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Rasterman's New Toy: EVAS
renai42 writes: "Rasterman gave a very interesting speech about his new EVAS canvas software at Linux.conf.au this week. This LinuxToday.com.au article gives a fair idea of the gist of the speech. EVAS is interesting stuff for the Linux community - a hardware accelerated X desktop with anti-aliased fonts and alpha blending." They've been claiming that the next Enlightenment will be the fastest WM around thanks mostly to EVAS.
Totally Offtopic Side Note 1: I find it amusing that LinuxToday.com.au snatched my X icon: I always thought it was probably the crappiest Slashdot icon, and I never dreamed anyone would want to take it. My policy on Slashdot Icons has always been steal whatever ones you like, but credit us when you use 'em, and its not a big deal, but its just funny to see who takes what.)
Totally offtopic sidenote 2: while we're talking about toys, check out Jubei, my MAME front end I've been poking on in my enormous amounts of free time.
So, the idea is that Enlightenment will be fast because the tons of junk that it does will be hardware-accelerated? Wouldn't it be logical, then to assume that all of the other window managers out there that are faster than Enlightenment (Sawfish, fvwm{,2}, twm, etc, etc,) will be even faster than Enlightenment given the same hardware acceleration?
Sawfish seems to me to be about 2-10 times faster (purely subjective) than Enlightenment. Can that gap be bridged by hardware? Of course, but it still doesn't make E efficient.
How does this relate to Keith Packard's new X Render extension, which so recently gave Qt/KDE antialiased fonts ?
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Maybe their next version will be better than 0.16 in this regard, but aside from speed, one of the things I really don't like about E is its desire to controll all aspects of my life. For instance, its background selector is very ungainly, but it wants to use it instead of using the perfectly-good Gnome Control Center. And so on. I see no need to replace Gnome, when it's pretty good already and E is mostly reproducing its capabilities, but prettier.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Am I the only person who, on seeing the subject line:
Rasterman's New Toy: EVAS
Thought that Rasterman had gone out and picked up some of those oh-so-cool Evangelion figures?
And of course, other than just for the sake of shear beauty, using 3D accellerators to draw interfaces makes perfect sense. Most companies that make accellerated cards put a LOT more effort and design consideration into the accellerators, but not so much into the 2D accelleration. As a result, 3D graphics are rendered more quickly on just about all cards. Let's use that power for more than just games! :-)
Uh, unless I'm mistaken, OS X doesn't use OpenGL acceleration for its interface. I know it supports OpenGL for 3D apps, and it probably uses 2D acceleration when rendering the UI.
Some people around here probably don't remember Enlightment as I remember. Enlightment was the ONLY decent-looking window manager for Linux back when Gnome and KDE didn't exist. I remember looking at screenshots of E running.. Enlightement was probably THE reason I started using Linux.
It wasn't a perfect window manager (and nobody claimed it was since it's still labeled as devel) but it kicked ass back in the early Windows 95 days.. I was so happy when I compiled Enlightement and could take a break for the bleak FVWM.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
...until you check the system requirements: The Lance of Longinus, an affectless fourteen-year-old albino Japanese clone girl, and Your Dead Mother. C'mon, how many people have actually have that kind of setup?
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
No, now you need three separate packages to just run your desktop environment. A step forward? :-)
/ \
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
x
/ \
I see that this is available at Sourceforge.. I downloaded the RPMs, and I noticed that they wanted libGLcore.so.1, which appears to be an X module for the NVidia X servers. The stock XFree86 4.0.x servers come with a similar file libGLcore.a .
Anyway, I'm just wondering -- does this mean that this EVAS stuff only works with NVidia cards? Is there any chance I'll get it to work with my G400?
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Nice to see portable, machine independent interfaces (X) replaced with non-portable, machine-dependent ones (svgalib, EVAS).
Not.
One more proof that Linux != Unix.
- Hubert (Unix lover)
The themes that come with Debian are pleasing to the eye, and the WM seems easy to use. However, I do miss the right-mouse-button Lower feature (to send a window to the back) which FVWM supports.
