Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
--Mike == Mike A Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Mike On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Lukas Molzberger wrote: Another source of complexity comes from the ancient, more than 10 years old X API. Many people argue that one just has to add new extensions to keep XFree up to date. Mike It is hardly ancient. well, it could be considered old, but then perhaps that just means it has withstood its challengers, and remains superior overall. the Unix kernel and its attendant libraries range up to 30 years old, with similar properties ... d ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Tue, 16 Jul 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Quoting Mike A. Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I personally don't see any alternative to overcome the current problems of XFree. I don't see real problems in XFree, and think that one of the best features of X is the networking capabilities. Indeed, have a look to how easy is to have xinerama on two different video cards. Do this with windows or macos. It's hard, if not impossible at all. Is that a joke ? Did you ever try to set up a second gfx card and monitor under Mac OS ? It's a breeze, just point'n'click. Whereas in X, you have to hunt for the Xinerama HOWTO and mess with the config file. xf86cfg has multihead configuration built in, although it isn't what I personally consider user friendly. This is something that will become more friendly in the future though as multihead becomes much more popular. :-) I wan't to stop someday and write code for a better multihead configuration interface in the textmode (currently it just adds new screens to the left of the last one). For the graphics interface, I plan to write a wizard mode, similar to the text interface. And also, make this wizard mode allow configuring everything without the need of a working mouse; curently if the mouse does not work, it is required to use xkb mousekeys, and this really is not user friendly :-) Anyway, the code is there, and I don't mind if someone uses part (or all) of the xf86cfg code in a Gtk or Kde interface. I just think that any such code should use libxf86config, so that if it reads an existing XF86Config file, when writing a new one, does not miss any information from the previous configuration file (in the current libxf86config, comments may be rewritten out of order, but are not lost). redhat-config-xfree86 uses libxf86config, or rather a python wrapper for it. -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Alexander LarssonRed Hat, Inc [EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] He's an immortal hunchbacked househusband haunted by an iconic dead American confidante She's a beautiful communist bounty hunter in the witness protection program. They fight crime! ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
We need the X-newbies website - www.x-newbies.org ;) It is very important and XFree86 should publish a book for BASIC X window concept. It should explain all basic concepts of the Xwindow with example picture etc. Presently in Xfree86 very very less no.of picture are available to explain. Already existing books may be good. But not for newbies. More ( Correct ) information should be given to Future Xperts :) Bye :) -- --==| Bharathi S | BSB-364 DONLab | IIT-Madras |==-- Some food for the stomach is brought When the ear get no food for thought. *In Tirukkural of Holy Tamil poet Tiruvalluvar. ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
[Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Christian Berger wrote: Netscape is much faster than Mozilla. I think it's just that some design decisions in the X version of Mozilla, which is probably much different than the Window's version, are suboptimal. Having seen enough Well I doubt Mozilla for Windows is faster than Mozilla for Linux. You've not tried it then. Mozilla for Windows running on my box on one processor runs faster than Mozilla in Linux running on both processors. (Win98SE). Application startup time is faster for Mozilla in Windows, as is runtime execution. Not measured or benchmarked mind you. It is visibly noticeable. If it were faster in Linux, I certainly wouldn't say it was faster in Windows. Mozilla (GNU-Version) is still a bit slower than Netscape Navigator 4.x, but that's an application problem, not a graphics problem. Indeed. And in fairness to the Mozilla developers whom are doing a fantastic job of developing the browser, every version of Mozilla for Linux that I've upgraded to has been noticeably faster and less buggy. I've been using Mozilla as my primary browser now for almost 2 years if not longer. It has come a long way in a short time IMHO. I'm confident that the performance issues that remain, will get resolved all in due time. -- Mike A. Harris Shipping/mailing address: OS Systems Engineer 190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie, XFree86 maintainer Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3 Red Hat Inc. http://www.redhat.com ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
[Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, José Fonseca wrote: As far as development being stuck, no, I don't think so. It's just that the people who know enough about anything to get things done are very few. True, but there are reasons for that. The reason is that this stuff is difficult. We get so many college kids that just learned C wanting to help. The help is appreciated, but there are few things that they can do beside fix simple bugs and they get discouraged. There's not much you can do about this. Changing the project's mission statement doesn't make the work any easier. We need people with years of experience either in graphics driver development or in some other aspect of window system operation and that is hard to come by. Excuse me!? The XFree86 developer page (http://www.xfree86.org/developer) says and I quote: When requesting to join the XFree86, the most important qualification is not your experience level but your keeness on contributing to the project and climbing the uphill road to learning and mastering XFree86. And now a core member completely states otherwise!? I don't interpret what Mark said like that at all. Both statements are true. The developer page indicates that new developers are always welcome, and that developers are welcome to the project based on their keenness for contributing. My interpretation of what Mark is saying above, is that while help from anyone regardless of skill is appreciated, those without a lot of skill do not contribute a lot in practice to the project, and that those who do have a lot of skill in graphics driver development and/or window system development have a lot more to offer to the project. In other words, who is more likely to be a greater asset to the XFree86 project? 1) An experienced developer with years of experience writing graphics drivers and GUI systems. 2) A college student without much skill in the area, but with a willingness to try and learn, and contribute what they can. Obviously, someone with more experience, is going to be able to do more work more quickly, and of general higher quality. There may be exceptions to this generalization, but they are definitely the exceptions, and not the rule. Of course, in either case, contributions from everyone willing to contribute are welcome and encouraged. The fact of the matter is that dozens of new developers with little or no window system experience are going to do little to move the project forward. I couldn't disagree more with this. I'll give you my example - not because it's the best example out there but because it's the one I can better describe. I'm a mechanical engineer - my formation includes just an intro to Pascal and Fortran programming. My programming skills were self tought since my 10 years, but have very few things that I can show as programming experience proof. Not to mention window systems: up to this date I've still to make one GUI or 3D application. Nevertheless, after switching to Linux only on last October, I've study the OpenGL spec, made a developer's FAQ with all information I could gather the DRI, got CVS access, and together with another guy (whom background isn't also computer science but art) brought the Mach64 DRI driver from barely a draft to the point which is almost ready to inclusion in a release. This included getting familiar with CVS, linux kernel programming, the DRI architecture, X, and a almost complete rewrite of the code due the Mesa 4.0 architectural changes. You're one of the few. Somewhat of an exception that is to the general rule. According to your point of view we should have never given the trust that the kind DRI folks put on us since we had no experience. The fact is that we made the experience. And it is this trust on new people that is exploding in new developers willing to help (and actually doing so) on the DRI project. I think you are misinterpreting Mark here again. Mark isn't saying at all that only people with years of experience should be allowed to work on the XFree86 project. What he's saying is that everyone is free to contribute, however in order to REALLY push the project forward, it needs to gain more developers who DO have a lot of experience in the area. I agree with that generally. That does not mean that others do not contribute, nor that the project isn't helped by others. It is in the scale of what a person can do based on their experience. Ironically, for a couple of months I've been trying to join the XFree86 developer team but after all this time this process still didn't finish... and every now and then one reads threads about how the XFree86 developers can't cope with the number of patches and feature requests... Well, I'd be surprised if you would be rejected from joining the XFree86 member development team after your current efforts working on DRI with Mach64. How exactly have you been attempting to join?
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 08:39:10AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: [...] I don't interpret what Mark said like that at all. [...] (This comment below applies to all your comments I've cut here.) People's expectations and potential are always a very subjective matter. Perhaps I didn't understand Mark words correctly. I had no intention to offend him and I hope I haven't done it. Ironically, for a couple of months I've been trying to join the XFree86 developer team but after all this time this process still didn't finish... and every now and then one reads threads about how the XFree86 developers can't cope with the number of patches and feature requests... Well, I'd be surprised if you would be rejected from joining the XFree86 member development team after your current efforts working on DRI with Mach64. How exactly have you been attempting to join? Perhaps something is messed up with that process. I suppose it has been approved, BOTH I'm not quite sure. Anyway, my intention in becoming a XFree86 developer was to be able to monitor