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X GUI

X.org Making Fast Progress 778

prisonernumber7 writes "X.org is showing a lot of progress! The combination of the XFixes extension, Damage extension, Composite extension and XEvIE (X Event Interception Extension) present in X11R6.8 present user interface designers with a wide range of here-to-fore difficult to achieve possibilities. What does this mean for the enduser? That's window shadows and window shadows within windows as well as true translucency for the OSS community. Good samples of Gnome and KDE desktops with drop shadows, and so on can be found here, here, here, here, here, translucency here, here and here, and its use on handhelds running Linux."
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X.org Making Fast Progress

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  • I hate to say it... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rpdillon ( 715137 ) * on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:11PM (#10165347) Homepage

    ...but I've been waiting for translucency under X forever. It hurts me to admit it because I always thought that I didn't care about "eye-candy" but this is really cool. Why did it take so long?

    Oh well...off to look into downloading, though I suppose I'll have to wait for the next version of KDE to take advantage of the new features.

    • by Curtman ( 556920 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:22PM (#10165410)
      They just gave CVS write access to Vladimir of the Gatos project according to the mailing list, so in an upcoming release (not the next one due out in a couple days) we should see support for ATI All In Wonder video cards out of the box. Congrats to the Gatos project, and to Xorg! This should have been done years ago. Good riddance to XFree86.
    • Meanwhile... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rd_syringe ( 793064 )
      The other two desktop operating systems out there have had it for at least five years and are working on newer things. Am I really seeing a bunch of people getting excited over translucencies and shadows? These are things that have been commonplace for years.

      There are WAY more fundamental issues that need to be addressed for widespread Linux desktop adoption, from APIs to core architecture changes. But hey, at least our cramped KDE menu has translucency now. :P
      • Re:Meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rpdillon ( 715137 ) * on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:34PM (#10165473) Homepage

        You make good points, but if there is one thing I've learned observing which software gets adopted and which does not, its that polish matters.

        As the Linux desktop experience matures, acceptance will eventually hinge on its polish - OS X really has that aspect nailed down, and its not a bad goal to pursue. Sure, there are other issues that need to be addressed, and of course power-users will turn it off, but for folks like me that spend a lot of time in IDLE or Kate writing python code, I can spare the CPU cycles on my Athlon 64 3000+ for transparency. And hey, I like the look. =)

        This is a good thing, and I don't think it materially adds "bloat" though I'm not knowledgable enough of the code to say that with certainty.

        • Re:Meanwhile... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by bob65 ( 590395 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @09:02PM (#10165621)
          one thing I've learned observing which software gets adopted and which does not, its that polish matters.

          Exactly. Just like in the automobile world, polish matters, and can often make or break a deal. A lot of cars have "unneccesary bloat" (weight) which affects performance. But things like sound insulation, vibration reduction measures, and bells and whistles add to the overall "feel" of the car. Many manufacturers have admitted to paying particular attention to the sound made when closing the car door. They deliberately fine-tune the acoustics so that closing the door makes a nice, reassuring "thud", and deliberately fine-tune the springs and hinges on the door to make it feel "heavy" and "solid", when in fact, they have not actually changed the door structure itself. Look and feel plays an important role (consciously or subconsciously) in people's buying decisions.

        • Sure, there are other issues that need to be addressed, and of course power-users will turn it off, but for folks like me that spend a lot of time in IDLE or Kate writing python code, I can spare the CPU cycles on my Athlon 64 3000+ for transparency. And hey, I like the look. =)

          The shadows behind applications have actual utility. I noticed this when looking at the projection of one of my professor's OSX laptop desktops. It's much, much easier to discern the z-order of the applications, and which pixels be
        • You make good points, but if there is one thing I've learned observing which software gets adopted and which does not, its that polish matters

          Could you please stop all this fuzz about polish. Call me old fashioned, but in my PC I want nothing else than good, old english.

          Ah, those arrogant immigrant geeks.

        • by Lispy ( 136512 )
          Of course eyecandy matters. If you are like me you spend more time looking at that world inside that box on your desk than you look at your kids, your soulmate or a piece of art. If this HAS to be all I see all day, it better pleases my eye...
      • Re:Meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) * <slashdot AT stefanco DOT com> on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:40PM (#10165502) Homepage Journal
        Am I really seeing a bunch of people getting excited over translucencies and shadows?

