| Re: [AD] Thoughts on speeding up X |
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On Friday 30 July 2004 14:30, Chris wrote:
> My initial thought after realizing this is.. why the initial double
> buffer? AFAIK, X has drawing primitives we can map getpixel, putpixel,
> line, and the like, to.
Makes sense to me.
> It also has an image structure that we can
> potentially hack and use to blit Allegro bitmaps through directly to the
> X display.
Were you thinking of using pixmaps as system bitmaps under X? That might
make sense...
> Thoughts? Ideas?
Yes, but it's rather radical and probably ``Allegro 5'' stuff. I'd like to
change the way Allegro programs acces the screen. In fact, it may be in
the Allegro 5 graphics draft, I haven't looked at that recently.
What I'd like to see is something like a set_gfx_mode() where you can give
hints for the update method you want to use: double buffering, triple
buffering or plain.
You then have something equivalent to GLbegin() and GLend in OpenGL to
indicate the start and end of a drawing cycle, say gfx_begin() and
gfx_end(). In between, blitting and drawing operations are buffered to a
virtual screen or alternative screenpage. Only at gfx_end() is the actual
screen updated.
This has the advantage of hiding the gritty details of double/triple
buffering from the user, in particular the ALLEGRO_VRAM_SINGLE_SURFACE
conditionals needed now.
It would also facilitate the inclusion of an OpenGL driver in Allegro
itself if and when we want to merge AllegroGL.
This is not so much a redesign of the X11 driver as of the whole graphics
subsystem. And as I said, it's probably too much to do for now.
Evert