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Novell announces Xgl/Compiz release

Novell announces Xgl/Compiz release

Posted Feb 10, 2006 14:35 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
In reply to: Novell announces Xgl/Compiz release by mmarq
Parent article: Novell announces Xgl/Compiz release

"Conclusion: it would be "very nice" to have a standard "block stacking""

No, it wouldn't. We had a standard block stack between 1993 and 1999. How much flexibility did it provide? How much forward progress was possible? It's like wishing your car's engine, transmission, driveshaft and diffs were all welded together into one simple unit. It's nice in theory but it just beomces unweildy in the real world. When a problem is very complex, modularizing it often makes things SIMPLER.

Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean that it is flawed. That's the beauty of the current setup -- you don't *have* to understand. The blocks stack, and everything can just work, from palmtop to mainframe. It's a flexibility that I don't think has ever existed in a full-stack graphics architecture before. I expect good things in the future.

It's disappointing. Drag went to a lot of trouble to explain how the pieces fit together and why. Yes, Jon Smirl's paper is very good but Drag answered your question a lot better. I suggest you read his reply again and actually try to understand *why* before making glib, uninformed replies. For instance:

"XGL is the core for OpenGL driven X Server. XeGL is a standalone x server using the XGL core" [is] a good example where things could "get together"

Wrong. XeGL turns the server inside out to try to make it smaller and simpler. To merge it BACK into the X/XGL server would remove the whole point of this experiment. Did you really not realize this??


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