On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 10:26 +0200, Tarjei Knapstad wrote:
On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 02:46, Rodd Clarkson wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 07:02 -0400, Build System wrote:
> What does this mean for users without hardware acceleration?
> What does this mean for users with NVIDIA and ATI cards who don't have
> support for 3D rendering because current open source drivers aren't
> offering support for this?
It means you won't get accelerated graphics :)
I think the whole point of Cairo is that it's a common graphics
framework with multiple backends. If your application renders graphics
using Cairo you automatically get support for rendering to:
* The X window system
* OpenGL
* The Win32 API
* Postscript
* PDF
* SVG
* etc...
So in theory at least it's a graphics portability layer. You can build
your application for windows just by selecting Win32 rendering, users
will get hardware accelerated output if they have support for it or
normal X rendering if not and so forth. Implementing printing and PS/PDF
output is also a breeze for the application developer as he/she can just
render using these backends.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is what Cairo is meant for -
fast vector graphics with multiple backends making life easier for
application developers, and life faster for users with hardware
accelerated graphics. Those without it shouldn't notice any difference.
Don't get me wrong (and I'm not sure if you have). I think Cairo is a
wonderful idea and I'm really looking forward to seeing what people do
with it.
What I'm wanting to know is will people without hardware acceleration be
worse off. Are non-hw-accelerated users going to end up with a system
that runs something like non-hw-accelerated 3D (which really sucks, even
with a good processor)? Or will the rendering on non-hw-accelerated
systems be quite good, and rendering with hw-accelerated systems will be
brilliant?
regards
R.
--
"It's a fine line between denial and faith.
It's much better on my side"