ANNOUNCE - graphics package

[Joe Armstrong]

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote:

> >   I will support the widget infrastructure and the low level X library.
> 
> It's quite soon to ask this, but I wonder: do your plans include adding
> functionality for X extensions? From what I saw in the code, it's not so easy to
> extend in a modular way, but I may be jumping to conclusions.

On the contrary it is *very* easy - If I have not misunderstood.

In my code most commands boil down to things like (for example)


	xDo(Display, ePolyFillRectangle(DrawCursor, GC0,
                     	      [mkRectangle(0,0,?CursorWidth, ?CursorHt)])),

	
All names like 

	ex11_lib:eXXXXX

Are primitive protocol messages.

To add support for (say) a rendering  extension one could make a new
protocol conversion module and write:

	xDo(Display, render:eSomeProtocolMessage(.....))

etc.

/Joe


> 
> What I had in mind was the Render extension, and also support for Xft. This goes
> a bit beyond "Erlang only talks to X server", but I guess you would be also
> interested in high quality output, TrueType fonts, antialiasing, transparency
> and so on ;-)
> 
> regards,
> Vlad
>