        (Has Windows really had Translucencies and shadows since 1999?)

        No, we're excited that there is a version of X-window that is progressing.

        These latest enhancements aren't super exciting, but X.org has had a lot of enhancements added since it split off from XFree86 a short 9 months ago, and there are many more enhancements coming in the next few months.

        I think that all major distros had adopted X.org over XFree86.
      • Re:Meanwhile... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by kerrle ( 810808 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:43PM (#10166078) Journal
        No, you're seeing people get excited about the API and core architecture changes you just mentioned.

        Right now, they're being used to do drop shadows and transparency - but the same extensions can also be used to reduce network bandwidth required for remote sessions or create a 3D desktop.

        Composite, Damage, and the other new extensions are exactly the fundamental changes you claim are needed - the fact that the quickest way to show them off gives us some neat eye candy is just icing on the cake.

        Also, Windows does not currently support this type of window compositing - it has basic alpha channel support, but there's a lot things these new extensions can do that Windows cannot, and won't until Avalon.

    • by Chuck Bucket ( 142633 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @09:04PM (#10165639) Homepage Journal
      I'll agree with you, as I always thought it was silly, time in an OSX translucent term got me hooked! to be able to work in the CLI while looking at some code in Moz (through the term) was actually useful!

      CB
  • by jgardn ( 539054 ) <jgardn@alumni.washington.edu> on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:11PM (#10165349) Homepage Journal
    X.Org is proof of Open Source advantages. XFree86 was a failing project, floundering under incompetent leadership. Under normal, closed source projects, this would spell doom for the software.

    However, because it is open source, the project could be forked under new, competent leadership. And also, because of its licensing terms, people could switch to that fork without any negative repercussions.

    Look at the progress X.Org has made in such a short period of time! How can anyone say that Open Source software is not superior?
    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:18PM (#10165392)
      Something tells me that X.Org's rapid progress is really part of a backlash from the unresponsive situation under XFree86. These features had been considered by developers for a long time, and probably at least in one or two cases had a test implemenation ready to be patched in.
    • Code's reusability (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zaxios ( 776027 ) <zaxios@gmail.com> on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:38PM (#10165496) Journal
      Under normal, closed source projects, this would spell doom for the software.

      And their work would probably be lost, and any new project that wanted continue their type of work would have to write everything all over again just to reach the existing level of functionality - which is a waste of time and effort. Instead, the pre-existing project is forked. Open from closed source is an innovation in distribution equivalent to modular/OOP from procedural in development in allowing and encouraging reusability. Reusability then facilitates easier extension - like the sort of improvements we're seeing with X.org.
  • by lambent ( 234167 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:13PM (#10165358)
    I had not realized anything was missing from my window manager experience. But now that I see the screenshots for myself, I cannot wait for the oppurtunity to turn the new eyecandy off in the next release of KDE or Gnome.

    *cough* Sorry.

    Really great work, guys. I'm pround to see progress. But aside from these uses, what good will it do?

    And what's the implication of 'true' transparency? What kind of fake transparency have we all been using up until now?
    • by DashEvil ( 645963 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:18PM (#10165391)
      afaik they use `layers' to draw the screen now. So a foreground window doesn't actually draw over a window in the background. This means you can drag windows over other windows without the background app having to redraw itself.

      Ever notice how if you have a transparent menu open with a xterm/etc under it and, say, you're compiling something, that the text in the transparent menu doesn't update? `Fake' transparency refers to what we've been using now, which is basically taking a screenshot of the app and then pretending that your window is transparent by using the screenshot in the background of the window/menu. This real transparency means that it's not handled by the application, it's handled by X, and since the contents under your window weren't overdrawn, it can just.. you know... render it properly.

      That's what I got from it, anyway.
      • by kerrle ( 810808 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @09:29PM (#10165746) Journal
        It's not layers, per se; each window is rendered to a separate area of memory, and the composition manager builds the final screen from the various windows. In addition, XDamage allows the composition manager to know which parts of the window need to be redrawn, so rather than having the entire window redrawn (as is the case traditionally), only the part that was "damaged" needs to be redrawn.

        True transparency means that it's truly based on alpha values and computed as the window is drawn; current ways of "faking" transparency - in Konsole or XChat, for example - essentially take a capture of the background wallpaper and use that as the background of the window. If you move the window, you can see that it takes a moment for the background to adjust; with apps that are aware of and use the new X server features, this would be done as the window moved, and would also show windows and icons behind the currently focused window.

