Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!sgi!msc
From: msc@canth.SGI.COM (Mark Callow)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: Window Warz
Summary: Device-(in)dependence argument greatly oversimplified
Message-ID: <21618@sgi.SGI.COM>
Date: 9 Sep 88 03:40:12 GMT
References: <8809021443.AA12775@uunet.UU.NET> <3562@encore.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@sgi.SGI.COM
Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc, Mountain View, CA
Lines: 42

In article <3562@encore.UUCP>, bzs@encore.UUCP (Barry Shein) writes:
> 
> From: mo@prisma.UUCP (Mike O'Dell)
> >(1) X is a way to do device-dependent graphics across a network -
> >	changing screen resolution screws the application.
> >	This doesn't happen with NeWS.  There is also the toolkit issue.
> 
> I've been thinking about this and wonder if X has received too bad a
> 
> The only real weakness in X on this count (and it's serious) is the
> lack of scaled font machinery in the server. If that were there then
> device independant graphics could be left to the toolkits.

Barry greatly oversimplifies the problem.  Having the window server deal
only in screen-coordinates presents two major problems:

1.    It places a huge burden clients (i.e. application
      programmers) that wish to be device independent and
      to change size to fill their windows after a resize.
      Most clients want to do this.

      
2.    It makes it impossible to use transformation hardware
      to support the rather basic operations mentioned above.
      Transformation hardware can only be used by providing
      extensions that give different imaging models or by
      allowing the client to bypass the X server and draw to
      the hardware directly.

If the server handles the transformations the client writers job is
greatly simplified and transformation hardware can be used.  Transformation
hardware is going to become much more common in the next few years
and people are naturally going to want to use it.  It will be an awful
shame if the window system bars all standard clients from access to
that hardware.

Geometry is a giant leap ahead of pixels.

--
From the TARDIS of Mark Callow
msc@sgi.sgi.com, ...{ames,decwrl,sun}!sgi!msc
"There is much virtue in a window.  It is to a human being as a frame is to
a painting, as a proscenium to a play.  It strongly defines its content."