NeWS – Network Extensible Window System

DRI only comes into play if you're creating a direct OpenGL context running one of the open source OpenGL drivers (Mesa + DRM).

It does nothing for regular X11 clients, that don't use OpenGL. Actually DRI does not do drawing at all, it's mostly just a way for bypassing the X11 server for direct OpenGL contexts as specified in the GLX specification. Essentially it's shared memory plus mmaping certain regions of the video device into clients' address spaces.

You can't draw shit using DRI.

Again: This neither KMS, nor DRI/DRM, nor OpenGL have anything to do with the braindeadness of "modern" X11 toolkits.

What does have something to do with it is reinventing the wheel and to all the rasterization work in software client side in code contained in the toolkit (Cairo in the case of GTK+, "raster" in the case of Qt). Why these custom rasterization engines have been implemented?

Well, mostly to be able to use the toolkits in an embedded environment that lacks a display server with drawing primitives (for example DirectFB). Eventually the scope expanded to draw single widgets for X11 and at some point it was decided that it would be easier to just render the whole thing in software and then blit.

People were dissatisfied with the graphics primitives offered by X11 / XRender. Yes, I admit, rectangles, triangles, polygons, lines, arcs and ellipses are not that much (/s); there's still the desire for Bezier curves. And yes, I admit that the X11 graphics model may be somewhat limiting when it comes to composing drawing layers, as you need it for, say CSS.

However I consider it mostly a lack of creativity and determination. XRender can be quite powerful if you know how to use it. And with Glamor at last it will be GPU accelerated.

But like all stories, also this one has a twist for the dark: Although the art created by the protagonist was of high quality, the artists technique was behind the curve of what people actually wanted to see. The sad thins is, people didn't exactly know what the wanted to see, unless it was shown to them. Also our protagonist artist had a obsessive preference for his drawing substrates: The only canvases he'd be drawing on would consist of orthogonal grids and would only fill each cell with a solid color. His sidekick Crystal Freetype was okay with it, but also figured, that some people, for some reason liked it, if she tripled the resolution of the grid in one direction and biased the hues by a periodic red-green-blue pattern. But she never got really perfect at it.

Some say, and those would clearly be right, that the reason for that was, that the people who'd wanted to see their art would do it only at galleries: But those galleries had problems with reproducing their illumination. Each gallery had slightly different light. For a long time each gallery tried to compensate with its own tools, documenting what had to be done in a customary way. Eventually all these galleries got their act together and agreed on a specific way to tell each other and the artist how the light looks at their place.

They also realized that for maximum effect the light at the gallery had to be taken into account when drawing the pictures.

Unfortunately our hero "rendering code" never properly learnt what to make out of the information he got from the gallieries. He preferred to work with his preferred colours Red, Green and Blue and knew how to mix them according to the color theory on RGB colors "s" as laid down by his idol "Adobe" (also called sRGB), but Crystal FreeType never got the knack for it, messing up the Gamma of her antialiasing. There would have been of course the color theory of linear contact color spaces, but our hero abhorred the idea to work with "imaginary" colors, or that the dyes in his paints would only look right after being treated with a colorspace-converting developer.

Sometimes two galleries would want to exhibit the same picture. Or one gallery one part and another gallery the other part; or maybe three or four libraries. Of course our hero could have carefully planned how to draw each part of his paintings, but this would take time and more importantly much more extra effort in dealing with his clients. So instead most of the time he'd just draw for the lowest common denominator. The pictures would be not as pretty as they could have been, but at least everybody got to see something.

But what really dragged down our hero was, that his paintings were heavy. Moving them around in towns where his clients lived already was hard work, but it was manageable, thanks to the heavy dutry transport system available. But sometimes a gallery away from his clients wanted to show the pictures and then it got really messy.

Some clients remembered that when "hero rendering code" still lived at his parents, he could give his parents a call and place an order for a picture to be drawn. He'd just telephone what it should look like, which went rather quickly. Of course some clients adopted a inefficient way of placing their orders, stating one item, asking if it was on the list then asking for the next one, and so on. Other clients became clever and just placed their whole order before asking back; often "hero rendering code" would already be at work, when the confirmation on the order arrived. Of course there would have still be problem of moving the picture to a gallery… but as it turns out the parents had a huge library with reconfigurable walls at their house. So clients who'd just want to show drawings drawn by "hero render code" at his parents libraries according to their telephone calls could do this from practically everywhere, even over telephone lines that could barely carry a conversation, yet patrons would see the same image quality.

But now with "hero rendering code" insisting on doing his work in the clients town transporting the pictures became a major issue. Some clients found the services of the Shrinker Codec Union; their union workers would deconstruct the drawings of "hero rendering code", sweep things under the rug they's presume the patrons would never see and transport that. For very complicated images they figured out, that this was actually faster than trying to talk the complicated picture through the telephone line; yet the price was, that pictures often suffered in their colour brilliance. It was however Crystal FreeType who's be extremely outraged, because it was often her expertly crafted contributions which got mauled by the Shrinker Coded Union workers.

Meanwhile new drawing tools appeared on the market; or rather they've been on the market for quite some time, but hero rendering code never learnt how to peoperly use them. His parents added an annex to their house though where those drawing tools could be used. But often it were hero rendering codes clients who'd then use these tools for their own means. Hero rendering code often tried to get to grip with those tools but often failed miserably; maybe hell never learn. And Crystal FreeType, she doesn't even understand how to use these tools properly; FreeType lais out her pictures and spans of lines, she'd colour in particular colors. But those new tools, if they are used like that produce poor results or it takes much longer to get a nice picture of a character, than using the old tools. But it's not that this is impossible. New artists who are expert in the use of these new tools have become runners up.

But many of hero rendering code's clients are now so closely tied to him, that they can't make use of those new expert drawers services. And they remember the times, when they could give the parent's "X11" a house call and have them write down the order for the picture.

Wouldn't it maybe be possible to create a lodging home and gallery for all these new artists in town, where one could place house calls for showing their drawings on premises? In a Gallery where the artists can paint the interesting parts of their painting in the room where they're going to be shown, matched to the lighting conditions then and there? Without the need to haul havy paintings over land?

to be continued…