Re: Minix2 GUI (was: Light Weight X "clone")

Brendan McKenzie wrote:

SVGALib sounds like a good starting point. Perhaps part of SDL could
also be ported and used for dealing with inputs (keyboard/mouse) if
necessary. Would anybody be interested in taking on the challenge of
porting SVGALib? ( www.svgalib.org ) From there we could begin
developing a usable graphics API.

Anyone have any suggestions for a name? Mindows perhaps? :) ... or
maybe not.


As Lindows ?
Naming Lindows already was discussed, not in newsgroups in the court.
However I read somewhere that the X Windows is earlier naming than MS Windows
X Windows dated with it seams 1983, MS Windows with 1984.

The problem is not in SVGA "Super Video Graphic Array".
My own video library in length of over 10Kb on TurboPascal
perfectly served for page viewing on Hercules (Which I actually had), CGA,EGA
and VGA. And did it faster than native graph.tpu on 8Mhz i8088 compatible
processor.

The problem is exactly in protocol.
API as also the protocol.
There are X protocol, Windows API, PDF, Xlib, GTK, QT, ect..
GTK and QT exit not only for X but for Windows, and it seams for PDF-terminals.

QT is commercial, and too heavy it has Opera, and Konqueror
GTK it opensource

To have both QT, and GTK plus Xlib you need to exactly copy protocol of Xorg.
Which allows you to run wide variety of application, including Mozila,
Konqueror, GIMP, multimedia players.

Problem of X, I guess, not in the network oriented Client Server
architecture but in revolutionary implemented protocol.
Which looked good for 1982 DEC graphical terminal,
but not so for personal computer with video accelerator in 2006.

Based on the similar principles with X, PDF-terminal
has more optimized protocol.

Finally, it is possible to design complete terminal protocol
with API. But even a usual (character) terminal is a server in Minix3.
(Which theoretically may be accessed through network.)
Not Client Server based protocol, will make your API or single tasking,
or such as in Windows 1 and 2 (where central control program switches
user between applications),
or in the best case such as in Oberon.

Look, when you drow histogram or send pixel by pixel video,
if with each pixel of 800x600 video array, you also send some information,
also several headers and initiation of (TCP/IP)
processing of these information may take more resources then
cosine transformation (as in JPEG and MPEG) or even fractal transformation.
But when you send ones entire array through shared memory or even TCP/IP,
(as in some X implementations) used little resources
comparing with cosine transformation.
But when you need interpolation, face filling,
which may do your video array is not enough just to send picture.
But PS-terminal first, later PDF-terminal did it somehow.

Finally it is possible to create some native graphical API of only particular
OS,
but who'll made applications for this only API?

--Quas.co.ua


waqar wrote:
> > I think Minix does not need an X implementation. A better idea
is to
design a GUI api from
scratch just like the Win32 API. And it should not be client server
based like X is

Sebastian wrote:
Hello,

[GUI]
Can you please tell me which? I am running Minix 2.0.4 (i286/287) ...

Take a look at "Mini X revisited" in this news group.

Thank you.

Regards,
Sebastian

I would again like to say that minix needs a GUI that is standalone and
does not support networking. Sombody mentioned in this post that once
there existed a project. I think we should start again. The first
problem that one is going to face will be SVGA drivers. I think porting
svgalib will be a good idea and then build the gui on top of it.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Asking about Medical Application
    ... Most of the Intraoral software out there is old and uses the Microsoft ... DirectShow API and / or the Windows Media Video API WMV. ...
    (sci.med.dentistry)
  • Re: Win32Asm and Graphic
    ... >> modern video cards all do everything differently to one ... > module of DirectX) to enter FULLSCREEN EXCLUSIVE mode, ... You're still using the Windows API though (in this case ...
    (alt.lang.asm)
  • Re: newbe about API
    ... Emne: Re: newbe about API ... > I found all these API-CALL strings are finally compiled to ... more than that...and Windows simply takes this to an extreme that this ... DLL, when a weak point is found (which, with Microsoft, is something ...
    (alt.lang.asm)
  • Re: In the Shallow End
    ... When a document claims how an API is supposed to be used and then gives the user examples that actually work, ... Vague in your instance means you have no context to VMS or UNIX of that era. ... Windows offers lots of this stuff. ... That's why Apple had to dump a whole paradigm to plunge ahead and take the lead. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: a pre-beginners question: what is the pros and cons of .net, compared to ++
    ... as the windows forms architecture wraps a number of activex ... and retains backwards compatibility with both COM and the classic Win32 api. ... C++ cannot inherently do video capture either, since you have to import COM. ... Outlook or Word or IM programs, each of which would run in managed code ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.general)
Loading