Eric Pareja wrote:
>> dido at impreium.ph wrote: >> >> It mutated into Display PDF and is now a key component of MacOS X. > > Thanks. I'm wondering though if it's still built atop X just like DPS?
Nope. Quartz/Quartz Extreme is its own display server.
And if I understand correctly... Aqua is [more or less] the widget set / GUI layer sitting on top of Quartz.
Quartz Extreme makes extensive use of OpenGL calls (and thus, takes advantage of the hardware acceleration provided by OpenGL drivers) for its key functionality such as compositing layers (i.e. for alpha blending, etc...).
The new direction they want to take X into is to leverage off of OpenGL as well. Glitz is a project which has successfully implemented XRender functionality on top of OpenGL ( http://www.freedesktop.org/bin/rdiff/Software/glitz ).
At this point in time, despite all its flaws, it seems that there are just too many programs running under X for it to be thrown away. So they're using the extension mechanism to retrofit new functionality into it - but such an approach may or may not be holding back the design of better APIs for new features.
Looking at how today's Windows is able to very adeptly encapsulate both the Win16 [probably including all the exotic plumbing including DDE] and DOS subsystem [one of the demos for Longhorn shows that it is able to run Visicalc for DOS... and like I mentioned earlier Windows XP runs ancient CGA programs even better than Windows 9x!] without compromising the design or efficient operation of newer APIs, perhaps an analogous approach can be taken for a new *nix display server.
Two possible approaches:
1. Make X compatibility an isolated part of a built-from the ground up display server that is /not X/. Such a server would need to be able to appear as a true-blue X server for old X clients (i.e. speak the unmodified X11 wire protocol) but somehow have a way for the 'new technology' clients to let the server know that they are such and 'switch it' into a different mode.
[Note that the above is completely speculative... I may be talking off the top of my head here as I don't understand enough yet...]
2. Just run an X server on top of a non-X display layer. X servers (especially rootless ones - i.e. no root window / all windows are displayed independently) running on OS X and Windows (heck there were X servers running on DOS... remember Deskview/X?) prove you can have completely seamless running of X apps side by side with non-X apps on your non-X desktop - even cut-and-paste works to some degree, nor is drag and drop between X and non-X apps inconceivable.
[This is actually the cleanest way to have your cake and eat it too and it's already been proven to work...]
It really all depends on whether the decades old architecture of X is holding us back and as such is better shoved into an isolated part and no longer enhanced, or if its extension mechanism is still up to the task of embracing the latest innovations without compromise.
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