karlton@sgi.com (Phil Karlton) (12/19/90)
In order to slow down the impact upon my personal mailbox
I am attempting to answer some of the more common questions
I have seen regarding my posting of 8 December.
1) When will it be available?
Basically, I don't know. If I did know, I probably wouldn't be allowed
to say.
2) What does the phrase "network transparent GL" really mean?
The DGL client side library has been merged with the shared GL library.
If the DISPLAY environment variable is set, then the rendering will
be to the remote workstation and a DGL daemon running there. The
normal caveats about permissions about remote execution remain in
force.
And, no, you will not be paying a performance penalty for
the rendering in the local case. One thing that will continue to
not work in the remote case is 'callfunc'. GL graphical objects
will work in both the remote and local cases.
Existing DGL linked programs will continue to work. The new
functionality will not be available without relinking.
3) What about fonts?
XLFD (those long font names under X) will work as will the font manager
that exists under NeWS. Fortunately, X, fm, and DPS will all share the
same font bits on the disk. (DPS uses pre-computed rasterizations where
appropriate. It's faster and makes for much more readable text at small
font sizes.)
4) How do I get beta?
If you want to volunteer, contact Ben Passarelli <ben@wpd.sgi.com>.
Our resources for supporting beta sites are limited, and it may
be tough to get on the list.
5) Does this include AT&T System V.4?
Irix 4.0 will not contain any additional V.4 specific features.
Irix 4.0 will be much like V.4 in that it will be fully POSIX
compliant, support BSD system calls, mapped files and other
user-requested features.
6) What goes in which product? Is Motif development bundled with the
base developer's option?
X is now a basic part of development on the SGI platform. So,
we will be offering a bundle which includes all development
tools including X development software. The price of that
bundle has not yet been determined.
The Motif runtime license will be included with the base system
at no additional charge.
7) Will all my GL applications be slowed by having to go over the network
like X?
No. Local GL clients will continue to dump tokens directly into the
rendering FIFO. Some operations will be faster. Window manipulation
will typically involve less thrashing of the swapping pages as the
NeWS server will not be there running its PostScript interpreter loop.
In addition, X rendering speeds have been made significantly better
than in the 3.3 releases. I suspect that those of you who use X will
be pleased with how it behaves.
8) What else will be in Irix 4.0? File system enhancements? FORTRAN
goodies? etc.
Other things will be happening, and I don't know the content. The
major purpose of the original announcement was to give early warning
that a currently supported feature is being withdrawn with IRIX 4.0,
i.e., there will be no NeWS window manager. (Don't forget that
PostScript rendering will be supported through the DPS X extension.)
PKblbates@AERO4.LARC.NASA.GOV ("Brent L. Bates AAD/TAB MS361 x42854") (01/07/91)
Under the DPS X extension, does SGI plan on fixing psh and psview, so that the PostScript image command will now work. I seems sad that you can't even try VERY simple examples in the Adobe Systems PostScript manuals and have them work correctly. The main problem is the transform matrix arguments have no effect on the image at all. -- Brent L. Bates NASA-Langley Research Center M.S. 361 Hampton, Virginia 23665-5225 (804) 864-2854 E-mail: blbates@aero4.larc.nasa.gov or blbates@aero8.larc.nasa.gov