Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Glucose and graphics

Today I pushed a new acceleration architecture for Xorg. Called Glucose, it uses OpenGL to accelerate X. What happens there is that Glucose hooks into the initialisation code during the graphics card setup and dispatches the X rendering calls through the same codepaths that XGL uses. The email describing it and the some reasons for it is here: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2006-August/017527.html. One step closer to the Open Source graphical utopia.

Besides that I've spent the last few days working on optimising various parts of Qt's rendering architecture. From OpenGL painter, through X11 to the raster code. Just beating down graphics into submission at this point really. At first a few code paths held me in a headlock that required some repetitive "banging head on the keyboard" action on my part but now it's ok. Now, Qt just rocks at rendering vector graphics. No screenshots today though :) I started writing a real-time vector graphics cartoon fully in Qt but it's not yet finished. By the way one thing I find missing in all Open Source vector editors is that you can't just scan your sketches and put them as background to trace over, Flash does it pretty ok. Instead of complaining I probably should just go ahead and implement it in Inkscape.

Finally Paul and I sat down today to figure out semantics of OpenGL support in Qtopia Core and we got it down. I'd like to have a fair dosage of 3D support on the Greenphone.

Oh, and US Airways stole my luggage. If you ever met me you know I have (had) a great collection of shirts. Now they belong to US Airways. Oh, and my US cell was in it, so if you've been wondering why I haven't been picking up your calls lately, it's because US Airways stole my phone.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds cool

So, XGL is a an entirely new XServer built upon OpenGL, whereas Glucose is an acceleration architecture - which means it runs existing X server processes through OpenGL, making it a more immediate solution for users? Or something almost somewhat similar to that?

Anonymous said...

Zack,

I've been tracing over my sketches (or rather, other people's non-SVG artwork) in Inkscape for some time. I just import the bitmap and go to town.

Anonymous said...

And... what about the status of AIGLX?

Anonymous said...

Aiglx is bundled with X.org 7.1, and it just works.

Anonymous said...

"Aiglx is bundled with X.org 7.1, and it just works."

Unless you have propietary drivers, hopefully that will change soon.

Anonymous said...

Zack everybody knows babies come from Paris

Anonymous said...

The news about Glucose is already on digg.com:
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Glucose_a_new_OpenGL_acceleration_architecture_for_X

Anonymous said...

So, when it closes the gap between AIGLX and Xgl, how fast will that be upstream? Will you get it into 7.2? And what do you thinkl how fast could that be stable, so that we really get 3D on a daily base (not on a extra-install-necessary-base like Xgl)?

And, how does this fit with the plan that Xegl will be the one to rule them all? ;)

Anonymous said...

Feel free to add "onion-skinning" features to inkskape, similar to "Disney's Animation Studio" from the 80s.

Anonymous said...

Well, you could hope your phone is still on and trace your luggage's location using the emergency GPS locator...

Anonymous said...

Cool! Keep up the good work.
I hope this will be in Xorg ASAP. It would rule if it would be in Xorg bevore Vista is out. ;)

Anonymous said...

Sounds amazing, and I am sure it is :-)
But is it buildable and ready to make us drool on the keboards ?

Anonymous said...

you've mentioned about enhancing Qt vector drawing, and also use (and hack on) inkscape. so i wonder, is there any chance that Qt will have full SVG rendering anytime soon? i specially miss textures...

skierpage said...

Does Arthur take advantage of this? Arthur seems similar to Cairo, will Cairo be able to use Glucose?

If Arther is similar to Cairo, why not just ship Cairo?

Anonymous said...

Hello Zack! What about this project? Do you want to complete it :) ? It would be awesome!

If I only have time, I'd like to help you really much!

Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

Archive link broken for some reason. This could be the (now) correct one:
http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg/2006-August/017393.html