raph and dto: The X
Windows system definately needs to be brought up to todays
standards. But the design is significantly better than you
think. One think that isn't exploited very much is the fact
that you can have the X server to YUV instead of RGB. The
problem is that many X servers don't support the
extension.
Adding transparency shouldn't be hard at all. It's just
adding an alpha channel to the window. X already has the
windowing layering, so you simply definate how transparent
the current window is, and there you go!
What really needs to have happened is to have X grow
extensions to support effecient 2D acceleration. One really
useful feature would be the ability to create a block of
memory that you can modify in your local environment. Then
using the pipe, you pass a reference to the memory to the
Xserver (or kernel space if we ever get X in there) and then
the graphics card adds it to the list of windows to be
rendered. This would make effecient MPEG playing really
cheap as you simply define a window the YUV encoding, and
tell the Xserver to display that window. Then you get all
the clipping and YUV to RGB conversion that the video card
does. You may have to go backwards where the Xlib gives you
a frame buffer, but it still isn't hard.
The real problem is that we haven't seen anybody champion
an effort to add modern features to the Xserver. It would
also be nice to stick the Xserver in the kernel (yeh, I know
some of you will scream fowl), but the performance
improvement should be tremendous. Even with modern
workstations, you get a nice performance boost if you run
the application on one machine (like a 440Mhz Ultra 10) and
display it on another machine (like a G3 running MacOS). It
simply comes down to the fact that you suddenly have two
processors instead of one. One is dedicated to running the
application, and the other is dedicated to displaying the
results.
X should be brought into the 21st century.
nymia: Don't forget someone still has to
write the new compilers and implement the assemblers for new
processors. Assembly will never be dead, just few people
will have a use for it.
GJF: New Zeland is more 1st world than
3rd world. I thought that 3rd, 2nd and 1st was just a line
of econmic developement, but according to Merriam-Webster,
2nd world contries are those associated with Communism.
(Darn it, m-w using post instead of get!). After visiting
New Zeland earlier this year, the econmic situation is quite
nice. I only spent about NZ$300 in cash while I was there
as I could use my Visa Check card for almost all of my
purcases. This included most meals. Most cash was spent on
internet cafe's and transportation.
Uraeus: That only works if you can get
ahold of the person you'd like to spend time with. I
reciently had to call it quits with a recient (non-romanic)
relationship because she just couldn't take any time out of
her life to actually maintain some semblense of a
relationship. She tells me which weekend would be best for
her, and then is to busy to even remeber the correct date,
let along call/tell me that she'd be busy that weekend.
Constantly fighting a battle isn't worth it, and could
possibly be why I haven't felt like doing much computer work
the last two years.
Reading the "I Don't
Like Your Examples! article raph posted
is so true. At least he has the guts to defend his
possition and not take the easy way out.
Probably shouldn't of spent so much time on this diary
entry. Guess I'm just avoiding have to spend more time
documenting the new hardware tool wrapper scheme that I have
written for Credence
Systems. I did a presentation to the people here in
Hillsboro on it, and they like it. I just presented what I
have done and they were like, ok, sounds good, can we do
this with it? At least I did about double the size of the
documentation, but there is so much to document. The
documentation will probably end up being larger than all the
shell scripts!
I have been thinking about a new revision control
system. Really want to make something liker perforce, but
behave on a WAN scale, so a developer can "import" my tree
for libmime into his, and be able to "branch" the code and
submit changes back to me, and be able to integrate any
changes/bug fixes that I make.
After a discussion last week about documentation, I have
been writing a design spec/paper for it. It really is true
that you need to make sure you know exactly the problem you
are solving before you start on the project, You just might
get side tracked on the way. I was lucky with the hardware
tools wrapper project as that one is pretty easy to fit in
my head. Though I would of done better (not wasted as many
hours) had I done a design document. It was just that I
already had a better idea of what the tool environment
should look like than my manager, that my manager just
finally gave up and let me run with it. Thanks to the
people from Racyer Graphics (now at Apple Computer) for
inspiring my work. If I hadn't worked with their
environment, I would of never been able to design this one
and improve upon it.
Hopefully my trip the Australia will help get me back to
being more sane. I was about to say caring about work, but
why should I? If I want to travel and goof off, that's
fine. I don't need to love work, I'm just lucky that I'm in
an industry that pays well enough that I can save up to do
an international trip in six months or so.
Hmmmm, long enough diary entry? I just had to add
something to make it longer, didn't I?