had been wondering when someone was gonna use OpenGL
acceleration to render stuff in X... The idea has popped up in more than one
cofeeshop discussion between me and my friends, but no one
ever had the mad X hacking skillz to do it.
Way to go Raster!
--K
Re:I knew it. :-) (Score:2)
Re:X Render Extension. (Score:1)
Re:Rasterman's software (Score:2)
It wasn't a perfect window manager (and nobody claimed it was since it's still labeled as devel) but it kicked ass back in the early Windows 95 days.. I was so happy when I compiled Enlightement and could take a break for the bleak FVWM.
Oh, sure, EVAS seems great (Score:2)
--
"HORSE."
Re:I knew it. :-) (Score:1)
And windows can't move this way when not 2D accelerated. Just try out XFree on MacOS X, which does not support it.
The catch is: it only works with ATI's cards.
Re:Woohoo!!!! (Score:2)
Re:Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:1)
-- BitDancer
Way to go! (Score:1)
1) Write a library of good-looking, wickedly fast GUI widgets using the EVAS API (rip some code from Gtk to get this going quickly)
2) Invent a high-level network protocol for creating, manipulating, and responding to events on these widgets. Heck, write one on top of CORBA if you must. Now client applications will connect directly to Enlightenment and build GUI interfaces using its facilities.
3) Give Enlightenment direct access to input devices through a library like SDL [libsdl.org]
4) Finally, RM -RF THAT CRUFTY PIECE OF JUNK CALLED X11!
Please, Rasterman, realize that this technology won't just enable window managers to have fast eye-candy. It could form the basis for a completely independent, hardware-accelerated display server (not even OSX's Quartz is hardware-accelerated yet)! By managing and rendering widgets at the server, you will blow Windows, OSX, etc out of the water performance-wise, and keep X11-style network transparency!
Re:Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:1)
It seems that he is bypassing the X drawing layer somehow ("Raster showed us comparisons between X-accelerated displays and EVAS accelerated displays"). How that works with other X apps and the normal X feature set would be interesting.
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Re:Oh, sure, EVAS seems great (Score:1)
Re:desktop (Score:2)
Personally I don't like/use gnome and so I like having a graphical way to change my background.
(Well actually, I like bonobo and gnome apps. I just don't like the huge tool bar and the way gnome thinks it is a window manager when it's not)
Re:I knew it. :-) (Score:1)
Notice the difference?
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What hardware? (Score:3)
Anyway, I'm just wondering -- does this mean that this EVAS stuff only works with NVidia cards? Is there any chance I'll get it to work with my G400?
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Re:Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:1)
After the initial shock (no docking bars, cartoon icons and Hollywood style special effects), I actually started enjoying its....minimalism....:)
As for speed - it probably improved at least 10-fold, which comes as no surprise, considering just how basic FVWM is.
Linux going down the Windows road (Score:2)
Not.
One more proof that Linux != Unix.
- Hubert (Unix lover)
Re:desktop (Score:1)
This is one area of Window Managers in general that has annoyed me for quite some time. That is the doubling up of features. In regards to setting a background though, Gnome has the ability to completely disable its control over setting the background. Therefor whatever else you are doing to set a background will always work... E on the otherhand only allows you to turn off having a background... so if you then set a background through Gnome and then bring up a transparent terminal, the terminal will just show a blank root window as opposed to the background that you set through Gnome. At least that has been my experience.
Re:Think different (Score:1)
WM choice (Score:2)
The themes that come with Debian are pleasing to the eye, and the WM seems easy to use. However, I do miss the right-mouse-button Lower feature (to send a window to the back) which FVWM supports.
But at least Windows users don't accuse my desktop of being "dull" any more
To broaden the appeal of Linux, it needs more work on this sort of thing. However, I think Linux is an awful long way from being a "consumer level" OS like Windows. Having just upgraded my system with the latest Debian, the installation leaves a lot to be desired when compared with Windows. Fortunately, I almost know what I'm doing when it comes to Linux (having first started with Linux when it was kernel 0.12!), so it wasn't a big deal for me to install Deb, but I can't imagine most of my friends (who are not in software development) installing it without my (or some other Linux aware person's) help.
