[Xorg] Damage/Composite + direct rendering clients

[Sean Middleditch]

On Tue, 2004-05-18 at 13:28, mcnichol at austin.ibm.com wrote:

> Please pardon my ignorance on this subject, but this discussion
> raises the question in my mind about why the composition manager
> is a client, rather than being part of the Xserver.

It's the same reason the window manager is just a client.  It separates
mechanism and policy.  With the composite manager as a client, you can
swap in and out any such client you want.  The compositing can do a huge
number of "special effects," such as transforming windows (couple this
with the WM to get 3D minimize/shade effects), adding drop shadows,
applying a filter/mask (say, dimming windows out the further down the
stack they are), and so on.  If the compositor was in the server, all of
these would have to be coded directly into the server, or they simply
wouldn't be possible.

> 
> Is there a write up on this somewhere?


> 
> Thanks
> Dan
> 
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-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis at awesomeplay.com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.