        As long as the composition manager has good hardware acceleration (something which is already the case with NVidia, but not so much with ATI), this combined with a double or triple buffered desktop could well provide a Linux/Unix desktop on par with OSX, at least technically.

        Of course, it's up to the window manager to really take advantage of these added features; metacity can already support window borders with alpha values, for true transparency.

    • by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:21PM (#10165405) Homepage Journal
      *What kind of fake transparency have we all been using up until now?*

      the kinda where you don't see what's right under the transparent window, rather you just see transparency against the background image.

      this is supposed to be true support for it, without any goofy hacking from within the program, i think.
    • I can think of some times it would be really handy, not that it solves any of my problems that can't be solved another way.

      For instance: say you are monitoring commands you are running on four different machines in four terminal windows that will take a while, and as a sanity check, you also have xosview running behind the terminal windows corresponding to the machine the terminal is on, and showing through enough to be useful but not enough to totally obscure your commands window. Now you get to use mor
  • Groovey (Score:5, Funny)

    by xombo ( 628858 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:15PM (#10165365)
    Now we can start to look as much like OSX as possible. Very pretty. Now we just need to wait for Adobe and Macromedia to endorse Linux and it'll steal the graphic design folks from Apple.
    • Re:Groovey (Score:3, Insightful)

      by merdark ( 550117 )
      Now we just need to wait for Adobe and Macromedia to endorse Linux and it'll steal the graphic design folks from Apple.

      Apple computers are so much more than just drop shadows and translucency. To get the designers, you would also need hardware as well designed as Apple hardware (read: designer hardware), you need to completely remove the need to go to the command line, you need to simplify the interface.

      But most importantly, X needs proper colour matching support. Designers need to work with ICC profiles
  • by pacslash ( 784042 ) <pacslash.gmail@com> on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:15PM (#10165367) Homepage Journal
    Am I the only one who doesn't care what their desktop looks like? Shadows are all well and good, but this only take up valuable cpu time which could be used for NetHack!
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:15PM (#10165369)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Performance (Score:4, Informative)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:16PM (#10165370) Homepage
    What I'd like to know is when mainstream distribution makers will build and configure XOrg so that it performs well. My experience with Fedora 2 and 3Test1 was not good. My PowerBook G4 running at 1Ghz running Panther outperformed KDE 3.3 w/ XOrg 6.8.99 from fedora development on a Athlon XP 2400+ w/ 512MB of ram.
    • Why GPUs Matter (Score:5, Informative)

      by WombatControl ( 74685 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:25PM (#10165429)

      Chances are you were running your X server with unaccelerated drivers - which offloads all the hard work to the CPU. In Panther, Quartz Extreme allows the transform and lighting engine of your GPU do all the hard work, leaving the CPU for things that a CPU should be doing it.

      Properly implemented and accelerated, eye candy does not have the take away from CPU power and can greatly enhance usability - as it does with OSX.

      • Re:Why GPUs Matter (Score:5, Informative)

        by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:54PM (#10166134) Homepage
        Chances are you were running your X server with unaccelerated drivers - which offloads all the hard work to the CPU. In Panther, Quartz Extreme allows the transform and lighting engine of your GPU do all the hard work, leaving the CPU for things that a CPU should be doing it.

        It's partly that. But Quartz is also fast on a plain unaccelerated 2D framebuffer. To prove this, simply run Panther inside Mac-On-Linux on the Linux PowerBook. Transparent windows and drop shadows are noticeably faster inside MOL than on the Linux desktop.

        The issue is apparently the interaction between XAA (XFree86 Acceleration Architecture) and the XFree86 driver model. It isn't designed to handle Composite and Render properly. There is a hack in the 6.8 release so drivers will work, but suboptimally. There is considerable work going into a new driver architecture called Keith's Driver (kdrive) and XAA which will give near-Panther performance. But the powers that be have decided to leave those improvements until X.org 6.9. They want the extensions out there now, even if they're slow, so GNOME/KDE/others can start designing applications that use them.

  • Good, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Moridineas ( 213502 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:16PM (#10165372) Journal
    Pics are looking good (amazing what a subtle difference can makes in terms of feel) but I have to say what still stands out in all those pics--bad fonts!