Re:What hardware? (Score:1)
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Re:I knew it. :-) (Score:1)
I think you might mean windows 2000 instead of OSX.
a google search of OSX and opengl [google.com] doesn't produce anything interesting. And Apple is fairly good about issueing press releases if they do something new. I've heard that the new interface for apple is pretty and that it's slick but I haven't heard too much about it being fast.
Anyways, your logic is a little bit screwy about using 3d acceleration to speed up 2d. Because if you could do that then 3d acceleration would be called 3d and 2d acceleration. Perhaps you are associating OpenGL with 3d only instead of 2d? But OpenGL can be used to accelerate 2d also if you add the following line (and one or two others) to your code.
gluOrtho2D(0, EzWinWidth , 0, EzWinHieght);
Re:What's wrong with Berlin? (Score:1)
I think Berlin would have a serious chance if it was able to run X apps. Given that it currently can't, adoption is just not going to be widespread.
Re:desktop (Score:2)
Err, actually you've got it backwards. E predated Gnome, and in most instances where they overlap, it is Gnome that duplicated a feature that was in E ( or any other WM).
With the advent of destop managers, of which there are two main competitors(KDE, Gnome), it's up to the WM developers to decide to go back and remove the "overlapping" functionality. Or detect if a desktop manager is running and disable that functionality.
For a lot of people that's a hard pill to swallow, especially given that you don't know for certain your users are going to be running ANY desktop software. The path of least resistance is just leave the code be.XLib bypass? (Score:1)
Re:Excellent news. (Score:1)
Debs for E17 (Score:3)
Figure out there how to get it apt-able.
heikkih
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Re:desktop (Score:1)
--
David
Re:Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:2)
<p>Although nowadays it's popular to hate Enlightenment, bash it's speed and fanciness, Enlightenment for me was more like a proof of concept, an attempt to achieve what's not directly achievable by X11. It was also a major eye candy in Linux advocasy demos (well, till MacOS X arrived, with the "swallowing taskbar"
<p>I'm talking about the rippling desktop, zooming workspaces, transparent terminals (eTerm). All of that stuff was done by hacks around X, without any dedicated effects API from X -- and they managed to do it.
<p>Now, OpenGL can offer those effects with real hardware acceleration - scaling, alpha blending, just the stuff all those effects need.
Re:Excellent news. (Score:1)
Do you have to re-compile KDE?
Re:Windows vs. XFree86 & WM's (Score:1)
I run E on a P233 and have no speed issues (Score:3)
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Re:What hardware? (Score:1)
Re:I run E on a P233 and have no speed issues (Score:1)
Re:What hardware? (Score:2)
Re:What hardware? (Score:1)
Re:iiemyiwryfhopypwsyhuyapydosiiymwiniyhuyaatiwkya (Score:1)
Re:Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:2)
as far as terminals go, it's Rxvt all the way, there's no other terminal that comes up as fast. I will trade that kind of speed for the obvious slowdown of using a hacked transparent terminal which ugly-ly blinks white everytime you click on it.
But on another, slightly off-topic note.. everyone here is talking about 3D hardware acceleration. What ever happened to 2D hardware acceleration and how to it's not supported in X or seemingly trying to be supported?
EVAS is good (Score:1)
---
boris at darkrock dot co dot uk
Re:Way to go! (Score:1)
integrating RENDER and XAA (XFree86 Acceleration Architecture) is a much better solution, and the one that will catch on. EVAS can simply be retargetted to RENDER.
Of course, you're probably just another person who can't read top who thinks his X server is sucking up 30 megs (hint: its not). I wish there was some good reference on modern COW shared mapping paged VMs.