But at least Windows users don't accuse my desktop of being "dull" any more
To broaden the appeal of Linux, it needs more work on this sort of thing. However, I think Linux is an awful long way from being a "consumer level" OS like Windows. Having just upgraded my system with the latest Debian, the installation leaves a lot to be desired when compared with Windows. Fortunately, I almost know what I'm doing when it comes to Linux (having first started with Linux when it was kernel 0.12!), so it wasn't a big deal for me to install Deb, but I can't imagine most of my friends (who are not in software development) installing it without my (or some other Linux aware person's) help.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
... and then I suggest all debian/E-users head over to ljlane's debian repository to check out the stuff :)
Figure out there how to get it apt-able.
heikkih
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I run E on a P233 w/ 96Megs ram, a reasonably busy theme, and a $20 video card and have never had speed issues. I've tried other WMs and haven't noticed anything drawing or responding faster. What's the speed problems I'm always hearing talk of?
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A lot of people out there (me included) run Linux on much older computers (in my case a p120). WMs like WindowMaker and BlackBox run perfectly acceptable on these systems. Will hardware accelerating Enlightenment perhaps give a ray of hope to those of us with slower cards, or will even not pushing all that graphics work into the video card not help us?
As a sidenote, what kind of graphics cards are we looking at here? Anything that has an accelerated X server (like, say, an old Mach64) or are we only talking high-end cards?
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
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Oh, yay, and I suppose there's a nice, included PDF viewer that uses Display PDF to view PDF files, then. What happens when you open a corrupt PDF file?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Let's see if I have this straight:
EVAS is an API or library that allows for the WM, in this case E, to utilize hardware accelerated OpenGL hardware, not just the standard 2d raster stuff found on most video cards, right?
Does this mean E will only work on NVIDIA and 3dfx hardware, under Linux? I've heard other people mention this too.
Is this canvas software, EVAs, akin to Apple's DisplayPDF layer? Will it eventually mature into a display layer that sits between the hardware and the WM? I'm curious if Apple was an inspiration, or not.
Or is it literally just a wrapper around OpenGL? Instead of calling a 2d api, it just remaps to an equiv 3d function call to get the alpha blending and scaling?
If this is literally in it's infancy, maybe a long term design plan to create a Quartz type API would be nice.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Nice troll. No, you can blame the closed-source hardware development model.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
So, basically what you are saying is, re-invent X, but do it in a way that is incompatible with most of the existing X apps out there... all so you can get rid of X?? Hmm.. something doesn't make much sense here...
In modern versions of (stable) GNOME the toolbar is ultra-configurable. It can be a tiny 12 pixels if you so desire.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Thanks.
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
I always enjoy coding with Rasterman's libraries. They are not done the Proper Way(tm) - they are better.
Everyone has been told massive amounts of global variables are poor style. Everyone except Rasterman. Current color? Current drawing surface? Font to use? Dithering? All globals. It makes his code clear and efficient, and just as important, it eliminates all of those normally unused paramaters from functions that make code ugly and interfaces difficult to remember.
So what if a lot would have to change to make his code thread safe. He prefers to use one thread for graphics stuff anyway, and he doesn't make sacrifices people who don't.
What I am trying to say, is that we have general coding rules. Like no globals, because stuff like thread safety is lost and have different people design different parts becomes error prone. But he knows he doesn't care about thread safety, and he is the only person writing the library, so he violates the general rule. And his libraries are better for it. Evas is no exception.
-Ben
...and yes, it is that cool. I checked out the cvs version about three weeks ago, looked at the demo application and was very impressed.
EVAS has three modes for rendering: Hardware Accellerated using OpenGL, Software only using various X windows extensions to speed things up, and X lib only for compatiblility with the lowest common denominator.
I'm away from my linux box right now, so the next paragraph is from memory, and by now raster might have added more features and speed.
