Re: DRAFT PROPOSAL: Port of „Consumer JRE“ features to Unix/X11 platforms

[Wayne Meissner]

On 08/02/2008, Clemens Eisserer <linuxhippy at gmail.com> wrote:

> > It might be worthwhile listing which drivers have good XRender support
> > - do opensource drivers for various cards/chipsets have better XRender
> > support than OpenGL support?
> > If so, it would be something that gives more support to this idea for
> > mainstream users, and a fully opensource desktop, not just remote X
> > users.
> Absolutly, thats the main reason why I think XRender as Java2D backend
> makes sence (thanks, seems I've not mentioned this enough).

You mentioned it, I just thought being more explicit (i.e. opensource
driver Foo for popular chipset Bar has better support for XRender than
opengl) lends more weight to your idea.

> Some of the open-source drivers bundled with Xorg already accalerate
> XRender (Intel, ATI/AMD), and because EXA will be the default
> accaleration architecture soon, in the mid-term almost all drivers
> will have good XRender accaleration.
> I'll put some explanations and links to the proposal to make this more clear.

I've read a smattering of XRender/EXA/XAA/OpenVG/Gallium3D stuff this
afternoon, and it would be nice to see a brief explanation of:

1) exactly what Java2D things XRender can accelerate.

1b) How that relates to and speeds up common software (e.g. the Nimbus
L&F, the Substance L&F, JavaFX) that is or will become important in
java-on-the-desktop.

2) what the state of XRender is in various open & closed source
drivers (e.g. last time I used nvidia on linux, XRender was buggy).

3) How XRender compares to OpenVG or Cairo for accelerating java2D.

A couple of lines on each, with links to further information should
do.  It wouldn't hurt to be a bit verbose here, you can always cut it
down later.


Sidenote:  Would it be better to make the XRender proposal independent
of the other parts?  They seem to be only linked by the
"linux-desktop" angle, and they're not inter-dependent - and it looks
like it would be a substantial chunk of work all by itself.