Slower Systems (Score:3)
As a sidenote, what kind of graphics cards are we looking at here? Anything that has an accelerated X server (like, say, an old Mach64) or are we only talking high-end cards?
Re:Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:3)
It seems like they are saying that Enlightenment will be faster because it will specifically coded for the accelerated X server.
I still kinda doubt it. Just because something's hardware accelerated, it doesn't mean that it will be fastest necessarily. Enlightment just has too much JUNK in it...it tries to do EVERYTHING...its a victim of rampant featuritis, or at least freeping creaturism.
Re:What's wrong with Berlin? (Score:2)
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
Try Sawfish (Score:2)
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Re:I knew it. :-) (Score:2)
Questions, questions. Apple DisplayPDF anyone? (Score:2)
EVAS is an API or library that allows for the WM, in this case E, to utilize hardware accelerated OpenGL hardware, not just the standard 2d raster stuff found on most video cards, right?
Does this mean E will only work on NVIDIA and 3dfx hardware, under Linux? I've heard other people mention this too.
Is this canvas software, EVAs, akin to Apple's DisplayPDF layer? Will it eventually mature into a display layer that sits between the hardware and the WM? I'm curious if Apple was an inspiration, or not.
Or is it literally just a wrapper around OpenGL? Instead of calling a 2d api, it just remaps to an equiv 3d function call to get the alpha blending and scaling?
If this is literally in it's infancy, maybe a long term design plan to create a Quartz type API would be nice.
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Re:Windows vs. XFree86 & WM's (Score:2)
Re:Way to go! (Score:2)
So, basically what you are saying is, re-invent X, but do it in a way that is incompatible with most of the existing X apps out there... all so you can get rid of X?? Hmm.. something doesn't make much sense here...
Re:Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:2)
What Raster is saying is that actual tests of the *next* version of Enlightenment (using EVAS) show it to currently be the fastest window manager out there. I havn't tried that yet, but it sounds as though his claims are not without some evidence.
--Ben
Huge toolbar (or not). (Score:2)
A few questions etc. (Score:2)
Thanks.
It's... It's...
Re:WM choice (Score:2)
if you are looking at an installer targeted for the average windows user you should probably consider mandrake.
the installer isn't really that important on the "consumer level". most "consumers" dont install operating systems. the operating system comes preinstalled.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
Re:Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:3)
What I think is humorous is Raster's minimum requirements for EFM. PII-300, 96Mb of Ram, accelerated X server...For a FILE MANAGER???
of course, Konqueror and GMC are just as bloated, and none of them are very functional when it comes to OO behavior (just because it's Drag Drop, doesn't mean it's good...I wanna be able to move something a link points to and have the link KNOW about it, dammit!!! ... think WPS).
Here's one that's fast and nice though, even if not perfect, it's the best Filemanager for X at the moment IMHO:
http://rox.sourceforge.net
Rasterman's interface style (Score:2)
Everyone has been told massive amounts of global variables are poor style. Everyone except Rasterman. Current color? Current drawing surface? Font to use? Dithering? All globals. It makes his code clear and efficient, and just as important, it eliminates all of those normally unused paramaters from functions that make code ugly and interfaces difficult to remember.
So what if a lot would have to change to make his code thread safe. He prefers to use one thread for graphics stuff anyway, and he doesn't make sacrifices people who don't.
What I am trying to say, is that we have general coding rules. Like no globals, because stuff like thread safety is lost and have different people design different parts becomes error prone. But he knows he doesn't care about thread safety, and he is the only person writing the library, so he violates the general rule. And his libraries are better for it. Evas is no exception.
-Ben
Ive played with EVAS... (Score:2)
EVAS has three modes for rendering: Hardware Accellerated using OpenGL, Software only using various X windows extensions to speed things up, and X lib only for compatiblility with the lowest common denominator.
I'm away from my linux box right now, so the next paragraph is from memory, and by now raster might have added more features and speed.