the XFree86 development more closely, because I wasn't (then or now) getting enough information about it from xpert ML. But from the comments here regarding the private mailing lists it seems that the answer isn't there, but simply that Xfree86 developers work more intimately than what I'm personally used to in the DRI project. My interest in the XFree86 development is infact rather specific: the RandR extension will be a crucial brick for a proper 3D support on lower end cards such as Mach64 which have little onboard memory. My card for example (sorry to bring the the subject to me, but most open-source development aims to strach a personal itch, and this was why I first started), has only 4MB ram, being impossible to have fullscreen 3D acell at 1024x768. Non-fullscreen 3D can be possible and fullscreen is possible at lower resolutions, but for that work properly it will be necessary an efficient memory management of the frame buffer memory, and here is where I think that the RandR will be important. The same problem applies to other cards though, as the intended desktop size and/or color depth increases. [...] More people with CVS write access to the trunk is something that I think should be very carefully considered. David et al need to be comfortable that giving someone write access is the right thing to do first. That is something one has to earn by showing they know what they're doing, and that having write access would alleviate core members from having to commit things. I don't see any problems that would be caused however from having branches of CVS available that other developers could use. That would be a good thing IMHO. My feeling exactly. If there were a larger number of active contributors contributing frequently in a linux-kernel style, that increased the patch submission burden beyond what core developers could handle, and some of those developers obviously showed skill at separating the good stuff from the bad, I've a feeling David would have little objection to adding more people as long as it saved him work and didn't create him work (or other core members). But the way things are going we are never going to reach a large number of activer contributors. Seems an egg and chicken problem here... let's wait and see which one borns first... if at all. José Fonseca ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
Mike A. Harris wrote: On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, José Fonseca wrote: I'm a mechanical engineer - my formation includes just an intro to Pascal and Fortran programming. My programming skills were self tought since my 10 years, but have very few things that I can show as programming experience proof. Not to mention window systems: up to this date I've still to make one GUI or 3D application. Nevertheless, after switching to Linux only on last October, I've study the OpenGL spec, made a developer's FAQ with all information I could gather the DRI, got CVS access, and together with another guy (whom background isn't also computer science but art) brought the Mach64 DRI driver from barely a draft to the point which is almost ready to inclusion in a release. This included getting familiar with CVS, linux kernel programming, the DRI architecture, X, and a almost complete rewrite of the code due the Mesa 4.0 architectural changes. You're one of the few. Somewhat of an exception that is to the general rule. Here is some advice from a non-core team member w/o CVS access...take it for what it's worth. Jose is exceptional and there are more developers in the world with his talent and ambition that haven't discovered XFree86, yet. If you can find a way to embrace those developers, you will find fresh new blood, with fresh ideas and a the ambition and capabilities on driving that forward. We have all seen the newbie who comes in and makes a bunch of noise to no avail. However, creating barriers to reduce this impact is also a deterrent to attracting the productive young developer. The challenge facing your project is to find a way to inform, enable and support new developers to your project. I sincerely hope that a few of the core team members are listening, and perhaps reading between the lines. I also commend Jose for addressing this subject in an open and honest dialog. Regards, Jens -- /\ Jens Owen/ \/\ _ [EMAIL PROTECTED] /\ \ \ Steamboat Springs, Colorado ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
Mike A. Harris wrote: On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Christian Berger wrote: Netscape is much faster than Mozilla. I think it's just that some design decisions in the X version of Mozilla, which is probably much different than the Window's version, are suboptimal. Having seen enough Well I doubt Mozilla for Windows is faster than Mozilla for Linux. You've not tried it then. Mozilla for Windows running on my box on one processor runs faster than Mozilla in Linux running on both processors. (Win98SE). Application startup time is faster for Mozilla in Windows, as is runtime execution. Not measured or benchmarked mind you. It is visibly noticeable. I'm really hoping this thread dies soon, but I've got to chime in here. There is absolutely no comparison between the windows gui and X. I routinely have 10-15 windows open, which would include at least 2 mozilla mail windows and minimally 3-4 browser windows. I also have 2 desktops with 3 virtual desktops each. You just don't get that kind of functionality with a Windows gui and if you tried to have that many windows open on win95, win98, nt, win2k, it would purely meltdown. I have no experience with winxp and don't plan to, but I suspect it's no different. The above argument appears to revolve around Mozilla, not X. -- Until later: Geoffrey [EMAIL PROTECTED] I didn't have to buy my radio from a specific company to listen to FM, why doesn't that apply to the Internet (anymore...)? ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, [iso-8859-1] José Fonseca wrote: My interest in the XFree86 development is infact rather specific: the RandR extension will be a crucial brick for a proper 3D support on lower end cards such as Mach64 which have little onboard memory. My question to you is: why do you want to spend your time on this when you can buy a *much* higher end card than a Mach for $40 US? Your time is worth than that, even if you are a student. One of the primary time-wasters in open-source is that developers spend a lot of time on support for hardware which is obsolete. When obsolete hardware was much cheaper than brand new hardware, this support for was important. Now, however, that difference is pretty minimal. Buy a new card and save yourself lots of pain. -a ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Bharathi S wrote: We need the X-newbies website - www.x-newbies.org ;) It is very important and XFree86 should publish a book for BASIC X window concept. It should explain all basic concepts of the Xwindow with example picture etc. Presently in Xfree86 very very less no.of picture are available to explain. There are plenty of books on Xlib programming and on using the X-Window system. O'Reilly publishes some. What's missing is X architecture books. There are none that I know of but there is documentation on this in the source tree. See xc/doc/hardcopy. Mark. ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
Le mar 16/07/2002 à 19:52, Andrew P. Lentvorski a écrit : On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, [iso-8859-1] José Fonseca wrote: My interest in the XFree86 development is infact rather specific: the RandR extension will be a crucial brick for a proper 3D support on lower end cards such as Mach64 which have little onboard memory. My question to you is: why do you want to spend your time on this when you can buy a *much* higher end card than a Mach for $40 US? Your time is worth than that, even if you are a student. One of the primary time-wasters in open-source is that developers spend a lot of time on support for hardware which is obsolete. When obsolete hardware was much cheaper than brand new hardware, this support for was important. Now, however, that difference is pretty minimal. Buy a new card and save yourself lots of pain. If he does help to implement RandR into XFree, his time won't be wasted. Moreover, that's what I like with opensource: I can find top-class OS drivers for old hardware, and use these old boxes as firewall, car mp3 player, etc.. ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:52:22AM -0700, Andrew P. Lentvorski wrote: On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, [iso-8859-1] José Fonseca wrote: My interest in the XFree86 development is infact rather specific: the RandR extension will be a crucial brick for a proper 3D support on lower end cards such as Mach64 which have little onboard memory. My question to you is: why do you want to spend your time on this when you can buy a *much* higher end card than a Mach for $40 US? Your time is worth than that, even if you are a student. One word for you: laptop! One of the primary time-wasters in open-source is that developers spend a lot of time on support for hardware which is obsolete. When obsolete hardware was much cheaper than brand new hardware, this support for was important. Now, however, that difference is pretty minimal. Buy a new card and save yourself lots of pain. The way I choose to spend my free time is matter that concerns me alone. Not only the work I've been doing has been very useful for me (this laptop has a year, it's my main working computer, I don't to expect to swap before 2-3 years, and I enjoy to play UT and other games on it), but I have been having a great time learning about the fascinating world of 3D graphics and low-level driver programming. You have no idea how common the Mach64 is in laptops. And after the Mach64 I'll probably pick another obsolete card to work on, like the Savage chips (which are also common on laptops, but the reason I'm interested is because I have one and the card long has been abandoned by the vendors, so it will give me a great satisfaction to fullfill the dream of having decent driver it) or a Riva TNT2 (which I just bought very cheap from a friend of mine - just for kicks, mainly to port the existing Utah-GLX driver, but I'm sure that the BSD guys will apreciate my work too). As you can see this experience has been very rewarding so far, and not the opposite. José Fonseca ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
Am Dienstag, 16. Juli 2002 20:17 schrieben Sie:
Le mar 16/07/2002 à 19:52, Andrew P. Lentvorski a écrit :
If he does help to implement RandR into XFree, his time won't be wasted.
Moreover, that's what I like with opensource: I can find top-class OS
drivers for old hardware, and use these old boxes as firewall, car mp3
player, etc..
Yes, and besides even unproductive or little-productive time isn't
wasted. People learn from those things It may be fun for them. It's not
really like there are any deadlines. It's done when it's done, so do what you
feel like to do, if it's at least slightly productive or entertaining, it's
good.
