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From: toddb@sail.labs.tek.com (toddb)
Newsgroups: comp.multimedia
Subject: Re: X efficiency questions
Message-ID: <9086@sail.LABS.TEK.COM>
Date: 8 Mar 91 01:04:08 GMT
References: <2082@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov>
Sender: root@sail.LABS.TEK.COM
Reply-To: toddb@sail.labs.tek.com (toddb)
Organization: Tektronix research labs
Lines: 54

|> 1. Is there any way to zoom XImages inside of the server?

Some X terminal manufacturers offer the ability to decimate images because
of specific requests from customers.  Both NCD and Tektronix products do
this.  As mentioned in another reply, the X Image Extension (XIE) will
address this.  For the short term, you should do it yourself.  The
contributed program xgif does a simple nearest-neighbor interpolation
as an example of how this would be done.

|> With X11R3 there was something called ZoomHints for the WM but that no
|> longer exists. 

This has to do with zooming client windows, not with diddling with the
contents of client pixmaps.

|> 2. Given the current X11R4 distribution, is there any way to do
|> fine-grain synchronization such that one could request the server to
|> do Maps and UnMaps of windows (containing for example images) so that
|> one could make movies?

Tim Glauert from Cambridge Olivetti research labs (cam-orl!thg@relay.eu.net)
proposed a X Synchronization Extension at the most recent X conference that
effectively constipates and laxitizes a client's protocol stream based on
events and timers.  With this you could load a number of pixmaps into the
server, and then do a series of CopyArea requests into a window with
intervening synchronization requests that wait for some timer.  No
implementation is available today although I hear that Dec and Olivetti are
working on it.

There is also a multi-buffering extension that *is* on the R4 tape but
I don't think it is really intended to play a series of pixmaps.  Rather
it matches the double buffering hardware in the marketplace.

|> 3. Is there any way to do XGetImage/XPutImage using any sort of image
|> compression?

No, but again Tektronix and NCD offer a private extension to accomplish
this for the sake of big customers.  And again, I think XIE addresses
this.

|> 4. Is there any plans for standardizing on audio extensions for X11R5?
|> Are the any plans for audio compression for it if they are?

Dec talked about an audio server they have done, but everyone I have
talked with agree that this will never, ever be an X extension.  This
is not to say that an X client could not also be a client of an audio
server.  Barry Arrons, when he worked for Olivetti, did an audio server
called VOX, but I don't know how to get ahold of it.

---------------
internet: toddb@sail.labs.tek.com                                   c--Q Q
US:       Todd Brunhoff; Video and Electronic Systems Lab;              `
          Tektronix, Inc.;  Box 500  MS 50-321, Beaverton OR 97077      -
Phone:    (503) 627-1121