The EVAS demo I looked at showed off all the features of evas like anitaliased text, alpha blending, image scaling, and so forth. When in Hardware mode, I was able to get around 80 FPS on my system with a Pentium 2 350 and a tnt 2 ultra (by todays standards, this is not an impressive system), in software mode the speed dropped to arounf 20 fps (comparable to the other canvases ive seen), xlib mode was slower, and the image quality was horrible, but the point of xlib mode is not for speed or quality but compatiblity.
Raster's plan is to use EVAS to accelerate E 17 and EFM (Enlightenment's intergrated file manager). With hardware acelleration, E 17 shoud slimply rock.
What I would like to see now, is for evas to be incorporated into other canvases, like the gnome canvas, whatever kde's canvas is, and java 2d. That would rock even more.
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Re:Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:2)
treke
Re:I knew it. :-) (Score:2)
Re:Windows vs. XFree86 & WM's (Score:4)
Re:Window managers? (Score:2)
Re:Enlightenment's backdrop config (Score:3)
I think it's already gone ;)
Rich
Re:Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:2)
According to http://www.us.rasterman.com/news.html [rasterman.com], ``I've been working on Enlightenment 0.17 too - and well- optimizing it too. I'm pretty sure its currently the fastest window manager out there - admittedly not 100% complete - just check it out of CVS. I've been doing performance comparisons with blackbox, fvwm, twm, windowmaker, sawfish, mwm and fvwm2 - and enlightenment 0.17 sofar equals or beats them in every speed test i throw at it.'' I find this quite interesting.
But on another, slightly off-topic note.. everyone here is talking about 3D hardware acceleration. What ever happened to 2D hardware acceleration and how to it's not supported in X or seemingly trying to be supported?
Almost nobody here is talking about 3D hardware acceleration. Thiss is all about 2D. Contrary to popular belief OpenGL does 2D as well as 3D.
--Ben
Oh Yea, come to me baby... (Score:2)
Re:Slower Systems (Score:2)
>>>>>>>
I don't think that any cards from the P120 era even *have* OpenGL HW acceleration, much less a good implementation of it. So no, I suggest you splurge and spend the $35 (on pricewatch) that a NVIDIA RivaTNT2 M64 costs. You'll be happier, trust me.
Re:X Render Extension. (Score:2)
>>>
Actually, for most implementations, the OpenGL 2D path sucks monkey balls. It is only good when you treat the desktop as a 3D space with a fixed viewpoint. That means instead of using blits and stuff, you texture map windows onto quads and draw them. Of course, I don't know how Raster pulled it off, since OpenGL currently doesn't support hardware rendering to a pixmap, but hey, he's a smart guy.
Re:What's wrong with Berlin? (Score:2)
From what info I see on here, EVAS isn't, as long as you have the needed X extensions.
Re:I knew it. :-) (Score:2)
Re:WM choice (Score:2)
I installed Beta 2 of Progeny [progeny.com] today. It's a Debian-based dist written by Debian developers, and it has a whizzy graphical install. I'd have no qualms about giving it to someone who's never installed Linux before.
Re:A few questions etc. (Score:2)
>>>>>>>
However, they also have a case of "not invented here" syndrome, so most likely, GNOME EVAS will not be compatible with KDE EVAS, will not be compatible with E EVAS.
How exactly can OpenGL do stuff like this? I know that OpenGL is now added to Xfree 4 hardware-accelerated whenever possible, and otherwise software-wise, so I understand people will start to use the OpenGL API just because they know it is always as fast as possible. But I thought OpenGL was about 3D? (OpenGL is still a bare terrain for me.)
