[M3devel] Modernising m3-ui?

[Chris]

On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:14:56 -0500
hendrik at topoi.pooq.com wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 01:50:20AM +0100, Chris wrote:
> > It looks like most of the libs(Trestle, X11R4, OpenGL, etc...) in m3-ui haven't been touched or updated since the early 90s.
> > 
> > Seems like modernising it might attract some more developers. i.e. 
> > Bring the X interface up to date(X11R6) and support things like DRM, 
> > XRandr, etc... And update OpenGL for NURBS, VBOs, etc...
> 
> I hear the OpenGL itself is undergoing massive change at the moment.  We 
> may have to replace its Modula 3 binding anyway.  The new OpenGL, I'm 
> told, no longer deals in individual triangles, squares, and the like, 
> but only in arrays of same, to better use graphic card parallelism.
> 
> -- hendrik

Definitely a chore. As an excercise I plan to start porting the NeHe tutorials over to Modula 3. However, a big question for me is where to begin.

Idealy an application written to the older standards should still be able to compile and run on new cards, which MIGHT mean mapping the current bindings over top a set bindings to the new standards. We'll see how the standards board deals with that issue.

Also upgrading the X bindings will also be a challenge. The nice thing about the current X window system is that it's far more modular than the X11R4 in the current library. That should make it easier to upgrade the interface systematically, one piece at a time.
-- 
Chris <Highjinks at gmx.com>