XFree86 4.2.99.4

topaz22

Senior member
Dec 9, 1999
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Anyone tried this out? Couldn't find much info on it, but i installed one machine, didn't notice much difference... any comments?
 

topaz22

Senior member
Dec 9, 1999
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thats just it, i couldn't find a up to date changelog...
didn't really expect much, but moreso was just bored at work. the new mouse pointers are kindy annoying, tho.
 

Barnaby W. Füi

Elite Member
Aug 14, 2001
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Originally posted by: topaz22
thats just it, i couldn't find a up to date changelog...
didn't really expect much, but moreso was just bored at work. the new mouse pointers are kindy annoying, tho.

how are the pointers different?
 

ProviaFan

Lifer
Mar 17, 2001
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Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
Originally posted by: topaz22
thats just it, i couldn't find a up to date changelog...
didn't really expect much, but moreso was just bored at work. the new mouse pointers are kindy annoying, tho.
how are the pointers different?
Good question. I've not seen the new version, and am not feeling too ambitious about compiling it right now. What makes them different?

And another question - when the f___ are we going to see proper hardware accelerated alpha blending. That window manager that does transparent title bars (you use it, don't ya, BBWF?), and KDE (which does nice transparent menus) both use fake transparency; the stuff looks good in screenshots, but it isn't true transparency (open up a Konqueror, load a page that has an animated GIF near the top, then open a semitransparent menu over the GIF, and you'll see what I mean). "Fake" transparency also slows even relatively modern systems down to a crawl, making it quite useless. Come on, folks; Microsoft has had this eyecandy in Windows 2000 since, well, early 2000, and we're still waiting for it on Linux?
 

Barnaby W. Füi

Elite Member
Aug 14, 2001
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And another question - when the f___ are we going to see proper hardware accelerated alpha blending.
hardware support is there, any modern card supports the RENDER extension, which is the basis for alpha blending (which is in turn responsible for transparency and AA'd fonts, etc)

That window manager that does transparent title bars (you use it, don't ya, BBWF?)
yeah, waimea ( recent screenshot w/ transparent menus :D ) . also i believe another wm or two have this feature. it's actually a hack. to use the transparency, you have to use Esetroot to set your background, which sets special hints that the wm can look at to figure out what the background is. if you don't use Esetroot, you can't have transparency. i'm not sure how kde et al get around this, whatever they do, waimea should look into... i use Esetroot without complaint but it would be nice to know i dont _NEED_ it.

and KDE (which does nice transparent menus) both use fake transparency; the stuff looks good in screenshots, but it isn't true transparency (open up a Konqueror, load a page that has an animated GIF near the top, then open a semitransparent menu over the GIF, and you'll see what I mean).
actually IIRC kde has real transparency, at least it shows windows and stuff underneath it. everything else just shows the wallpaper. does windows alpha blend on top of animation?

"Fake" transparency also slows even relatively modern systems down to a crawl, making it quite useless. Come on, folks; Microsoft has had this eyecandy in Windows 2000 since, well, early 2000, and we're still waiting for it
microsoft has had it, but more importantly, they have also had fully accelerated video drivers, which is touch and go in X. matrox cards have full acceleration, but AFAIK apps have to call it specifically (mplayer, opengl games, etc). nvidia's drivers are lame, and i'm not too sure on ati. once we get video acceleration to be commonplace, we can start getting good alpha blending. hey, we can still get "pretty good" alpha blending with crap acceleration, just wait to see what happens when good video support arrives :)

i actually stopped using transparent terminals because they take about 0.75 seconds to refresh when i maximize them, which is obviously pretty lame. this is a duron 1.3ghz with a fully accelerated card, so obviously the method being used in aterm is not taking advantage of the video card's acceleration.

on Linux?
who cares about linux? ;)
 

ProviaFan

Lifer
Mar 17, 2001
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Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
and KDE (which does nice transparent menus) both use fake transparency; the stuff looks good in screenshots, but it isn't true transparency (open up a Konqueror, load a page that has an animated GIF near the top, then open a semitransparent menu over the GIF, and you'll see what I mean).
actually IIRC kde has real transparency, at least it shows windows and stuff underneath it. everything else just shows the wallpaper. does windows alpha blend on top of animation?
I guess we have different definitions of what "fake" transparency is. Let me try to explain better: what KDE does, AFAIK, is to take a mini-screenshot of what's under a menu before it opens; then, it uses CPU power to blend the screenshot it just took with an image of the menu. This is then shown on the screen. "Transparent" terminals don't do this; instead, they capture an image of the background (root window?) image, and blend the terminal contents with that (in software, again). That is why it's so slow, and that's why when a terminal is over another window, the other window doesn't show through the terminal.