Servus
Casandro
--
#define T 1000
#define M T*T
int main(){int x,y;for(y=0;y20;y++){for(x=0;x70;x++){int
c=-1;int xr,yr,zr;int xp,yp,zp;xp=yp=zp=0;xr=(x-35);yr=(y-
10);zr=10;while(1){if(ypT){c=5;ifzp)/T)%2==1)^(((xp+M
)/T)%2==1))c=0;break;}if(zpT*10){c=0;if (((yp*yp+xp*xp)/(
T*100))%2==1)c=2;break;}zp+=zr;xp+=xr;yp+=yr;}printf(%c,
c+32);}printf(\n);}};
___
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[Xpert]RE: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
This thread has gone all over the place, but I have a suggestion. Has anyone considered setting up something like LXR (http://lxr.linux.no) against the sources for XFree86? I have occasionally had the need to browse the sources, but it seems to me that they are not segmented very logically. I will admit that this is probably because I simply do not understand the current scheme. Anyhow, if someone were to set up a public one of these, it might make things a bit easier for people who want to contribute a little bit, and it might make things much easier for people on this list to discuss things in particular. I would set up something like this, but I have no ready access to the resources required. Is there a taker? -andrew ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]RE: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Andrew Berg wrote: This thread has gone all over the place, but I have a suggestion. Has anyone considered setting up something like LXR (http://lxr.linux.no) against the sources for XFree86? I have occasionally had the need to browse I second that motion! -Peter ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
[Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Lukas Molzberger wrote: Hello, in recent years many people were talking about Linux on the desktop. However, before there is any real chance that this could happen a few fundamential problems in XFree must be solved. These are: 1. XFree is far too slow. What is your metric? XFree86 is slow at what specifically? Provide some examples. 2. What is presented on the screen should always be consistent (i.e. no flickering). Your screen flickers? If so, that would likely be considered a video driver specific bug, or possibly some other bug. That isn't a flaw of X, but rather a bug in a given video driver. (3. It should be possible to configure XFree over a dialog that is intergrated in Gnome and Kde.) I agree that a simple user friendly GUI config tool should exist. Such a tool should integrate into the user's desktop GUI of choice. The GUI config tool included with XFree86 is intended to be used on any system wether or not GNOME or KDE exists, and is thus based on Xt et al. In order for proper integration with GNOME, a GTK based tool needs to be created, and for KDE a Qt based tool. Preferably one tool with multiple front ends, to minimize duplication of effort/functionality. We're working on such a tool for GTK, but have no plans to make it Qt based (duplication of coding is a waste of resources), but since it is open source (redhat-config-xfree86) people are free to contribute to the codebase if they'd like a different frontend. I'm sorry to say that and I really don't want to offend any people. Statements that start out apologizing for not wanting to offend people, generally go on to offend people. That said, I'm not offended, but others might be. But I've hardly seen any progress regarding these problems during the last two years and I don't see any way how this could change in the next two years. I don't see a huge problem with any of the things you've brought up above other than the configuration angle, and that is something which improves over time, and will likely consider to do so, and to become easier and easier. In order for it to happen, either someone who has a personal interest in making it happen for whatever their reasons are - volunteers to do it, and does it, or somebody funds it, or some company decides to do it themselves. I don't see anyone jumping up volunteering to write a user friendly GTK and/or Qt X configuration tool, so that leaves funded development. As I said above, we're writing a new config tool for GTK. Something like that takes time to implement and improve. The current development is coming along nicely, but it will be a while until all of the necessary features are implemented and friendly. XFree is evolving very slowly despite the fact that some of the best developers are working on it. I think the reason for that is that XFree is far more complex than necessary for its intended job. XFree86 is evolving slowly in some respects, and quite well in others. There are various reasons for that. I would put forth that the #1 reason for any slowness or perceived slowness of development, is simply due to the lack of people interested in developing X, and that lack of a linux-kernel like development environment where many hundreds, perhaps thousands of developers are quite active. X/XFree86 has a bit of a barrier to entry to new developers, as many people view it as one insanely huge pile of code that is impossible to understand and/or navigate. It can be daunting, but it is not impossible, and it takes a lot less time to start working with it than one might think. First step is to ignore the 98% of code that irrelevant in the scope of the portion of X you might be interested in working on. Another reason is that X development doesn't scale well IMHO as the number of developers or potential developers rise. The current XFree86 team is doing a good job at what they're doing, but if the number of contributing developers to XFree86 was to double or triple, the patch queue's would only lengthen, simply because the XFree86 team is quite busy doing what they do best already. The lack of a bug tracking database also enters into this problem IMHO, but that is another discussion. I'm not sure how the scalability issue can be addressed, but in order to get more developers working on the code, some sort of effort needs to be made by people who are interested in attracting more developers, to help minimize the barriers to developer entry, and create developer FAQ's, debugging FAQ's, and other developer useful information. I try to help would-be developers get started as much as I can, and I'm sure many others do too, but it is itself time consuming too. The more community involvement we've got, the better IMHO. I know there have been countless discussions on the X messaging system, but most of them missed the point. That is that such a messaging system introduces an enormous
[Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Sun, 14 Jul 2002, Mark Vojkovich wrote: I know there have been countless discussions on the X messaging system, but most of them missed the point. That is that such a messaging system introduces an enormous amount of complexity. As far as I know the only reason for having the X messaging system is the remote display feature. But I guess that less than 5% of the XFree users are actually using this feature and there are already other solutions like VNC available. Another source of complexity comes from the ancient, more than 10 years old X API. Many people argue that one just has to add new extensions to keep XFree up to date. But this way X gets more and more complex. And why are the X is highly extensible by design. It's far less complex than alternative window systems like MS Windows or OS-X and is probably more extensible. I'd definitely have to agree with that for sure. As a result of this complexity the developers working on XFree are less efficient and it also keeps new developers from joining this project. What I want to suggest is to start from scratch and design a new, clean and modern windowing system without any legacy. I know this would be a pretty radical cut, but I personally don't see any alternative to overcome the current problems of XFree. The main problem with a new graphics API would be to keep backward compatibility with the current application base. But this problem is easy to solve by just porting XFree to the new API, the way it is done for OS X and Windows. I think you have the wrong mailing list. XFree86 is an implementation of the X-Window system. The key phrase here is the X-Window System. XFree86 is headed in the directions of an X-Window compatible system, meaning we intend to extend XFree86 well beyond the base sample implementation, and in many regards we have done this already, but we have no intention of dropping what you call legacy support. As far as development being stuck, no, I don't think so. It's just that the people who know enough about anything to get things done are very few. I think that pretty much hits the nail on the head right there. An effort at a website with tutorials, HOWTO's and other developer related help information geared at helping NEW developers get up to scratch on given areas would be very useful if someone has the time to work on it. I've been writing some things for a while, none of which are complete. Something like the dri website's new developer info, etc. That would start to help anyway. I think it will happen in time. -- Mike A. Harris Shipping/mailing address: OS Systems Engineer 190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie, XFree86 maintainer Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3 Red Hat Inc. http://www.redhat.com ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
[Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On 15 Jul 2002, Xavier Bestel wrote: Date: 15 Jul 2002 01:56:41 +0200 From: Xavier Bestel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 List-Id: General X Discussion xpert.XFree86.Org Subject: Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end? Le lun 15/07/2002 à 01:39, Nick Name a écrit : (3. It should be possible to configure XFree over a dialog that is intergrated in Gnome and Kde.) Someone should write it. Indeed I think there are: I personally use debian, but Mandrake, Suse and RedHat users continuously say that their distribution can do everything graphically. Better yet, XFree shouldn't need configuration at all with modern hardware: config is just needed for some old un-probable chips, and some settings such as resolution, depth, etc. (which should be settable on the fly, BTW) That is true in many aspects, and XFree86 is definitely headed more in that direction. It does not happen overnight however. The issue is really manpower, and developers interested in volunteering to do the work, or companies who want feature foo implemented funding development of foo. I personally don't see any alternative to overcome the current problems of XFree. I don't see real problems in XFree, and think that one of the best features of X is the networking capabilities. Indeed, have a look to how easy is to have xinerama on two different video cards. Do this with windows or macos. It's hard, if not impossible at all. Is that a joke ? Did you ever try to set up a second gfx card and monitor under Mac OS ? It's a breeze, just point'n'click. Whereas in X, you have to hunt for the Xinerama HOWTO and mess with the config file. xf86cfg has multihead configuration built in, although it isn't what I personally consider user friendly. This is something that will become more friendly in the future though as multihead becomes much more popular. -- Mike A. Harris Shipping/mailing address: OS Systems Engineer 190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie, XFree86 maintainer Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3 Red Hat Inc. http://www.redhat.com ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
[Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Nick Name wrote: Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 02:22:37 +0200 From: Nick Name [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII List-Id: General X Discussion xpert.XFree86.Org Subject: Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end? On 15 Jul 2002 01:56:41 +0200 Xavier Bestel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is that a joke ? Did you ever try to set up a second gfx card and monitor under Mac OS ? It's a breeze, just point'n'click. Whereas in X, you have to hunt for the Xinerama HOWTO and mess with the config file. Ok, sorry. I just made THE mistake: speaking 'bout what I don't know. Sorry. But really, I've tried to simply install a second video card, different from the first, in win98. Freeze. Stop. No way, I had to remove the card, and manually remove the driver... still I can't remember how I got out of that mess. In the same period, with X, I could do everything I want, even get two 3d games running at the same time, one on a matrox, and another on a s3/3dfx pair... simple: use two X servers :) For this example, I'd have to say it is not really too relevant because just as many people are likely to have had the reverse happen, where it just worked in Windows, and it was a big pain in the ass in XFree86/Linux et al. I've personally experienced both depending on the hardware. Getting an i740 working in Linux a couple years back took 20 minutes, while getting it working in Windows involved reinstalling the OS, installing USB support in Windows 95 to get some random DLL, flashing my BIOS, then installing about 7 things in a particular order. I had to reinstall Windows twice actually because I screwed up on step. I've had the reverse experience with other hardware, where it worked great in Windows and sucked in Linux and was a pain in the ass to get working (if it worked at all). Same goes for configuration of various hardware. Sometimes it is straightforward, other times it is not. It depends on so many different variables, there is no one best system or one best solution. And what works great for one person, may work crappy for another depending on hardware combinations, etc. -- Mike A. Harris Shipping/mailing address: OS Systems Engineer 190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie, XFree86 maintainer Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3 Red Hat Inc. http://www.redhat.com ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
[Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Lukas Molzberger wrote: Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 09:34:11 +0200 From: Lukas Molzberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 List-Id: General X Discussion xpert.XFree86.Org Subject: Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end? On Monday 15 July 2002 01:39, Nick Name wrote: 1. XFree is far too slow. I don't know what your terms of comparison are, but for example return to castle wolfenstein on same hardware runs really faster than on windows, with maximum settings. Dunno if this means anything. Sorry, I should've written clearer what I mean. Only the 2d performance of XFree is slow. For example XVideo Opengl are indeed very nice. I don't use WinXP for other reasons, but just compare it with XFree. I think the feeling is just so much better. I mean thats not a special XFree problem. I've worked on IRIX machines for a long time and there you have the same problem. I mean I know that it's not all XFrees fault. The Toolkits also play an important role. You're claiming it isn't XFree86's fault now, whereas your last email was suggesting someone should set out to reimplement XFree86 because it was slow. Why reimplement a GUI if it isn't slow. Guessing at the problem, and shooting in the dark doesn't solve the problem. Use profiling software such as oprofile to find what is slow, and either fix it, or provide your profiling results to the community so other potential developers can work on improving the situation. The more we work together to find the problems of the _existing_ system we have, and fix them, the betteer the system will be. Dividing ourselves and randomly reimplimenting things from scratch only slows development down even further. 2. What is presented on the screen should always be consistent (i.e. no flickering). It is already? No, just move one Window over another or do an opaque window resize and you'll see artefacts all over the place. Works fine for me. Most likely your video driver is buggy, or acceleration is disabled. The solution to that, is to debug it, and fix it, or report the bug, and hopefully someone else with the hardware and specs can debug and fix it. (3. It should be possible to configure XFree over a dialog that is intergrated in Gnome and Kde.) I would like to apologize in case I didn't find the right words. I just think there is a problem with XFree and don't see it going away anytime soon. Sure, there are problems with XFree86, just like any software. Those problems will get solved as more people who care enough about them being solved join in the effort at solving them. -- Mike A. Harris Shipping/mailing address: OS Systems Engineer 190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie, XFree86 maintainer Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3 Red Hat Inc. http://www.redhat.com ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
[Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Lukas Molzberger wrote: Hello, in recent years many people were talking about Linux on the desktop. However, before there is any real chance that this could happen a few fundamential problems in XFree must be solved. These are: 1. XFree is far too slow. No it isn't. Your apps are stupid or the drivers you are using are under accelerated. I'm using Mozilla for example and I'm sure that its not that app that is slow here since I've compared it with Mozilla on WinXP. Comparing Mozilla running in X, and Mozilla running in Windows, and seeing that Mozilla running in X is much slower than it running in Windows, is totally not an indicator that X is slow. Zero scientific data has been gathered, and an incorrect conclusion made. Mozilla is faster in Windows, because the development of Mozilla in Windows has funded optimizing it to be faster. Some optimization work of Mozilla in X has been done, but nowhere near as far as the amount of optimization done to the Windows version. So comparing this is apples and oranges. Mozilla is slow in X because of Mozilla, not because of X. It may well be that the driver is under accelerated. I'm the i810 driver, but my old notebook with an smi chip was even slower. I know that the Nvidia driver is much faster but as far as I know the 2D part is still slower than under Windows even so it actually uses the same driver. And none of those things have anything to do with X11 protocol getting in the way, or X being complicated. If a video driver is slow, then it is slow. X isn't slow, the video driver is. Solution is to make the driver faster, by improving it, or funding it, or conning someone else into doing either. What makes you think rewriting a new GUI would not encounter these problems as well? Someone has to write drivers, and if an X driver is slow, then likely new-GUI-of-the-week driver for that video card will likely be slow also. In fact, I would wager that that new-GUI will have most of it's driver code directly lifted from X, since there isn't much point in writing such code 100% from scratch. 