BoF: Graphics in GNU Classpath

[Sascha Brawer]

Hi all,

during our meeting in Karlsruhe, some of you said that they will come to
LinuxKongress, which will take place from October 14-16 in Saarbrücken/
Germany.

In previous years, there apparently was an opportunity for so-called
Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) Sessions. In my understanding, this is basically
a fancy name for "meeting."

So, I think it would be good to have a discussion/BoF about graphics in
GNU Classpath.  If others are interested as well, I will submit the
following announcement to LinuxKongress.  If you have any comments or
suggestions, please comment :-)

Best regards,

-- Sascha

Sascha Brawer, address@hidden, http://www.dandelis.ch/people/brawer/



==============================
BoF: Graphics in GNU Classpath
==============================

Background
----------

Many existing Java(TM) applications depend on the Java2D(TM) API, a very
well-designed, powerful set of high-performance graphics routines. Most
applications use this graphics library indirectly through the Swing(TM)
toolkit, which is the most widely used API to write interactive
applications in the Java(TM) programming language.

It would be very desirable for GNU Classpath to support the Java2D(TM)
API. However, the current state of graphics support in GNU Classpath is
extremely limited.


Purpose of the meeting
----------------------

- To discuss whether the goal is realistic at all.

- To determine which parts are most urgently needed, and which parts are
less important.

- To find a structure of the code that can support several target
platforms. For example, the requirements are rather different for remote
X11, local X11, IKVM.NET, Jaos/Oberon, embedded devices with
framebuffers, or pure Java operating systems. Ideally, it would be
possible to find a clean way to structure the code so that most parts are
shared.


Who might be interested
-----------------------

- People who know about X11, XRender, OpenGL(TM) or some other graphics API
- People who are familiar with the Java2D(TM) APIs
- Implementors of virtual machines
- Contributors to GNU Classpath

Of course, everyone is welcome!


Related links
-------------

It would be good if the attendands could get familiar with some of the
relevant APIs. Of course, knowledge about Java2D(TM) would be especially
important.

- Programmer's Guide to the Java2D(TM) API
  ftp://ftp.java.sun.com/docs/j2se/1.4/j2d-book.pdf (PDF),
  http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/2d/spec/j2d-bookTOC.html (HTML)

- The X Rendering Extension
  http://keithp.com/~keithp/render/protocol.html

- X11 Manual pages
  http://www.xfree86.org/4.2.0/manindex3.html

- OpenGL(TM) Overviews
  http://www.opengl.org/developers/documentation/overviews.html

- OpenGL(TM) Specification
  http://www.opengl.org/developers/documentation/version1_4/glspec14.pdf