The EVAS demo I looked at showed off all the features of evas like anitaliased text, alpha blending, image scaling, and so forth. When in Hardware mode, I was able to get around 80 FPS on my system with a Pentium 2 350 and a tnt 2 ultra (by todays standards, this is not an impressive system), in software mode the speed dropped to arounf 20 fps (comparable to the other canvases ive seen), xlib mode was slower, and the image quality was horrible, but the point of xlib mode is not for speed or quality but compatiblity.
Raster's plan is to use EVAS to accelerate E 17 and EFM (Enlightenment's intergrated file manager). With hardware acelleration, E 17 shoud slimply rock.
What I would like to see now, is for evas to be incorporated into other canvases, like the gnome canvas, whatever kde's canvas is, and java 2d. That would rock even more.
--
A buddhist walks up to a hot dog stand and says ``Make me one with everything.''
Yes, there is an included PDF viewer, although it appears to only support a subset of PDF (some files just appear as a bunch of boxes). As for corrupt PDFs, feel free to send me one and I'll let you know what happens. :-)
X uses the same hardware acceleration that windows does. For instance, most modern video cards can draw basic primitives (like squares, lines, etc), and copy portions of the screen in hardware. X will use all of this. It's called the X11 Acceleration Architecture (XAA). /var/log/xdm.errors should show if you have XAA installed and working.
Raster's software will use acceleration no one else does. For instance, using 3D acceleration to do pixmap resizing and alpha blending. Basically, rasterman is finding areas that could be used to speed up enlightenment that other people havne't thought of yet.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
I think it is integrated with X. Rasterman is using the X interfaces. GLX for image scaling and alpha blending. XRender for antialiased fonts. It's just that no other WM is doing all this (KDE is using the XRender fonts).
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
I think it's already gone ;)
Rich
This is so freaking cool! This is just the type of thing that Linux needs to become better than Windows in every possible way. EVAS is A) Fast. We (I anyway) all love speed, don't we? B) Has anti-aliased text! I haven't gotten Render to work yet (as I don't have a Matrox card) but I *DO* have an NVIDIA card, and from my POV, going through OpenGL is a much better way to integrate Render's features without yet another driver API. C) Alpha blending? Compositing functions? Am I dreaming? I hope not! I think that if the XFree guys keep hacking away at X (another couple of releases with jump as a big as 4.0, and X might get halfway to mediocre) and NVIDIA keeps churning out new Detonator releases, and the LibArt guys find a way to integrate with EVAS (yea, I know it's asking a lot, but everything is there, and it is wholly in the realm of possibility) then Quartz may not be the sexiest windowing environment around anymore. If EVAS takes off, I might even load Linux back on my system, and that is quite high praise indeed. PS> I know I'm dilusional and self-important, live with it ;)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Last time I looked (5 minutes ago) Berlin seems to be tied to Linux via the GGI. That is a problem if you don't run Linux.
From what info I see on here, EVAS isn't, as long as you have the needed X extensions.
OS X uses OpenGL, but not to accelerate Quartz. What it does is allow GL in Quartz views. Quartz itself, is software rendered PDF. (Now if they *did* hardware render it, I'd have an excuse to buy a G4...)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Except make it not slow, bloated, and hard to program! You compatibility freaks should really realize when you just have to give it up and move on with new (and hopefully better) technology!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Yo, why was this modd'ed down? X11 is a crufty piece of junk! And even if the moderator doesn't agree with that statement, there is evidence supporting it, and the rest of the post is quite insightful. (namely the bits related to using SDL and keeping network transparency.) Where are my mod-points when I need them?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
And that WINE icon is just evil...
A company called Skinux is developing an eponymously named GUI for Linux that features anti-aliased fonts, alpha compositing, arbitrary transforms, etc. There's a
screenshot up, and you can browse their site for more info.
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Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
This is most exciting because we can use it to develop a really super kick-ass XDM replacement, or so I hope. The easiest way to get the largest group of people able to develop new login screens for it would probably to combine XDM-EVAS (for lack of a better name) with the flash player. Then you could develop flash movies with special properties which would handle gathering login name and password. Just be careful about bounds checking, eh? :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Rich
> Err, actually you've got it backwards. E predated Gnome, and in most instances where they overlap, it
> is Gnome that duplicated a feature that was in E ( or any other WM).
