Re: [forum] Re: FW: XFree86 future

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On Son, 2003-03-23 at 13:30, Lukas Molzberger wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 23, 2003 at 10:35:19AM +0100, Lukas Molzberger wrote:
> > > > Don't worry, we're not planning on getting rid of the client-server
> > > >model any time soon.  David Wexelblat is correct in the sense that 
> > > >the majority of people do not need it, but it's definitely the case 
> > > >that some people find it essential.  Not only that, I disagree with him.
> > > >I think direct rendered 2D has little to no benefit.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >                        Mark.
> > > 
> > > If direct rendered 2D would bring little to no benefit why then is the 
> > > performance of direct rendered 3D under XFree so much better than the 2D 
> > 
> > How can you compare them ? 
> I admit that this is mainly a subjective thing, but in 3D I can load really 
> complex objects and I can move them around and it feels smooth and fluent. 
> The 3D won't let me see any broken or incompletly drawing states. 

That's because OpenGL apps usually use double buffering. You still see
tearing unless the buffer swaps are synchronized to the refresh.

The issue isn't speed but smoothness.

> But that's the case on the X11 desktop. Sometimes I can watch the system 
> redrawing a window. The X11 desktop just doesn't feel good. That's not only 
> a XFree problem but a general problem of X11. I've used several X11 
> implementations (in Irix, AIX, Solaris) and it's always the same.  

I do think that double buffering could do wonders but I don't know how
feasible or hard it would be to achieve that.


> > One thing that would be nice is to have a common driver for 2D and 3D.
> > Or at least that both use the same command stream (the drm dma engine if
> > it is available, 

BTW the Radeon drivers do that.


> > > > the 3D part of the graphics driver right than it is to get the 2D part 
> > > right. 
> > > > I'm certain that network transparency together with the ancient X11
> > > API's are 
> > > > a large part of the problem of the XFree project. I've worked on several 
> >  
> > Well, on local X, the network part is supposed to be almost transparent
> > and cost very little, so why remove it.
> 
> My point is that the client-server model does not only have a performance 
> penalty 

Why do you say that when all people here who have actually measured this
seem to disagree?

> but more importantly that it also makes X11 as a whole unnecessarily 
> complex. It makes it difficult if not impossible to fix certain issues in 
> XFree and the complexity also scares possible new developers away. 

Why? I've never had to deal with the wire protocol while working on
drivers.

> Take for example the problem of resizing opque windows. It looks extremly 
> slow and broken even on fast hardware. 

Window resizing is extremely slow on MacOS X as well, that doesn't seem
to bother people as long as it's smooth.

> That's not really a performance problem but a synchronization problem 
> between the WM, the XServer and the application. I've asked about this 
> issue before and everybody seem to agree that it is pretty much 
> impossible to solve this issue with the current X11 protocol. 

Owen Taylor seems to disagree. Do you think the synchronization issues
would be easier to solve without a central server? At least Aqua has a
server as well, ours just happens to be behind a wire protocol which
provides network transparency without performance impact in the local
case. That's great, isn't it?


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)/ Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
XFree86 and DRI project member   /  CS student, Free Software enthusiast



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