new GTK+ display model

[Max Harris <maxwell oreality com>]

I want to hack GTK+ so that it draws with Mesa instead of GDK (without
breaking the ability to switch back or compile to GDK for all those who
run X).

Before anyone writes this off as absurd, there are several good reasons to
do this:

* Maximum utilization of features in modern graphics cards (hardware
transform, antialiasing, among others). Apple's Quartz/Aqua is great, but
the same thing can be done with little CPU overhead if 3D hardware is
used.

* Get around X limitations (I know antialiased fonts and other things are
being addressed, but other architectual issues remain). I know that X
won't go away soon, but should it stop development of new things? Please
don't flame me or others about this.

* Vectorized display allows for new UI paradigms - specifically, ZUIs, or
Zoomable User Interfaces (things like Pad++
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pad++/ and Jazz ). This is something X really
can't do.

Last year, I helped create Synapse, a GUI written from scratch that uses
Mesa and Freetype. Screenshots are available
at: http://www.oreality.com/synapse/screenshots.php3

All would be fine and dandy, except that we made three huge mistakes by
keeping it initally closed (that scared off everyone), by not making the
API compatible with anything (no apps), and by pushing it as a 3D GUI
(the 3D aspect was useless). I want to mainstream the good things about
Synapse, without bringing along any of the bad stuff along with it.

If I submitted a patch that did this by providing alternate
implementations of stuff like gtk_button_paint(), would it be accepted? Is
anyone else interested in this?

Max Harris
maxwell oreality com