My question/suggestion/request is: Could be done (with this technique) a hardware accelereated widget-theme/kwin-theme? Where would be the biggest problems? It's a thing I have in my mind weeks ago, and I am not man enough to start a project like this, not without hearing first your answers. Think it, there would be nice and soft effects with almost no CPU... (or that's what i believe
)PS: Please answer ppl with knowledgements
Ratings & Comments
3 Comments
1. OpenGL is really nice for games and real 3D Objects, but it's overheaded and mostly useless for a 3D Pseudo 2D UI. (IMHO) More important would be a multilayer oriented sublying render system (keith packard is working on something like this, freedesktop) that handles a 3 dimensional system of 2d layers (no continous z axis.) in pixmap backbuffer, resp. the graphical ram. 2. If you refer to the QGLWidget class: This is not a class that uses OpenGL to display buttons aso., but to write an openGL area IN a qt Widget/Window - context! Allthough i can render a pixmap out of a gl object, it just won't help you to build an openGL style. (or to implement translucency) sorry... (everyone wants a more eyeCandy solution than X, i eg. thought exactly the same, when i saw "QGLWidget.h" - so don't worry.)
i don't know about your 2nd point, i think you're wrong with the first one. Opengl doesen't only accelerate graphics for 3D. Mac osX uses opengl acceleration doesen't it? did you ever see how fast and fluid it is? Another simple example is the image viewer gliv (which uses opengl), on linux. Just try it out, open a 1600x1200 picture and rotate, zoom in/out, move the pic with your mouse, and you'll see it's faster than any other image viewer that doesent use hardware accelerated gfx.
Quartz Extrme in fact relies partially on OpenGL, but be sure, Apple added a lot of stuff. About gliv: This depends enormously on the graphics board - eg. try scaling with a GForce2: at a certain point, nothing will work anymore. Or try Transluxent (like XNest, using openGL) If you choose a too high resolution, even the mousecursor won't move (apparently)) OpenGL was originally created as an interface for realtime 3d CAD (head over to sgi for further information) - therfore it's e.g. more accurate than MS Direct3D, version 2.0 will also be much ahead, and probably the Version for Doom3 is too. But if you don't need a true 3d universe, it does a lot of useles stuff, that decreases velocity. But yes: using the GPU would increase system performace excessivly! (e.g. T&L, Shaders, Pixmapbuffer in GRam...)