>>>
OpenGL doesn't really do 3D, it draws triangles in 3D space. All you have to do is fix your viewpoint directly above the scene, and make sure that everything you render is the same distance from the observer. For example, to blit a pixmap to part of a window, you create a texture out of the pixmap, and draw it on whatever part of the desktop you want. You get the hardware scaling effects by making the quad (quadralateral) you are using bigger or smaller, and OpenGL will not only resize the pic, but if you have filtering enabled, will smooth it out. You can do anti-aliasing creating a texture with the text and the correct alpha values, and alpha blending (again, accelerated by OpenGL) the texture onto the screen. OpenGL is actually quite nifty for 2D when used in this way. I wrote a little demo game once using GL. It was a 2D side scroller, but using OpenGL you can add stuff like rotation, scaling, light effects, cool fire effects, etc, that are usually hard (and slow) to do without GL.
So why are normal X extentions not hardware accellerated?
>>>>>
For most cards, the 2D path (used by X) doesn't mesh well with the 3D (OpenGL) path.
That's what X is supposed to do: work with your video card, right? I mean, why can't this be done through Xrender or whatever deals with antialias etc.?
>>>>>>>>>>
I suppose it could by done through X render, but I think that the XRender guys saw it fit to write their own driver API, maybe for good reasons (or maybe not
Re:Way to go! (Score:2)
Re:Way to go! (Score:2)
Re:Totally Offtopic Side Note 1 comment (Score:2)
And that WINE icon is just evil...
Re:Slower Systems (Score:2)
He won't be able to run it, simply from the standpoint that the M64 AFAIK is AGP-only, and I doubt that a P120 has an AGP slot. Dude (p120 guy), just be happy with fvwm2 or blackbox or windowmaker or whatever works, because the amount of time and effort and potentially money you'll spend on that machine to get E/Gnome+Whatever/KDE running smoothly is prohibitive (I ran E pretty well on a p233mmx with 64meg of ram and an ATI Xpert 98 card, that's probably the minimum; now I run it on a p2-450 with 128 and a Riva TNT, and it flys (no Gnome)).
If you are interested in getting a used PC, check out used-pcs.com [used-pcs.com](a local shop I've heard good things about; they have tons of Dells and whatnot. A system that meets the "minimum" for E I mentioned above looks like it would cost about $200-250 from them). Of course eBay is an option etc. etc. My point being is that if you really want to run this stuff just spend ~$300 or so on a used system, and make the old machine a server or something. :-) Good luck! (note also that you don't need Gnome at all if you're running E 0.16.x, so you can save memory and CPU by just running E.)
--
Fuck Censorship.
Re:Enlightenment -- fast? (Score:3)
It's not talking about a specific X server, it's talking about a different canvas library that uses OpenGL graphics acceleration.
>>Enlightment just has too much JUNK in it...it tries to do EVERYTHING...its a victim of rampant featuritis, or at least freeping creaturism.
I believe that the new version of enlightenment is a complete rewrite. Have you looked at the new source code?
Or on the other hand, your coment about "it tries to do EVERYTHING" may not have to do with code at all but is based on a misconception that adding features is the same thing as adding complexity to the code. This doesn't have to be true with a flexible design.
It is wrong/imposible to describe a program as "a victim of rampant featuritis" without looking at the code. Users don't look at software and say, "This software is too powerfull and flexible for me" (They may say that the interface is overwhelming or unintuitive, but that's not the same thing as featuritis).
Thus a program may indeed "do EVERYTHING" without having featuritis if the code is clean.
Another contender: "Skinux" (Score:2)
screenshot [skinux.com] up, and you can browse their site [skinux.com] for more info.
- - - - -
This is most exciting because... (Score:2)
This is most exciting because we can use it to develop a really super kick-ass XDM replacement, or so I hope. The easiest way to get the largest group of people able to develop new login screens for it would probably to combine XDM-EVAS (for lack of a better name) with the flash player. Then you could develop flash movies with special properties which would handle gathering login name and password. Just be careful about bounds checking, eh? :)
Re:Enlightenment's backdrop config (Score:2)
Rich
Re:desktop:: backwards? (Score:2)
> is Gnome that duplicated a feature that was in E ( or any other WM).
