<AWT Dev> <Swing Dev> Project proposal: fbtoolkit

Steph Meslin-Weber steph at tangency.co.uk
Tue May 29 09:55:00 UTC 2007


On 25/05/07, Stuart McCulloch <mcculls at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 25/05/07, Oleg Sukhodolsky <Oleg.Sukhodolsky at sun.com> wrote:
> > imho all functionality suggested could be achieved by fb-based XServer,
> > why do you need to reinvent the wheel and develop a toolkit which will
> > implement some functionality of XServer, some functionality of Window
> > Manager, and AWT toolkit.
> >
> > What is the advantage of the approach you suggest?
>
> perhaps better use of memory/resources?
>
> sometimes a bit of (re)invention can uncover new and interesting paths...

Stuart's got my main motivation, I'll add a few numbers to back that
up though. Looking at the OpenMoko binary images for use on the
Neo1973 as an example, it's clear that adding a minimalist X server
adds at least 5MB to your dependency footprint... and that's without
font or authentication. Each additional 'driver' such as FBDev, SVGA,
etc, seem to add 0.5-1MB extra to it.

>From existing proofs of concept I've worked on, I believe we can
address the usecases I mentioned in well under 1MB (I'm being
conservative here, I think under 400KB would be possible). It goes
without saying that the above footprint sizes exclude the JRE ;-).

For single-use devices or kiosk-type software, the extra size of an
XServer just isn't necessary and could be used for more image/sound
assets.

-- 
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Steph Meslin-Weber,	steph at tangency.co.uk
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