Previously indices were tightly bound to a particular Cogl vertex buffer
but we would like to be able to share indices so now we have
cogl_vertex_buffer_indices_new () which returns a CoglHandle.
In particular we could like to have a shared set of indices for drawing
lists of quads that can be shared between the pango renderer and the
Cogl journal.
Originally cogl_vertex_buffer_add_indices let the user pass in their own unique
ID for the indices; now the Id is generated internally and returned to the
caller.
It's now possible to add arrays of indices to a Cogl vertex buffer and
they will be put into an OpenGL vertex buffer object. Since it's quite
common for index arrays to be static it saves the OpenGL driver from
having to validate them repeatedly.
This changes the cogl_vertex_buffer_draw_elements API: It's no longer
possible to provide a pointer to an index array at draw time. So
cogl_vertex_buffer_draw_elements now takes an indices identifier that
should correspond to an idendifier returned when calling
cogl_vertex_buffer_add_indices ()
The cogl_is_* functions were showing up quite high on profiles due to
iterating through arrays of cogl handles.
This does away with all the handle arrays and implements a simple struct
inheritance scheme. All cogl objects now add a CoglHandleObject _parent;
member to their main structures. The base object includes 2 members a.t.m; a
ref_count, and a klass pointer. The klass in turn gives you a type and
virtual function for freeing objects of that type.
Each handle type has a _cogl_##handle_type##_get_type () function
automatically defined which returns a GQuark of the handle type, so now
implementing the cogl_is_* funcs is just a case of comparing with
obj->klass->type.
Another outcome of the re-work is that cogl_handle_{ref,unref} are also much
more efficient, and no longer need extending for each handle type added to
cogl. The cogl_##handle_type##_{ref,unref} functions are now deprecated and
are no longer used internally to Clutter or Cogl. Potentially we can remove
them completely before 1.0.
There is no need for a custom hsl to rgb converter since Clutter implements
this logic; originally it wasn't quite as optimal, but that has now been
fixed.
Using test-cogl-vertex-buffer as a test case which is CPU bound due to
hls -> rgb conversions this alternative algorithm looked to be ~10%
faster when tested on an X61s Lenovo.
The test is a sanity check that dynamic updating of vertex data via the cogl
vertex buffer api works and has reasonable performance. (though it can't be
considered a well designed benchmark since it wastes casual amounts of CPU
time simply choosing pretty colors.)
The code also aims to demonstrate one way of creating, updating and efficiently
drawing a quad mesh structure via the vertex buffer api which could be applied
to lots of different use cases.