Chronicologically you are correct, but in the order of installation it doesn't happen that way. If Gnome or KDE is installed, then the Window Manager that works with them duplicating, or worse, overriding, their features it unpleasant. I understand that it's extra work to remove the stuff that was a lot of work to put in, but that doesn't change the fact that the stuff makes it less useful as a window manager.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Doesn't finish anything (Score:2)
Perhaps you forget, but Rasterman actually gets paid to develop Enlightenment. If I was his boss I would have told him long ago to get something finished or get out.
And where the hell do you get the idea that people are only allowed to complain about things if they themselves are actively working on something like that? I paid for a boxed RedHat. If you pay for a car, do you feel that you're only allowed to whinge if the doors fall if if you yourself build cars? If you pay taxes to the government so that they can build roads, and the roads are full of potholes, do you only have the right to complain about it if you yourself help build roads? If you pay taxes to the government for decent schooling for you children, are you only allowed to complain if their schooling sucks if you yourself are helping to build schools? Don't be ridiculous. Get real. I don't have to write wm's to have a right to call other wm's as I see them.
Re:Rasterman's interface style (Score:2)
A lot of serialized interfaces become much easier to program if a global state is preserved. It can also be much faster in many cases as no checks are needed to see what is different between the new and previous arugments.
I also think this is vital to get the drawing code away from the toolkits. OpenGL has this and we people writing Qt, GTK, Windows MFC, and other programs can cut & paste there OpenGL code between them!
Xlib and Win32 GDI do not do this, and nobody bothers bothers emulating one of these on the other, despite the portability advantages. This is because the application has to retrieve the static information (the "gc") from the toolkit library, binding your code to the toolkit, and making portability between the toolkits impossible.
Re:Way to go! (Score:2)
B) Yes it IS particularly bloated. While BeOS and QNX get away with full featured DEs for less than a meg, X at a minimum has a around 10-15 megs of binaries. Given the fact that QNX's Photon (in conjunction with QNET) does even more than X (full network transparency, window manager, FontFusion AA font renderer, OpenGL integration, etc, X compatibility) and takes up at most a few megs (with all the features, the most bloated being X compatibility) X has to be classified as criminally bloated.
C) Why doesn't anybody use xlib then? xlib reminds me a lot of GDI (which makes sense, the GDI is influenced by X), and given the fact that Win32 is overall one of the crappiest API's I've ever had the pain to program, that's not saying much.
Re:Way to go! (Score:2)
Re:Slower Systems (Score:2)
- Nvidia Riva TNT2 vanta 16MB sdram
PCI - Retail Box
Nvidia Riva TNT2 vanta 16MB sdram PCI
$ 48
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Partially correct. There is a PCI version, it is just a little more expensive. Still, $48 is chump change considering how much better having good OpenGl compatibility feels.
Re:Windows vs. XFree86 & WM's (Score:2)
Re:Windows vs. XFree86 & WM's (Score:2)
Re:Windows vs. XFree86 & WM's (Score:2)
glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES);
glVertex2f(2.0,3.0);
glVertex2f(2,2,3,5);
glVertex2f(2.9,3.9);
...etc...
glEnd();
In that bit of code, you could have drawn a 500 pixel triangle with only a few lines.
Re:Enlightenment's backdrop config (Score:2)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A) Not everyone want's to fuss and figure out exactly *where* those symlinks go. With a GUI, you don't need to read any docs. With the CLI (for want of a better term to reference "your way") you do. Also, free yourself from the notion that the software developer has *any* control over what goes on your system. " wherever Propaganda.debs choose to install themselves" is just wrong, autocratic, and MS-like. YOU should chose where your software goes, not the Debian guys, and not the package maintainer! Stand up for your rights and be counted, or be downtrodden like the rest of the software-industry-oppressed lusers!