keith@reed.UUCP (Keith Packard) (12/17/87)
The documentation distributed with Xv11r1 says, in no uncertain terms, that access to the display frame buffer is necessary for (the prototype server implementation of) Xv11 to run. I am wondering if this is entirely true. If a hardware device could be programmed to support all of the basic graphics ops, could it not be used instead? The only troubles I see are passing pixmaps to/from clients. Assuming this problem solved, would it be feasible? I have, at home, a system which completely isolates the unix engine from the display bitmap; fortunately, the display bitmap is driven by another cpu identical to the unix engine, so I can develop arbitrarily complicated code for it, but I'll never have direct access to the frame buffer from the unix side. I'd rather keep the X server on the unix side and split at the graphic ops level as debugging the other processor is not very pleasant. Send mail and I'll summerize if warranted. keith packard reed!keith -- Keith Packard tektronix!reed!keith