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Re:Still no alpha support :-P but no suprise. by Jeffrey+Baker · 2000-08-24 00:06 · Score: 5 · on X Consortium Announces X11R6.5.1

A lot of the things Linux users have been beefing about are starting to come together. Check out the new veriosn of FreeType, which includes 8-bit anti-aliasing and many nifty rendering features for many different types of fonts. See also the new experimental rendering engine for XFree86 here. Check out those translucent TWM windows. MMMM.

Antialiasing by raph · 2000-06-13 01:40 · Score: 2 · on Latest Eazel Screenshots

There's enough misinformation posted here that I feel some factual information is in order. I am doing work for Eazel on a consulting basis on graphics and rendering. Librsvg (the renderer for the reduced SVG subset) is my baby.

Yes, Nautilus has the capabilities to do fairly advanced antialiased rendering. The current development snapshot has the option to use the antialiased renderer in the Gnome Canvas (joint work between Federico Mena-Quintero and myself). This does full alpha-blending and enables the use of icons with semitransparency. The Xlib renderer will probably remain an option for those with slower computers. Icons can be provided in both SVG for full scalability, or in PNG in a graded series of sizes.

My current project is integrating Freetype 2 text with librsvg, adding antialiased text capabilities with both TrueType and Adobe Type1 font support.

The current architecture of X makes it relatively straightforward to implement antialiasing and alpha compositing within a window, but impossible to composite across windows. Thus, Aqua effects such as having windows cast soft shadows, or having drag'n'drop icons antialias correctly, are currently beyond the scope of what X can do.

There is active work ongoing to add true alpha to X, led by Keith Packard of SuSE. I'm following this work closely, and am eager to see it come to fruition so that we can start to apply a rich imaging model across the entire screen.

Raster is doing some very cool work with EFM. Some people seem to think there's a kind of war going on between the Gnome and E camps. I don't see it this way at all - to me, it's a friendly competition in the best sense of the word. Raster is at the cutting edge of graphics capabilities, while Gnome is doing more work on integration and making sure everything works well on a broad range of systems and configurations. Both approaches have their merits, and if nothing else Raster's work serves as excellent protypes for Gnome development. I had lunch with Raster and Andy last week, and we had a really nice discussion about extending X, getting access to hardware acceleration for antialiasing and compositing, and so on. We also talked about some of the requirements for making sure all this stuff is useful from the Gnome Canvas, and I'm hopeful good stuff will come of it.

I also want to talk a little about antialiased text. The best of all possible worlds is an unhinted, antialiased display at 140 dpi or higher. Since those displays aren't widespread yet, we have to make do with some tradeoffs. The most fundamental tradeoff is between edge sharpness on one hand, and smoothness on the other. Also hanging in the balance is the faithful reproduction of the glyph shape. Whenever you antialias, the edges become softer. However, you can sometimes get a slightly better tradeoff by aligning vertical and horizontal stems to the pixel grid, thus ensuring sharp edges for these, while diagonal and curved segments get smoothly antialiased. However, this process does distort the font somewhat.

In order to take advantage of 140+ dpi displays, you have to write your apps to be resolution independent. Fortunately, with the Gnome Canvas (which is what Nautilus uses for its icon view), it's pretty straightforward - in fact, there's a zoom control that scales the whole canvas uniformly. I was surprised and a bit disappointed to see that Aqua is not resolution independent, and in fact has many of the dimensions hardcoded. Thus, down the road I think it's not unreasonable to expect free software to have the best rendering, bar none.

It's a lot of fun to be developing this stuff, and I'm looking forward to getting a desktop with advanced graphical rendering into the hands of lots of people.

But is it free software? by raph · 2000-03-21 06:08 · Score: 2 · on Trolltech Developing Qt That Doesn't Need X

The press release doesn't mention licenses at all. The only reasonable thing to conclude is that it probably won't be free software.

I believe it is now time for a fully free (GPL, perhaps) windowing system that fixes the major problems with X. Such a beast would:

Be based on a sophisticated imaging model with transparency and antialiasing
Have fonts that didn't suck
Be simple and small
Have hooks for adding hardware acceleration
Work with the realtime capabilities in the OS

A lot of the infrastructure that we need already exists. Libart provides the imaging model. FreeType can take care of the fonts. I've seen some early results from FreeType 2, and I have reason to believe it will be juicy. We can certainly make use of all the wisdom learned from mature systems such as X, as well as newer systems such as Berlin and Microwindows.

This idea, I think, is gathering momentum. If you're interested in contributing to the project, let me know and I can hook you up with some of the other people who are working in a similar direction.

