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RE: [Feature-requests] was Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Server Test 31
- To: "Robert Collins" <robert dot collins at itdomain dot com dot au>, "cygx" <cygwin-xfree at cygwin dot com>
- Subject: RE: [Feature-requests] was Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Server Test 31
- From: "Harold Hunt" <huntharo at msu dot edu>
- Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 21:38:31 -0400
Robert,
> 1) /dev/clipboard integration - can be done through either win32
> clipboard calls or just open /dev/clipboard. If you want to post BINARY
> data to the clipboard, the best way (IMO) is to use /dev/clipboard, so
> we centralise that code (it handles binary now).
Ah... see, now that is something I can go on. I want clipboard support very
much, but I keep forgetting to look into it. I'm going to work on it right
now and see what I can come up with.
> 2) this is something I thought of the other day - I don't know how
> feasible it is....
>
> when the Xserver starts up, make the screen size the entire windows
> screen size, and the background transparent.
> Then for each X window created, create a win32 window with a client area
> the size of the X window client area, and render into that.
> Finally translate win32 messages into X window manager 'things'
> (technical term there :] ).
Hrm... The X on X (Mac OS X) folks have developed a rootless X server,
however, it requires that a pointer to the primary display framebuffer
memory; the server renders directly into the primary framebuffer, just like
the old Cygwin/XFree86 that only worked on NT/2000. I'm not sure how
practical it would be to try creating a rootless X server, since Windows
95/98/Me are such a huge part of our user base. On a related note, have you
compared the performance of the primary framebuffer server with the shadow
framebuffer servers? Yikes! The primary framebuffer server is terribly
slow. (Just think about doing a stipple fill, were you modify existing
pixel values: synchronize with video card over PCI/AGP bus, grab a couple
pixels from the framebuffer, modify the pixels at the CPU, synchronize with
the video card again, send the pixels back, etc., compared to: perform
graphics operation in system memory, transfer the whole updated region to
the video card at once).
I need to read up on window managers before I can figure out some sort of
workable solution for this one. Anybody with more experience is welcome to
take over this one :)
Harold