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From: hess@suntea (Marty Hess <hess@suntea>)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  PEX: when and where...
Message-ID: <9009280107.AA28069@suntea.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 28 Sep 90 01:07:56 GMT
Sender: root@athena.mit.edu (Wizard A. Root)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 48

>From x11-3d-request@expo.lcs.mit.edu Thu Sep 27 16:51:56 1990
>To: rws@expo.lcs.mit.edu
>Cc: xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu, x11-3d@expo.lcs.mit.edu
>In-Reply-To: Bob Scheifler's message of Thu, 27 Sep 90 09:34:48 -0400 <9009271334.AA10232@expire.lcs.mit.edu>
>Subject: PEX: when and where... 
> 
>    If you want to plan for PEX, then start writing/learning PHIGS, because
>    that's the programming interface for PEX.  You'll have to consult your
>    individual vendors to see if the provide any proprietary PHIGS interface
>    in X today.
> 
> Great.  The tool I currently have (see comp.lsi yesterday) is
> SunView/SunCore based, and since SunCore died, I will be writing code for
> SunPHIGS pretty soon.  I have also heard that some X11 (but Sun only) PHIGS
> implementations are already available.  I'll check that out.

  You may want to contact Sun Consulting for information about an existing
  package of software that greatly assists in moving from SunCore to SunPHIGS.
  I don't have the details, but I know that it exists.
  
>    It will be available to the public sometime next year, and yes it will be
>    free.  But I will warn you, a completely software implementation of a 3D
>    pipeline is not particularly speedy.  The PEX sample implementation will be
>    just that.  Individual vendors will be doing their own ports to their 3D
>    graphics hardware, but whether any of that hardware-specific code will ever
>    become generally available is anyone's guess.
> 
> But of course.  My code is not especially 3D intensive, so slow speed
> wouldn't kill it.  I basically just need to do some simple plotting in 3D,
> with Gauraud shading.  Anything else will be a bonus, so I'll live with
> what I can get.  If fatster optimized server are for sale, no problem.  My
> company is not poor :-) and I know where the PO forms are.

  There are no plans for support of Gouraud shading in the first release of
  the PEX Sample Implementation.  It will only support flat shading.  Although
  it is not required for a minimal PEX extension implementation, we'd liked to
  have been able to do it.  There just wasn't enough time to do an exhaustive
  implementation.
  
  That's not to say that either future work with the code will not add such
  support (and it's not to say that it *will*, either!) or that individual
  vendors that support PEX in their servers will not have it, either.

	- Marty Hess, (415) 336-6374 or 960-1300
	  Applied Graphics Technology  --  PEX-SI Project Manager
	  Mailstop MTV-A1-43
	  Sun Microsystems, 2550 Garcia, Mountain View, CA 94043-1100
	  mhess@Eng.Sun.COM