Re: does glib use X at all.

[Bryan Patrick Coleman <bpcolema uncg edu>]

On 25 Jun 2000, Owen Taylor wrote:

>GDK has "almost no" functionality other than acting as a portability
>layer across different windowing systems and presenting a nice
>OO API. However, we avoid using separate source trees for the
>different ports of GDK so that where code can be shared, it
>is shared, and so that we ensure we retain compatibility between
>the interfaces 
>
>The GDK in GTK+-1.3 has been extensively revised to separate out
>port-specific and port-independent pieces. The CVS tree contains ports
>to Win32 and linux-fb along with X11. ports to BeOS and Mac also
>exist, though they are less complete and/or not integrated in. We've
>been changing stuff a lot recently, so only the X11 and linux-fb ports
>compile right now to my knowledge, but I think that the major changes
>should be done at this point.
>
>Your proposed port to GGI will presumably look somewhat like the
>frame-buffer one, though you'll be able to use some of the GGI
>primitives to accelerate things like line drawing and maybe text, and
>you'll be going through GGI for things like mouse handling. It would
>be nice to share code for things like window handling wherever
>possible, but we haven't thought a lot about that all that much yet.
>
>Regards,
>                                        Owen 

Cool thanks I have a better idea where I am headed now. As for Havoc's
question. I didn't know there was a fb gtk in the works. I will of course
start there rather than the X version.

As for why. GGI is just plain cool. Once ported to GGI GTK+ will be able
to use ggi's accelerated KGICON as opposed to fbcon. Also GGI has cool
things like true color emulation, multi-head support and tile targets. In
addition once ported to GGI any of GGI's targets will be available to GTK+
These include svgalib, aalib, fb, X, Xlib, DirectX, glide, monotext,
xf86dga, vgagl, and some really obscure ones to not to mention memory and
file targets. Any of these on a common plateform can be run from the same
binary without recompiling. There was at one point talk of making an XPcom
target as well. If mozilla is using gtk and gtk uses ggi which can target
XPcom then netscape could run itself :)

Acutally my end goal has nothing to do with porting gtk at all but its a
stepping stone. I am trying to write a library that will sit on top of gtk
and be able to display dynamic UI's using a multitude of output
evnironments including a speach card and plain text displays. I will be
using gtk and ggi for the graphical component. It will be something like
active desktop mixed with SWING on crack. The closest library I have seen
to what I am envisioning is OVID by ibm.


-  Bryan Patrick Coleman  

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