Re: [iPAQ] gtkfb

On Tue, 2002-01-29 at 17:08, Sridharan Subramanian wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> I had a few questions on gtkfb (direct framebuffer):
>
> - Is it really worth it on embedded systems as compared to X-windows and gtk together
>
> - Has anyone built gtkfb for the iPaq? If so can you please share the instructions on how to build it.
>
> - Is there a good window manager available for gtkfb. I want to run multiple applications directly to the framebuffer using a window manager.
There is a basic window manager inside gtkfb.

gdkfb only (at last look anyway) supported _one_ process which dominates
the input device and framebuffer . you cannot (afaik anyway) run two or
more processes simultaneously on the same framebuffer (successfully
anyway:) - how would they know which regions were obscured by other
apps?.. etc.
the lack of a controlling windowing process (i.e. X) makes this a hard
problem to solve elegantly.

I think QT/e has a cross-process windowing system which also allows apps
to draw directly onto the framebuffer using a shared-memory region
table, which i think is fairly icky.From past experience it probably
wouldn't be horrendously difficult to do something similar with GDK.

I think X has lots of advantages over such an approach.
owen

-- 
Owen Cliffe, Ph.D. Student, Dept. Computer Science
University of Bath