Very Computer

Hello !!!

Look at the subject!

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On 11 Jan 98 17:18:56 GMT, Iztok Polanic

Look at the home page!

<http://synergy.caltech.edu:80/~ggi/>

Short answer: It's the "General Graphics Interface," that seeks to
provide a common abstraction layer for graphics devices.  

The intent is to put some low level memory management and I/O code and
"better" console I/O management code into the kernel ("KGI"), then use
user-level libraries to talk to KGI to do such things as implementing
drivers for particular cards ("libGGI"), and then use further user-level
libraries and programs to talk to libGGI to implement graphic
applications.

The initial intent is to provide:
- Improved robustness (console switching can, at present, mess up one's
system)
- Nice handling of multiheaded systems (e.g. - multiple screens,
keyboards, mice)

Later plans are to make libGGI (and driver-related components) "smarter"
so that you get faster graphics.

And one can implement multiple libraries atop libGGI, so that you can
do
- Some DOS text GUI emulation schemes to make it easy to port some old
DOS software to Linux (that exist now)
- X atop GGI (this exists now)
- SVGAlib atop GGI (which is quite an attractive idea; possibly
partially implemented; this would revitalize SVGAlib)
- Possibly other GUIs atop GGI (Berlin being the most notable planned
thing at this point; Tk/DPS/Gtk would be quite interesting alternatives
that I don't think are planned)
--
"Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock
phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three"

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