Re:The Font DeUglification HOWTO by Anonymous Coward · 2000-02-25 03:50 · Score: 0 · on Making Linux Beautiful

Actually, linux does have font anti-aliasing. Check out xfstt or xfs. For more info, check out www.freetype.org

Re:Overload by justo · 1999-08-30 06:19 · Score: 1 · on Load Test the New Slashdot Setup

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Slashdot Load Testing (Continues) Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon August 30, 02:13 PM EDT
from the ain't-this-fun? dept.
Fixed so far:

Dropped http MaxClients down to 75
increased mysql max_connections to to 250

(they were 150 & 100, so we had 450 http forks fighting for 100 mysql connections. Oops! Thank god for load testing! I guess its problably good that I post another story just so that we can simulate normal Slashdot a little better: Slashdot doesn't usually have just 1 story with people posting on (well, unless we mention evolution or the GPL being violated or something) (Oh, and don't post comments with bug reports, there is no way I'll be able to keep up, email 'em. I won't reply, but I'll read it)

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Help Test Our New Server! Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon August 30, 12:51 PM EDT
from the load-testing-is-cool dept.
So here it is: A mirror of Slashdot (as of a week or so ago). It exists now for testing: So feel free to post comments and help test the new load balancer. For the curious, the new system has 3 http machines (P2s) and one mysql box (a dual P2) with a load balancer trying to keep everyone all equally busy. And its about time: the old setup has been really stressed out trying to keep up with everyone. Anyway, don't get to attached to any of your comments here, when we're satisfied that the new setup is stable, I'm gonna mirror over Slashdot and make the final switcheroo.

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Interview: Mandrake Answers Posted by Roblimo on Fri August 20, 12:00 PM EDT
from the x-leads-to-enlightenment dept.
Monday a whole bunch of people had questions for Mandrake, one of the heavies behind Enlightenment. Slashdot Moderators picked the best ones. We forwarded them, unedited, to Mandrake on Tuesday. His (excellent) answers appear below.

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Geeks in the Space: The Attack of 5 Posted by Hemos on Thu August 19, 04:10 AM EDT
from the more-stuff-to-listen-to dept.
Well, we've done it again. Yes, Geeks in Space, Episode 5 has been released. In it, we lament the lack of good news, talk about anti-matter, and the hiring of hacks by companies. You can also become...educated in my long-term plan for the hostile takeover of a certain Redmond-based company.

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Apple announces Darwin 0.3 Posted by Hemos on Thu August 19, 12:24 AM EDT
from the more-to-download dept.
J. FoxGlov writes "Macintouch reports that v0.3 of Darwin, the open-source foundation for Mac OS X Server is available on Apple's Public Source site. Apple Developer Connection members can get it on CD for $29. Check Public Source for more about the Darwin SDK and the new Darwin. "

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Microsoft's New Audio Format Cracked Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 05:23 PM EDT
from the secure-this-buddy dept.
Barcode (JPB) was one of the first to send us the word from Wired that the new audio format Microsoft introduced (Two days ago), supposed to be a secure format (resricting playback) has already been cracked. Dimension Music first carried the news-and what a name the crack has *grin*.

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Find your Star Wars Twin Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 05:16 PM EDT
from the what-freud-really-wanted-to-do dept.
The_Monk writes "Ever wanted to know your Star Wars twin? Now this incredibly important information can be verified. It placed me the likes of Astro Mech Droids, 'Tarkin, and R2-D2. " Ahem-as the lost twin of Lando (extraversion), I have a Cloud City I'd like to sell someone. But I'm about as agreeable as Boba, always a bonus.

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Now Police Can 'See' Through Walls Posted by Roblimo on Wed August 18, 12:40 PM EDT
from the move-along-there's-nothing-to-see-here dept.
Bram writes "Just found an article about another way to invade privacy." He's talking about hand-held radar systems police can use to detect breathing, beating hearts or other motion through walls and other obstacles. Sounds like a declassified version of the Ground Support Radar [GSR] units we used years ago in the Army. I can see why police would want them, and I can also see why Bram considers them a privacy threat. Depends on how they're used, I suppose.

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FreeType posts patent warning Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 11:53 AM EDT
from the i-want-my-verdonna dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "According to the the FreeType web page, there have been some new concerns raised about Apple's patents on TrueType. I hope this doesn't affect the planned TrueType support in XF86 4. " It appears that they are still checking into the issue, but I'd really like TrueType support. A lot. Let's hope Apple responds nicely.

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Microsoft to "publish code" to Instant Messenger Posted by Hemos on Wed August 18, 09:49 AM EDT
from the want-more-market-share dept.
VFVTHUNTER writes "According to this article at cnet, MS, in an attempt to gain a share of AOL's Instant Messenger Service Market, announced today it is going to publish the protocol to its own messenger service. " It's important to note it's NOT the source code, just the protocol.

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