    I really wish the default font situation would be better in the world of X and nix/bsd distros. Switching back and forth between Macs and PC's (windows), it's amazing how much better the mac fonts look and feel than windows. Likewise, Windows looks as much again better than the typical gnome/kde setup I have seen.
    • Re:Good, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dmaxwell ( 43234 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:25PM (#10165427)
      What exactly is so horrid about the fonts? I looked at several of those screenies and didn't see anything that especially jumped out at me as horrible. I most especially did not see the sort of jagged badly scaled hell that was the norm three or four years ago.
    • Re:Good, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

      "Switching back and forth between Macs and PC's (windows), it's amazing how much better the mac fonts look and feel than windows."

      I've found exactly the opposite to be true. The Mac OS X rasterizer seems to "over anti-alias" the fonts - it makes everything too soft and makes any font below 9 points hard to read. With ClearType on, Windows fonts look sharp but not aliased.

      So, for larger sizes, Mac OS X wins, but for the smaller sized fonts, Windows XP wins.

      Note that the default font size on Mac OS X is la
    • Re:Good, but... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Eloquence ( 144160 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:56PM (#10165584)
      The situation has gotten orders of magnitude better than it was years ago. We're now at least on par with Windows (and our default themes are cooler), and thanks to the work of the X.org team as well as the KDE and GNOME developers, I'm sure we will have OS X quality fonts before OS X has reached the next quality level. We're catching up.

      Where the Linux desktop really shines, however, is when it comes to customization. I prefer to operate in a very Windows-like manner, with maximized windows and taskbar. KDE allows me to do that (and gives me a nice launcher command bar with autocompletion - I haven't used the "start" menu in ages). Some want a nice file manger - KDE gives you Konqueror, GNOME gives you Nautilus. Others prefer doing everything in the shell, where you can use Midnight Commander and feel like you're back in the old DOS days.

      Some want virtual desktops or virtual screens (larger than the physical screen size). Any decent window manager provides that. Some want a very efficient, slim system - they use something like Windowmaker [windowmaker.org] or XFCE [xfce.org]. Others want all the bells and whistles and install KDE or GNOME with lots of applets. Some like to experiment with innovative new UIs and try out window managers like ion [cs.tut.fi]. Others are happy just using a cloned Windows or Mac interface.

      If you're willing to experiment, no system offers you as many possibilities as Linux. If you just want a clean, working desktop, all the major distro makers provide that by now.

      There's room to improvement, and the devil is in the details: clipboard interoperability is still buggy and incomplete, performance in some areas can be improved (try resizing your window very fast with content visible), the driver situation is unsatisfactory etc. But none of the problems before us is unsolvable. It's just a matter of time.

      • Re:Good, but... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:22PM (#10165978) Homepage Journal
        If you're willing to experiment, no system offers you as many possibilities as Linux.

        I'm going to have to call your bluff. Consider FreeBSD as one example. Same desktop. Same graphics subsystem, including DRI. And if you're into proprietary graphics drivers, NVidia's is even available.

        This service announcement brought to you by the Pedantry Police...
    • Re:Good, but... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Quantum Jim ( 610382 )

      If you have a license to use Apple's patents on anti-aliased fonts, then you can rebuild FreeType's Font Engine [freetype.org] to support pretty fonts. They switched it off due to legal uncertanities [sourceforge.net], but it is still included with the source code. You have to edit an header file, determine where your Linux desktop distribution stores FreeType's libraries, remake, and install it (as root) to enable it. That sounds complicated, but it is actually really easy to do. Just follow the instructions [freetype.org]; you don't have to be a h

  • Dock vs. Taskbar (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jared_hanson ( 514797 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:22PM (#10165409) Homepage Journal
    OK, this may be slightly offtopic, but since we are discussing UI, and I saw this in the screenshots, why does GNOME (and to a lesser extent) KDE sometimes try to pull of both the dock and taskbar interfaces. This is totally rediculous to me, and just leads the interface to feel cluttered and confusing.

    OK, so that rant above is coming from someone who has mostly converted to using Mac OS X on the desktop. I still use Linux on servers. Anyway, I remember about a year ago when I made the transition, that the dock seemed rather confusing. However, after a couple weeks of usage, I was cursing every taskbar system I ever had to interact with (Windows and Linux). The dock is just so much more condusive to having many windows open. Add in Expose to the mix, and you are in desktop heaven.