2. What is presented on the screen should always be consistent (i.e. no flickering). (3. It should be possible to configure XFree over a dialog that is intergrated in Gnome and Kde.) Talk to the Gnome and KDE people then. True, but they can only change the XFree config file. Therefore XFree needs to be restarted to get the new configuration. That isn't something that cannot be overcome by an X extension for many things. What's more, is that systems like Microsoft Windows *still* force you to reboot after even the most seemingly simple change to configuration. The joke Windows has detected that you have moved your mouse. Your system must now be restarted for the changes to take effect. comes to mind. I'm sorry to say that and I really don't want to offend any people. But I've hardly seen any progress regarding these problems during the last two years and I don't see any way how this could change in the next two years. XFree is evolving very slowly despite the fact that some of the best developers are working on it. I think the reason for that is that XFree is far more complex than necessary for its intended job. You say it's too complex and then you say we need more features? I mean it has too much unnecessary complexety. I mean if the message system is only needed for the remote display feature then I'm really not sure if this feature is really worth the hassle. I've worked on two projects that contained an message system and in both cases it was a major problem that ate up a large chunk of the development time and it made the projects slow even if used on the same machine. Some method of communication is necessary. What do you propose as an alternative solution? Any solution should be network transparent. We live in the world of networking now, and that is likely to get moreso in the future. VNC and other solutions are an afterthought solution for adding networkability to GUI systems. They work and have their good points, but they aren't a 100% solution for networked GUI applications. X11 is a much better solution. X is highly extensible by design. It's far less complex than alternative window systems like MS Windows or OS-X and is probably more extensible. I actually think that extensibility is a very good idea, but it doesn't prevent that API's age. What part of the X11 API are you refering to which is now aged and irrelevant. Also, how does that particular item negatively effect current development, current software, or present barriers to new developers to enter into the foray of development? I can't think of any part of X11 et al which stands in the way of progress. Extensions which themselves have become irrelevant and obsolete, have been deprecated. ie: XIE and PEX. They are no longer built by default, however
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Mike A. Harris wrote: An effort at a website with tutorials, HOWTO's and other developer related help information geared at helping NEW developers get up to scratch on given areas would be very useful if someone has the time to work on it. I've been writing some things for a while, none of which are complete. Something like the dri website's new developer info, etc. That would start to help anyway. I think it will happen in time. We need the X-newbies website - www.x-newbies.org ;) Changing the organization of www.xfree86.org so the stuff would be easy to find if somebody put it there is probably not going to happen anytime soon. I think it is much more probable that somebody sits down and creates a new site for this stuff, similar to kernelnewbies.org. -Peter ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]Re: Is the XFree development stuck in a dead end?
Quoting Mike A. Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I personally don't see any alternative to overcome the current problems of XFree. I don't see real problems in XFree, and think that one of the best features of X is the networking capabilities. Indeed, have a look to how easy is to have xinerama on two different video cards. Do this with windows or macos. It's hard, if not impossible at all. Is that a joke ? Did you ever try to set up a second gfx card and monitor under Mac OS ? It's a breeze, just point'n'click. Whereas in X, you have to hunt for the Xinerama HOWTO and mess with the config file. xf86cfg has multihead configuration built in, although it isn't what I personally consider user friendly. This is something that will become more friendly in the future though as multihead becomes much more popular. :-) I wan't to stop someday and write code for a better multihead configuration interface in the textmode (currently it just adds new screens to the left of the last one). For the graphics interface, I plan to write a wizard mode, similar to the text interface. And also, make this wizard mode allow configuring everything without the need of a working mouse; curently if the mouse does not work, it is required to use xkb mousekeys, and this really is not user friendly :-) Anyway, the code is there, and I don't mind if someone uses part (or all) of the xf86cfg code in a Gtk or Kde interface. I just think that any such code should use libxf86config, so that if it reads an existing XF86Config file, when writing a new one, does not miss any information from the previous configuration file (in the current libxf86config, comments may be rewritten out of order, but are not lost). -- Mike A. Harris Shipping/mailing address: OS Systems Engineer 190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie, XFree86 maintainer Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3 Red Hat Inc. http://www.redhat.com ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris Paulo ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