Chronicologically you are correct, but in the order of installation it doesn't happen that way. If Gnome or KDE is installed, then the Window Manager that works with them duplicating, or worse, overriding, their features it unpleasant. I understand that it's extra work to remove the stuff that was a lot of work to put in, but that doesn't change the fact that the stuff makes it less useful as a window manager.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Perhaps you forget, but Rasterman actually gets paid to develop Enlightenment. If I was his boss I would have told him long ago to get something finished or get out.
And where the hell do you get the idea that people are only allowed to complain about things if they themselves are actively working on something like that? I paid for a boxed RedHat. If you pay for a car, do you feel that you're only allowed to whinge if the doors fall if if you yourself build cars? If you pay taxes to the government so that they can build roads, and the roads are full of potholes, do you only have the right to complain about it if you yourself help build roads? If you pay taxes to the government for decent schooling for you children, are you only allowed to complain if their schooling sucks if you yourself are helping to build schools? Don't be ridiculous. Get real. I don't have to write wm's to have a right to call other wm's as I see them.
A) I'm not a newbie. All my xinitrc's for the last several years have included a script to renice X to -20.
B) Yes it IS particularly bloated. While BeOS and QNX get away with full featured DEs for less than a meg, X at a minimum has a around 10-15 megs of binaries. Given the fact that QNX's Photon (in conjunction with QNET) does even more than X (full network transparency, window manager, FontFusion AA font renderer, OpenGL integration, etc, X compatibility) and takes up at most a few megs (with all the features, the most bloated being X compatibility) X has to be classified as criminally bloated.
C) Why doesn't anybody use xlib then? xlib reminds me a lot of GDI (which makes sense, the GDI is influenced by X), and given the fact that Win32 is overall one of the crappiest API's I've ever had the pain to program, that's not saying much.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Thanks to the wonders of OSS, you could probably just reuse XAA and the existing drivers! As I remember, the acceleration API is quite general. And all those people making two redundant desktop environments might be more useful creating a replacement for X. Of course, given the fact that the OSS community has infinate programms (according to popular logic) manpower shouldn't even be an issue.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
and how can you blame closed-source? So far it seems like all the great graphical systems are closed source software - it seems to be coming from compaies either trying to stay competitive (DirectX) or trying to get a foothold (Be, NeXTstep, etc)
OK, you'll never see this, but ya daffy bastard, y a got it all wrong. The original post dealt with the poor quality of hardware support for X--"blame it on the open source development model" and the thing is, not all the specs are available for all the gfx hardware out there. Yep, those mean ol' companies don't open their specs, don't support XFree, and would be more than happy to let you think "Gee, Windows is a helluva lot better since my gfx card works so much better under it than under Linux."
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
In OpenGL? Most stuff doesn't even access data at the pixel level, just the normalized coordinate level You draw a triangle and it's
glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES);
glVertex2f(2.0,3.0);
glVertex2f(2,2,3,5);
glVertex2f(2.9,3.9);
...etc...
glEnd();
In that bit of code, you could have drawn a 500 pixel triangle with only a few lines.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Why is everyone so bloody afraid of heirarchial structures? I love being able to install a symlink to wherever Propaganda.debs choose to install themselves and have it all be reflected in a menu without a lot of fuss. Face it traditional config GUIs make you do more work
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A) Not everyone want's to fuss and figure out exactly *where* those symlinks go. With a GUI, you don't need to read any docs. With the CLI (for want of a better term to reference "your way") you do. Also, free yourself from the notion that the software developer has *any* control over what goes on your system. " wherever Propaganda.debs choose to install themselves" is just wrong, autocratic, and MS-like. YOU should chose where your software goes, not the Debian guys, and not the package maintainer! Stand up for your rights and be counted, or be downtrodden like the rest of the software-industry-oppressed lusers!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...