    So, my question is then, especially to the GNOME developers (GNOME is my preferred Linux DE), what are the plans with regard to application launchers such as start menus, taskbars, docks, etc. The progress has been remarkable, but, to me at least, this is the area most sorely needing standards and consistency.
  • by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:24PM (#10165422) Homepage Journal
    It just keeps getting better: Vladimir Dergachev of the GATOS [sourceforge.net] project (support for the tuner on ATI All-in-Wonder video cards) just announced that he now has write access to the X.org CVS - so he can finally merge GATOS into the mainline X code!

    Just think: A day in which support for the tuner on ATI cards is simply in the X server, rather than taking a great deal of pain and suffering to get working!

    (Of course, this only applies to cards supported by GATOS, the older cards. But perhaps, just perhaps, if enough people bring pressure to bear upon ATI, then ATI will use the GATOS code to support the newer cards as well.)
    • by Ruie ( 30480 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:36PM (#10165480) Homepage
      Actually the support for Rage Theatre 200 based cards is in the works. Bogdan Diaconescu and Matt Mercer have both worked with it.

      Right now the stumbling block is to upload DSP microcode using VIP bus FIFO. For some reason how to do this was obvious to ATI folks (as docs don't mention much of it) but very hard to accomplish in practice.

  • losing contrast (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:25PM (#10165428) Homepage Journal
    Objects seen at a distance have less contrast than objects close up. It would be a useful feature of windows if they lost contrast as they receeded to the desktop.
    • Re:losing contrast (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Quarters ( 18322 )
      "distance" is a relative term. In relation to the phenomena you are discribing "distance" refers to a decently large linear distance from the eye point. There are also other factors such as fog and haze values to contribute to the apparent loss in contrast.

      "distance" when used to refer to window depth is, in reality, non-existant. Even if you were to code such a system you would need a way to actually place a given in active window at a fictitious depth "in" your monitor. To facilitate that false sense of

    • Re:losing contrast (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Spy Hunter ( 317220 )
      I think once the new X.org is released, we're going to see an explosion of new X11 window managers with new fancy eyecandy features such as this, and much more. If you remember back a few years ago, the Linux scene was teeming with window managers of every shape and size (freshmeat is littered with them). People seemed to lose their enthusiasm for writing wacky window managers after KDE and GNOME's windowmanagers got decent theme support, and most of the old X window manager projects died out or at least
  • Users Experiences (Score:3, Interesting)

    by theoddbot ( 520034 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:31PM (#10165457)
    I've been running the latest versions to hit gentoo for a few days now, the 904 release improves stability a lot over 903.

    Using the nvidia drivers with RenderAccel enabled with xcompmgr makes the desktop fly! Its amazing the psychological difference the redraw elimination makes. It certainly feels much lighter, and gives my iBook a run for its money. The transparency effects have no noticible speed hit whatsover. I've had multiple transparent videos playing, moving around, etc and its all smooth the way it should be.

    This project really is an example of how re-opening the project from the XFree86 'cathedral' has increased development activity in leaps and bounds. Congratulations to all the X.org and freedesktop.org developers on a great job.

    -theoddbot
  • by jg ( 16880 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @08:32PM (#10165460) Homepage
    ***Please*** see the following web page for an explanation of the new facilities in the upcoming release! It is located at http://www.freedesktop.org/XOrg/X11R68ScreenShots


    The original poster meant well, but did not include the explanatory text with the screen shots...

  • by asterism ( 148910 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:01PM (#10165891)
    It's great to see X progressing in it's new home.

    Now is the time to get the esthetics worked out before things get entrenched. The screenshots of the drop shadows show a shadow around all of the edges of the windows. This looks really funny since this implies that the light source is directly over the center of each window. Why is there a shadow on the top? If we're going to have a rendered-style look we should choose a decent place for the light so we can have some consistency.

    I vote for the light source to be at offscreen at the top left.
    • by Gleng ( 537516 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @12:49AM (#10166615)
      I always thought it would be a nice idea to have the mouse pointer as the light source.
      • Hmm. Sounds interesting, and I bet it will be done sooner or later. But I think that after eight hours of work this could make me kinda sick. You know with all those shadows constantly moving when I move the cursor.

