Re: GNUstep and DirectFB

[Chad Hardin]

I have a side project going which you may be interested in.  It is a
lightweight window manager in the spirit of the OS X WindowServer.
I wanted to create a new backend for gnustep that doesn't use X11.  I too,
originally thought of using DirectFB as the basis, but IMHO directFB is
rapidly developing into something way beyond a simple lightweight window
manager.  So, I started NuVu
http://www.sf.net/projects/nuvu
(Source is available via CVS)

It is written in almost completely inlined C++ and uses STL for speed and
easy development.  Being a lightweight window server/manager, it does not
draw anything to the screen (well, it does do blits with transparency).
Instead, it allocates a piece of shared memory which the client also has
access to.  The client "draws" to this shared memory, then tells the server
it is done drawing.  The server then blits it to screen (it's a little more
involved, but that's the basics).  As far as the mechanics of actual
client/server communication, I haven't coded anything yet, I'm thinking
about what would be the best method.

Oh, nuVu uses the Linux video frame buffers.  But I'm sure you guessed that
already.


You might be interested in helping with this project, as it's main purpose
is to be the basis for yet another gnustep-backend.

Chad


"Alan West" wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm new to gnustep and this list so....
> About me: UK C/C++ programmer for 8 years commercially, originally ANSI
> C, then MFC,STL, and more recently ATL,WTL, COM, OLEDB.... I've been in
> search of something which enables me to develop software for different
> platforms easily for the past year or two, I've evaluated all sorts of
> libraries and technologies from cross platform windowing libs, to
> Mono/C#/.NET etc, Mozilla's cross platform support, and out of all this
> nothing has impressed me as much as the openstep/gnustep/Objective-C
> stuff, the Renaisance stuff looks awesome too, not sure I like the menu
> support though - must be a way to get the menu to work for all platforms
> instead of an extra Apple specific one.
> 
> I had a play with writing display server support using DirectFB (seeing
> as it includes window management), but got stuck at the first hurdle of
> including the directfb header file... its as though the Objective-C
> compiler doesn't expand the macros fully (macros defining DirectFB
> interface structs).. and fails to parse an enum with its value shift by
> another enum value... so....
> Does anyone already know if the directfb.h file is a true ANSI C header
> file?
> Or do I have to set an option with the compiler when including this kind
> of header file?
> Has anyone already done this?
> Or any other ideas (using gcc3.2.1 on Gentoo Linux)?
> 
> 
> Thanks
> Alan
> 
> 
> 
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