[OpenJDK 2D-Dev] Best way organizing XRender additions for the X11 pipeline?

[Jesse W. Hathaway]

> Hello,
> 
> I've some spare-time left so maybe I find some time to implement the
> most used software-fallbacks using XRender. There has been significant
> progress when it comes to XRender. With the EXA framework a few
> open-source drivers will soon be capable of accalerating fancy things,
> and nvidia has excellent XREnder accelaration in their latest binary
> driver.
> 
> I wonder what would be better:
> - Copy the source and implement an "XRender" pipeline replacing as
> much of X11 drawing functionality as possible.
> - Extend the existing one and let software-fallbacks there if no
> XRender is available.

Has creating a Cairo, cairographics.org, pipeline been considered? A 
Cairo pipeline would give you software fall backs as well as 
acceleration when available. Also given the increasing interest in 
using Cairo for X11 rendering its performance should only get better 
over time. Finally you could compare performance across Windows and
OSX since Cairo supports both platforms.

-Jesse