From: Steffen Seeger <seeger@physik.tu-chemnitz.de>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 14:08:25 +0200 (MEST)

Re: XAA cathedral: steffen?

> Steffen, could you enlighten us on what your cathedral contains right
> now?

The main points I have done so far:

- reorganization of the KGI module stuff so that vendors can get
  their stuff mixed with ours well.

- conceptual change in the mode handling. This is not fully finished.
  The drivers set_mode() and check_mode() functions need to get a
  new calling interface so that they can be stacked easily. This
  allows e.g. to have a Permedia driver loaded first, and then a 
  GLINT Delta driver, that can add/delete resources exported from
  the Permedia driver. This is also handy for VooDoo kind of setups,
  which have to intercept the current display driver.

- isolation of input event generation and 'focus and input device handling'
  into a separate module, the Kernel Input Interface.

- fixing of various minor things (the dead/compose key processing, 
  loadable/readable keymaps, etc.)

- rewrite of /dev/graphic to support direct rendering stuff. Components
  are tested, but not the whole thing. It works with fork(), clone() 
  and exec(), gives arbitrary sized DMA buffers and allows true 
  graphics processor multitasking.

remaining stuff/things to do:

- fixing/rewrite of the display registration/management.

- final fixing of the Permedia driver, so that it exploits the /dev/graphic
  accelerator stuff.

So far the kernel side. On the userland side I have isolated XFree's XAA
to compile with XGGI. However, the DDX initialization stuff needs to be
adopted to do KGI style initialization. Nothing big, but it has to be done.

This will allow us to use existing Permedia/GLINT XAA drivers with
little/no changes. (Just the accel stuff, the initialization will be
done using the kernel driver.
 
> I'm specifically referring to the stuff done to interface with XAA
> binary modules and libGGI. 

As for normal XFree servers, there will be console backward compatibility 
as long as there is no driver loaded. However, I am not working on 
integrating XAA drivers into libGGI. Perhaps Andy could tell you more here.

> I assume if mode negotiation and setup is
> done the kgicon way, the acceleration stuff in XAA could be made to work
> with libGGI and/or a XGGI server. I think it would be very nice to have
> this and if it isn't possible to get things working out of the box, a
> source only sollution would also suffice. 

Well, I have the XAA stuff compiling with XGGI, but it needs some more work
to be integrated. Especially the initialization needs work.

> The reason for me wanting this is to reuse work and to minimize
> support/synchronization issues and that XFree86 has a fairly reasonable
> professional organization which some vendors preferr to use.
> 
> It is hard to anticipate what you are working on in this respect so an
> update would be nice. :o)

Sure. Hope this is the info you want. I could use help on the X thingy,
but there was noone willing/experienced enough so far.
 
> -- 
> -Torgeir

			Steffen

----------------- e-mail: seeger@physik.tu-chemnitz.de -----------------