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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.apps:1042 comp.os.linux.misc:11002 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!news.funet.fi!nntp.hut.fi!nntp!sja From: sja@snakemail.hut.fi (Sakari Jalovaara) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.apps,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: DOOM for X Date: 15 Mar 94 10:26:13 GMT Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Finland Lines: 37 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <SJA.94Mar15122613@gamma.hut.fi> References: <hastyCMGpA7.Gu5@netcom.com> <2lo4m0$sdt@bosnia.pop.psu.edu> <SJA.94Mar12174713@gamma.hut.fi> <2m0h7a$3ck@u.cc.utah.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: gamma.hut.fi In-reply-to: terry@cs.weber.edu's message of 14 Mar 1994 02:12:58 GMT >]To get high speed graphics on X you just need to re-write the server: >] [have the usual Xlib calls access the hardware directly] > There are (apparently) several misconceptions here. > > (1) You can't necessarily map memory from the display adapter > directly. Indeed. If the hardware doesn't support high-speed graphics it doesn't. In that case you can't do high-speed graphics. If the hardware _does_ support high-speed graphics but the operating system doesn't give sufficient access to hardware, you need to have the OS fixed. Since these are 386BSD and Linux newsgroups I'd expect the OS not to be a problem. > (2) Not all OS's support the large segment changes, where the If the display hardware supports memory-mapping but the OS doesn't, you need to have the OS fixed. Or get another OS. Or make do with somewhat slower graphics. > (3) The client/server distinctions are fictional; I have a lab > full of NCR X terminals (now an AT&T X terminals I guess) > that support developement and download of clients to run in > the terminal (server) address space. EXACTLY! This is what I was talking about: compile (or link) the X clients in such a way that X library calls are hardware-aware. You call it "download the client to the terminal", I call it "link with a library that accesses hardware when DISPLAY=:0.0". All of this is academic, though, in that modifying the MIT X server to be a shared library is a decidedly non-trivial task... ++sja