Re: X Rendering and GNU Classpath

[Jean-Daniel Fekete]

Brian Jones writes:

>...

> Sascha,
>
> Is there any way to implement this that would work on both UNIX and
> Windows, but not require 3d hardware which OpenGL seems to... I'm
> guessing probably not.  Looks like 2 days Sun and SGI decided to
> create standard Java bindings for OpenGL,
> http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2003/july/sgisun_opengl.html.

Dear classpath developers,

I took over the development of Agile2D, a package implementing Graphics2D in 
OpenGL using gl4java.  Agile2d has been implemented originaly by Jon Meyer for 
Ben Bederson, director of the Human Computer Interaction Lab. at the University 
of Maryland.  Agile2d is available at http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/agile2d and, 
until the new version is available there, at my local page 
http://www.lri.fr/~fekete/agile2d and it is distributed under the Apache 
licence (it can change).

Having seen the announcement of Sgi and Sun, I think I will migrate Agile2D to 
the new Java binding.

It would be a shame to duplicate the effort so I am willing to help and provide 
all the information you would need to achieve a free port of Graphics2D based 
on OpenGL and, of course, the code too.

Keep in mind that there are currently more platform supporting OpenGL than Java 
so OpenGL is really a garantee of portability, compared to the  mess of having 
different ports for X11 graphics, Windows graphics, Mac graphics and others to 
come.  There is still a little bit of platform dependent code required to 
access OpenGL from these platform.

As for Font rendering, I have implemented FreeType font rendering for OpenGL 
and there is a library made by Stephane Conversy called glft that can be used 
too (see the svgl project at http://www.lri.fr/~conversy/svgl/).

I hope we can collaborate on providing a good and fast, free implementation of 
Graphics2D.

Best regards,

--
Jean-Daniel Fekete      address@hidden
INRIA Futurs, LRI               tel: +33 1 69156623
Bat 490, Université Paris-Sud   fax: +33 1 69156586
F91405 ORSAY Cedex, France