Windows has what I prefer to call "True" transparency. Example: I can take any one of the many freeware utilities that can make windows transparent (via a selection from an option in the context menu for the title bar) to make the Task Manager transparent (the task manager will always stay on top of other windows). Then, I can position the Task Manager over a web browser, so the page display area is slightly obscured; when I scroll the page up and down, the part that is "under" the Task manager will show through, and be updated in real time. Try this with a "transparent" terminal set to be always-on-top over a web browser in the *NIX OS of your choice, with XFree86, and it won't work the same way.
 

Barnaby W. Füi

Elite Member
Aug 14, 2001
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Originally posted by: jliechty
Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
and KDE (which does nice transparent menus) both use fake transparency; the stuff looks good in screenshots, but it isn't true transparency (open up a Konqueror, load a page that has an animated GIF near the top, then open a semitransparent menu over the GIF, and you'll see what I mean).
actually IIRC kde has real transparency, at least it shows windows and stuff underneath it. everything else just shows the wallpaper. does windows alpha blend on top of animation?
I guess we have different definitions of what "fake" transparency is. Let me try to explain better: what KDE does, AFAIK, is to take a mini-screenshot of what's under a menu before it opens; then, it uses CPU power to blend the screenshot it just took with an image of the menu. This is then shown on the screen. "Transparent" terminals don't do this; instead, they capture an image of the background (root window?) image, and blend the terminal contents with that (in software, again). That is why it's so slow, and that's why when a terminal is over another window, the other window doesn't show through the terminal.

Windows has what I prefer to call "True" transparency. Example: I can take any one of the many freeware utilities that can make windows transparent (via a selection from an option in the context menu for the title bar) to make the Task Manager transparent (the task manager will always stay on top of other windows). Then, I can position the Task Manager over a web browser, so the page display area is slightly obscured; when I scroll the page up and down, the part that is "under" the Task manager will show through, and be updated in real time. Try this with a "transparent" terminal set to be always-on-top over a web browser in the *NIX OS of your choice, with XFree86, and it won't work the same way.

ah. gotcha. i always assumed kde's was "real" transparency and never gave thought to motion. basically we just need people to jump on the RENDER bandwagon and get some good alpha blended stuff :) it absolutely is doable, right now, its just that well, you know...code needs to be written :p
 

Barnaby W. Füi

Elite Member
Aug 14, 2001
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hm, with a little reading, i have proven myself false.

look here:
http://www.xfree86.org/~keithp/render/

The render extension bits are integrated into the regular XFree86 CVS tree. Image composition and text operations are complete, although operations other than the most basic are not optimized.

XAA has some interfaces for accelerating the lowest levels of the extension. Most of the drivers support the extension with software, the Matrox driver has some primitive hardware acceleration.


and look at the very bottom image..

edit: btw, thanks for bringing this up, i just emailed the waimea author about the possibility of using x render..
 

pac1085

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2000
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Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
Originally posted by: topaz22
thats just it, i couldn't find a up to date changelog...
didn't really expect much, but moreso was just bored at work. the new mouse pointers are kindy annoying, tho.

how are the pointers different?
I thought they are alpha blended or something...just something i heard.
 

manly

Lifer
Jan 25, 2000
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I don't know what it's being called, but I seem to recall configuration as being heavily revamped. For example, you can now modify the configuration (namely XF86Config) and have the changes dynamically take effect, rather than having to completely restart the X server. As usual, it's best to wait for your distro to merge in XF86 4.3.0 than to do it manually.
 

Barnaby W. Füi

Elite Member
Aug 14, 2001
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Originally posted by: manly
I don't know what it's being called, but I seem to recall configuration as being heavily revamped. For example, you can now modify the configuration (namely XF86Config) and have the changes dynamically take effect, rather than having to completely restart the X server. As usual, it's best to wait for your distro to merge in XF86 4.3.0 than to do it manually.

yeah, thats the RANDR extension, you can change screen size (and in turn resolution) and refresh rates without a restart. i'm looking forward to checking it out.
 

Haden

Senior member
Nov 21, 2001
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It's a bit offtopic, but I wanted to ask:
Do you experience flicker when resizing multimedia (xine, mplayer) windows (what I mean with "Flicker" is either blue window->next video frame rapidly refreshes if I'm using XV, if it's X11 - it just seems like output is not double buffered (thought I force -double with mplayer)).
No big deal actually, but it's weird. With all multimedia programs I made for win trick was to double buffer all controls etc. to avoid this, I'm interested is this programs, Xfree or drivers fault in X.
 

