Re: Is Alpha Channel support in next release plan?

[Michael L Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>]

On Wed, 2003-08-06 at 10:58, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> No. ;-)
> 
> All the rendering (gdk_draw_*) is currently server-side. This means
> you can't do alpha remotely well or efficiently without X server
> support.

Ahh, I see.  I knew this, but just forgot it.  In light of this, I
withdraw much of what I said, and defer to Owen's point of view, except
to say, that perhaps introducing support in gtk/gdk client-side
structures for the alpha value so that in the future when server-side
support is there, there will be a minimal abi-change, would be
desirable.

> 
> If you want to speed up alpha support, help with the Cairo (was Xr)
> project, which will hopefully be the next-generation rendering for
> GTK when it's ready. Adding slow/crappy/broken hacks in the meantime
> just makes a mess (and makes apps slow/crappy/broken).

I agree about the hacks (ie QT, etc).  One point this brings up, though,
is will GTK and GDK be doing more of the rendering client-side?  I know
that Pango does font rendering client-side.  I realize that I was
advocating client-side drawing in my last post, but now I realize that
this is not always desirable, although it seems to be the trend these
days (ie xft, xrender).  Is this a good thing?  At some level this type
of thing seems to negate all the benefits of X while trying to overcome
X's deficiencies, leaving us with a system that may as well not be
X-based at all.  Personally, I will argue vehemently against abandoning
X11, as I live and breath the remote display capabilities.

Michael


> 
> Havoc
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-- 
Michael L Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>