Re: Windows2000 coolness

[Colin Fox <cfox telus net>]

Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> 
> >       Is that to be brought to its logical conclusion of, "...and since
> >  X does not have an alpha extension, Gnome won't have this feature"?
> >
> >       Is that what Rasterman said about translucent window moves? :)
> 
> Translucent window moves as implemented in Enlightenment are a hack.
> A very cute hack, to its credit, but a hack nonetheless.  They don't
> work properly on non-truecolor visuals or on machines with multiple
> visuals.
> 

Forgive me if this has been discussed before, and also if this isn't
precisely the correct forum for this particular discussion, but:

What do you guys think of a 100% OpenGL 3D window manager? The idea
being that the window graphics themselves are merely textures on
polygons. There would be numerous potential advantages, and it would
allow for funky effects like the fading menu (since alpha is part of
GL). You could even add shadows and anisotropic lighting, if you wanted
to get tricky.

I think a fully GL desktop with real 3D windows positioned in 3D space
would be unbelievably cool, not to mention the fact that no other OS has
this. Why not start taking advantage of our 3D accelerator cards?

I don't know what it would take to get X rendering this way, but as I
understand it, it's a pretty well separated sytem, so perhaps it's
possible to do the rendering into textures then apply them to polys?
-- 
Colin Fox
cfox@telus.net