Barnaby W. Füi

Elite Member
Aug 14, 2001
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Originally posted by: Haden
It's a bit offtopic, but I wanted to ask:
Do you experience flicker when resizing multimedia (xine, mplayer) windows (what I mean with "Flicker" is either blue window->next video frame rapidly refreshes if I'm using XV, if it's X11 - it just seems like output is not double buffered (thought I force -double with mplayer)).
No big deal actually, but it's weird. With all multimedia programs I made for win trick was to double buffer all controls etc. to avoid this, I'm interested is this programs, Xfree or drivers fault in X.

mplayer always has that blue background for me too, when rezizing/moving the window. IIRC xine does too, but i havent used it in a while.
 

topaz22

Senior member
Dec 9, 1999
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how are the pointers different?

They(as in the set of default ones) are red, there's a dropshadow, they are partially translucent, and there seem to be more variations for actions (on the edge of a window, on the corner, the hourglass type thing, etc)


 

ProviaFan

Lifer
Mar 17, 2001
14,993
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Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
Originally posted by: manly
I don't know what it's being called, but I seem to recall configuration as being heavily revamped. For example, you can now modify the configuration (namely XF86Config) and have the changes dynamically take effect, rather than having to completely restart the X server. As usual, it's best to wait for your distro to merge in XF86 4.3.0 than to do it manually.
yeah, thats the RANDR extension, you can change screen size (and in turn resolution) and refresh rates without a restart. i'm looking forward to checking it out.
Wow, real time resolution changing is done already? I thought that I was going to have to wait until XFree86 v5 for that! :Q
Originally posted by: topaz22
how are the pointers different?
They(as in the set of default ones) are red, there's a dropshadow, they are partially translucent, and there seem to be more variations for actions (on the edge of a window, on the corner, the hourglass type thing, etc)
Wow, sounds sorta cool - except for the red part. Hopefully the pointers can be changed back to the default black. Do you know if this is done on XFree86's part, or if this is an effect of the WM / DE? An article I read tended to indicate that the latest GNOME that was included with RH 8.1 was the cause behind the new pointers. :confused:
 

pac1085

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2000
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You can change the cursors. I dont know about black but I know you can change them to white. I really like the new ones too.
 

Barnaby W. Füi

Elite Member
Aug 14, 2001
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yeah, you can always change them. i'm sure they should have a black set (they better! :p)

AFAIK applications can't change the cursor to their own. x uses a "font" for the cursor, there is a set number of different cursors (for different actions, regular cursor, stopwatch, precision select, etc etc), and the apps can only choose from them by name. basically, similar to windows. you can change the cursor font and thus change all of your cursors, you can even make your own with a font editor.
 

ProviaFan

Lifer
Mar 17, 2001
14,993
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Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey
yeah, you can always change them. i'm sure they should have a black set (they better!)

AFAIK applications can't change the cursor to their own. x uses a "font" for the cursor, there is a set number of different cursors (for different actions, regular cursor, stopwatch, precision select, etc etc), and the apps can only choose from them by name. basically, similar to windows. you can change the cursor font and thus change all of your cursors, you can even make your own with a font editor.
Ah, thanks for explaining. So, if the cursors are really just a font, I wonder when we'll get anti-aliased mouse pointers? :p

<-- is going to download XF 4.2.99.4 in just a little bit and find out for himself. :)

Edit again: Should I just get binaries or is it worth it to compile from the source? (I've compiled X before so there shouldn't be a problem of me coming back and bugging you guys about how to do it ;) ).
 

Barnaby W. Füi

Elite Member
Aug 14, 2001
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also, i guess X 4.3 uses xml for it's config files, or at least some of them. i'm not sure if XF86Config is in xml or not. i think it would be kind of cool, because if it was in xml, alot of little programs for editing the file would crop up, since xml is such a buzzword (and makes data manipulation alot easier than digging through a file and trying to match stuff with regex's)
 

ProviaFan

Lifer
Mar 17, 2001
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Gah, I'm just going to download binaries; this is just a beta, right? I'll compile from source when the official 4.3 gets released. :)
 

Barnaby W. Füi

Elite Member
Aug 14, 2001
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Originally posted by: jliechty
Gah, I'm just going to download binaries; this is just a beta, right? I'll compile from source when the official 4.3 gets released. :)

yeah, 4.2.99 isn't even a release, it's just the version they're using in cvs since 4.3 is so close. i didnt even figure they had binaries for it.

edit: just stopped by xfree86.org, i see now :p