xserver on OpenGL

[Otto Solares]

On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 10:12:50AM -0800, Kendall Bennett wrote:
> Otto Solares <solca@guug.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Dec 03, 2003 at 04:42:58PM -0800, Kendall Bennett wrote:
> > > Keith Whitwell <keith@tungstengraphics.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > But right now, there are choices between various not-quite-perfect
> > > > alternatives:
> > > > 
> > > > 2) Duplicate one of the kdrive servers, but target one of the
> > > > embedded or linux-solo GL platforms.  This means we do without
> > > > pbuffers, and whoever runs this has to get linux-solo up and
> > > > running as well as X. 
> > > 
> > > My offer still stands to help work on this using the SciTech SNAP driver
> > > architecture. We already have a complete OpenGL driver architecture
> > > working on Linux console modes independantly of X (software right now,
> > > but we are working on bringing up the Radeon hw driver based on the DRI
> > > code). It would be real easy to add pbuffer support to our
> > > implementation, but it would not really be necessary until you need to
> > > use an offscreen buffer as a texture surface for a blending operation.
> > 
> > Does your API handles mode settings? via EDID/fixed info? outside X.
> 
> Yes on all counts. You can even create custom display modes that show up 
> in the mode list if you wish, and the CRTC timings are automatically 
> created based on the VESA GTF formula. It is also possible to use fixed 
> CRTC timings for fixed frequency monitors, but you need to do a bit of 
> hacking to make that work (some of our users wrote their own tools to 
> modify our CRTC database to make this work ;-).

Currently linux-solo in Mesa-newtree is a good way to have accelerated 3D
outside X but it uses fbdev as it managing API (mode settings, palette, etc.)
and in reality is a pain.  If you could donate a new managing API for linux-solo
in an OSL that would be a good start.  That could be a good foundation for
an OpenGL backend for xserver and for others projects like mine. Just my
opinion.

-solca