FreeLists / openbeos / [openbeos] Re: Interface Kit

[DarkWyrm <bpmagic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
>Hey everyone,
>       I'm going to be working on the interface kit, or at least that's what 
>I've been telling myself. The funny thing about an interface kit is that 
>it's generally used as an abstraction layer between the operating system 
>and a graphics server of some sort.
>       At this point, I don't see anyone working on a graphics server, correct 
>me if I'm wrong.
Actually, the IK team is hard at work, but we're taking a by-the-book 
approach (test suites, interface specs, etc) because the code will be big and 
hairy. I, personally, have been hard at work on researching and designing the 
app_server. Consider yourself corrected. :)

>       Now we could write our own graphics server from scratch, which would be 
>an enormous waste of time, or we could use one of the existing ones 
>(which just might make sense). There are three real options that I see 
>for our graphic system, we could use X(xfree86.org), Berlin 
>(http://berlin-consortium.org/), or the thing that comes with 
>AtheOS(atheos.cx).
We're using the AtheOS app_server as a model, but none of the code, partly 
because of licensing issues and partly because AtheOS and BeOS are alike only 
on the surface.

>       My personal thought is that X is old and tired, and that some day 
> Berlin 
>will hopefully replace it. Berlin also has some _really_ cool looking 
>features(transparency, fully based on opengl, 3d windows) that work at a 
>not-bad speed. It needs to be optimized of course, but it _will_ get fast.
>       Also we can run berlin on top of X, so that someone working on the 
>interface kit could do that work while still running their normal 
>graphics system on their computer.
We've seen it, but the team's decided doing our own thing is best, especially 
when we want to keep driver compatibility. I have been wondering if the 
BlueOS team has looked at it, though. It's a nice windowing system.

--DarkWyrm