Centralization of graphical awesomeness

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)]

On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:09:36 +0100 Petr Vanek <vanous at penguin.cz> said:

> >As an important but overlooked side effect, the more capable the
> >graphics toolkit is and the more bloated and unfriendly the resulting
> >end user interface will be. While we were at replacing the original
> >gnome mobile desktop, I would have liked to start from a minimalist
> >but inovative toolkit more adapted to limited hardware like the
> >freerunner or the many other gadget with only a small touchscreen that
> >will keep getting out, instead of having one more toolkit for the same
> >device range for which we already have dozens.
> 
> my 2 cents:
> 
> we can have lighter themes in E (as for example gry is, thanks the
> author for that!), but then need to have the X11-16 working - at
> this point, it has been recommended by Raster not to use it and even
> the new SHR phoneui apps cannot work with X11-16. So we are going back
> to the even slower engine.

you dont need it for lighter themes to work. it wont have as good an effect
though. but see below.

> Could this be looked at and revised? We need X11-16 for the Freerunner,
> the 32bit rendering is way too slow on Freerunner.

i'm not going to do anything to the 16bit engine. why? it's 100% parallel code
to the 32bit. and it's more work to do it as the format is more complex. every
operation is in 16bit or 16bit + alpha plane mask. it doubles maintenance work.
i have enough work just making 1 engine fast and maintaining accelerated
engines (xrender, gl, ...). :( 32bit engine is much mroe stable and more
capable. it is slower. but unless someone steps up to the plate and does the
work, it's not going to get done. 16bit engine was never complete from the
start, as it was written to make 1 specific app fast, and only what it used was
implemented.

> Illume is absolutely unmaintained - as Raster pointed, it hasn't been
> actively touched for a long time. Please see list of Illume immediate
> issues [1].

correct. as it simply hasnt been on a list of priorites in the last year. it's
far backburner stuff :)

> Raster, are you using Illume yourself somewhere? Could Illume get some
> attention? Otherwise it's going to die with the Freerunner users
> getting another phones (Pré etc).

no it isn't :) trust me on that one. :) nothing to do with freerunner. as for
illume - i am not using it. there is an illume2 module in svn that is a
skeleton rewrite that just does window arrangement in a very primitive way
right now. i don't have time to work on it right now either.

> As i see it, if the above will not happen, users will slowly drift
> away to solution perhaps "not so optimized" but feeling lighter and
> maintained. So the wish for E being THE toolkit for mobile devices will
> disappear. And we can see this already. SHR has been asked several times
> for more options in window managers. And as SHR has no manpower to
> provide this, Debian might start gaining attention, proper deb
> packaging of FSO will help this a lot.

from that point of view... i'll disagree. you'll know why at some point. :)
it'd love to chat about it... but i can't. :(

> Petr
> 
> [1] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Illume#Issues
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    raster at rasterman.com