Re: Creator3D programming

[raymond.meyer%rambler.ru@localhost]

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:39:54 +0100
"David Brownlee" <abs%absd.org@localhost> wrote:

> could you end up with two layers - one per device which provides
> direct framebuffer access and an optional set of accellerated
> routines, and another common layer which provides the API to the
> applications?
> 
I'm not sure, I think the idea is to have a graphics driver, which
interfaces the hardware, i.e. each framebuffer has its own driver.
Above the graphics driver you then have 2D and 3D library routines,
which communicate with the driver. I'm not sure how this is going to
work, because on context switch you would need to save the framebuffer
state, e.g. rendering pipeline attributes, etc.

> Getting hw docs on older graphics devices is a real pain - where X
> drivers already exist they may prove very useful - particularly on
> some of the hardware accelleration. Did you take a look at NetBSD's
> current xorg tree?
> 
Yeah I looked at Xorg sunffb driver, it's not the same as having
hardware docs. I have some broken documentation in regard to Creator3D
framebuffer, but it's quite old and I don't think it documents the
later models that have multiple hardware colormaps. If I get stuck,
I'll post a message on XFree86 mailing list, or email some of the
people who wrote sunffb driver, maybe they'll explain some things I'm
not sure about.