        Wouldn't it be nicer to link the lightsource to the systemclock and have it move like the sun over the desktop? So you could tell what time it is by the length and direction of the shadows. It would have to move backwards at nighttime of course or you would have a black desktop at night... ;-)
    • by Spy Hunter ( 317220 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @03:18AM (#10167117) Journal
      Well, it depends on what the purpose of the shadows is. If the purpose of the shadows is to look realistic, the shadow should only appear on the bottom and right of the window (for consistency with most UI toolkits which place the light source at top left). If the purpose of the shadow is to improve usability by making it easier to determine which window has the focus, then the shadow should appear around all edges of the window for maximum "popping off the screen" effect. It may surprise you to learn that OS X's windows have a shadow on all four sides. The left and right shadows are the same size; the top shadow is only a few pixels tall, but it is there; the bottom shadow is the largest. Also, the shadow of the topmost window is significantly larger and darker than other shadows, making it even easier to see the focused window. Apple knows their usability.
  • by cuban321 ( 644777 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:49PM (#10166106) Homepage
    Why do I have to reconfigure X to switch from my laptop's LCD to my external CRT? Why can't I use the nifty FN+F7 on my laptop or close the lid?

    Why can't it detect when I'm docked and switch to dual head (LCD + CRT)?

    The effects are cool, but alot of us would like to see these usability features too. I like using a graphical login, but I can't because I'm forced to have two X configurations. One for my LCD and one for my CRT.
  • by dh003i ( 203189 ) <dh003iNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:52PM (#10166119) Homepage Journal
    All I want to know is "Will my X.org actually use my GRAPHICS CARD to render the desktop, not the CPU?" In other words, I don't want it to look prettier -- I want it to be faster. Pretty does not mean functional.
  • by inkswamp ( 233692 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:38PM (#10166289)
    I've never been able to relate to complaining about eye-candy. I don't see it as a gratuitous part of the user experience, not even for admins. But it needs to be done right. A couple of points to consider before complaining or writing it off as unimportant:

    First, as long as you take the approach that Apple took with Aqua and Quartz in offloading the graphic work to the graphics card, then who cares? It barely affects CPU load and you get a better looking interface. It's just putting unused potential to work.

    Second, why would you want to look at an ugly interface? Car makers put a lot of work into what you see when you're sitting in the driver's seat, right? Steering wheel, seats, dashboard... they've all been carefully designed for looks just like the outside of the car? Those of you complaining about UI eye-candy: do you also look for totally stripped down cars too? There is something to be said for aesthetics. Unless you're a robot, it affects you.

    Third, some "eye-candy" can actually serve a purpose. For example: the "slurping" effect in OS X that so many people complain about actually acts as a visual cue, almost like a moving arrow, to show you exactly where your window is minimizing to. I never lose track of minimized windows in OS X, but I do it all the time on Windows. (Of course, it helps that OS X also has the added "eye-candy" of showing a minimized version of the window itself in the dock.)

    Just a few things to consider. I don't think eye-candy is the Great Satan it's often made out to be and it's good to see X keeping pace.

  • by logicnazi ( 169418 ) <gerdes@@@invariant...org> on Monday September 06, 2004 @12:03AM (#10166414) Homepage
    So I'm not that familiar with what is going on with the X.org so I'm hoping that someone who knows what is going on can tell me if this is really a good long term solution or just a poor hack to extend an architecture not extendable to the needs of a modern interface.

    In particular I am concerned that things like transparency seem to be accomplished at the application level rather than the rendering level. In other words, at least on a quick read, it seemed that transparency was handled by the application wishing to display a transparent window asking that window to be rendered off screen, having that composited window returned and then rendering this to the X screen. It would seem a more robust solution would be to allow simple rendering of windows with an alpha component.

    I know this might provoke a war over the sufficency of X but I'm hoping to get a few serious responses with technical knowledge about how reasonable it is to do these things without re-enginering X.
    • Not quite. There is now a 'compositing manager', just like the window manager that handles the actual rendering of windows. The change is that instead of all being rendered into the frame buffer, the compositing manager can point to a branch of the rendering tree and say 'whoa there! break this off into an offscreen pixmap'. It can then get these pixmaps and composite the windows as it sees fit. None of the bitmapped data for the windows need go accross the wire since all the off-screen pixmaps are held ser

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

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