Given the size and scope of the changes in ClutterActor, we ought to
rewrite the overall description of what an actor is, what it does, and
how are you supposed to use it and subclass it.
The Clutter backend split is opaque enough that should allow us to just
build all possible backends inside the same shared object, and select
the wanted backend at initialization time.
This requires some work in the build system, as well as the
initialization code, to remove duplicate functions that might cause
conflicts at build and link time. We also need to defer all the checks
of the internal state of the platform-specific API to run-time type
checks.
This adds a property which can be used to redirect the actor through
an FBO before painting so that it becomes flattened in an image. The
image can be used as a cache to avoid having to repaint the actor if
something unrelated in the scene changes. It can also be used to
implement correct opacity even if the actor has overlapping
primitives. The property is an enum that takes three values:
CLUTTER_OFFSCREEN_REDIRECT_NEVER: The default behaviour which is to
never flatten the actor.
CLUTTER_OFFSCREEN_REDIRECT_ALWAYS: The actor is always redirected
through an FBO.
CLUTTER_OFFSCREEN_REDIRECT_ONLY_FOR_OPACITY: The actor is only
redirected through an FBO if the paint opacity is not 255. This
value would be used if the actor wants correct opacity. It will
avoid the overhead of using an FBO whenever the actor is fully
opaque.
The property is implemented by installing a ClutterFlattenEffect.
ClutterFlattenEffect is a new internal class which subclasses
ClutterOffscreen to redirect the painting to an FBO. When
ClutterOffscreen paints, the effect sets an opacity override on the
actor so that the image will always contain the actor at full
opacity. The opacity is then applied to the resulting image before
painting it to the stage. This means the actor does not need to be
redrawn while the opacity is being animated.
The effect has a high internal priority so that it will always occur
before any other effects and it gets hidden from the application.
This backend hasn't been used for years now and so because it is
untested code and almost certainly doesn't work any more it would be a
burdon to continue trying to maintain it. Considering that we are now
looking at moving OpenGL window system integration code down from
Clutter backends into Cogl that will be easier if we don't have to
consider this backend.
Since EGA colors are apparently all the rage in other toolkits, Clutter
should not be left out. On top of the usual CGA/EGA palette the static
colors also include the Tango Icon palette, which at least is more
pleasant to the eye.
Static colors are accessed through an enumeration by using
clutter_color_get_static(), or using the short-hand pre-processor
macros.
http://bugzilla.clutter-project.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2066
The internal copy of JSON-GLib was meant to go away right after the 1.0
release, given that JSON-GLib was still young and relatively unknown.
Nowadays, many projects started depending on this little library, and
distributions ship it and keep it up to date.
Keeping a copy of JSON-GLib means keeping it up to date; unfortunately,
this would also imply updating the code not just for the API but for the
internal implementations.
Starting with the 1.2 release, Clutter preferably dependend on the
system copy; with the 1.4 release we stopped falling back automatically.
The 1.6 cycle finally removes the internal copy and requires a copy of
JSON-GLib installed on the target system in order to compile Clutter.
The keysyms defines in clutter-keysyms.h are generated from the X11 key
symbols headers by doing the equivalent of a pass of sed from XK_* to
CLUTTER_*. This might lead to namespace collisions, down the road.
Instead, we should use the CLUTTER_KEY_* namespace.
This commit includes the script, taken from GDK, that parses the X11
key symbols and generates two headers:
- clutter-keysyms.h: the default included header, with CLUTTER_KEY_*
- clutter-keysyms-compat.h: the compatibility header, with CLUTTER_*
The compat.h header file is included if CLUTTER_DISABLE_DEPRECATED is
not defined - essentially deprecating all the old key symbols.
This does not change any ABI and, assuming that an application or
library is not compiling with CLUTTER_DISABLE_DEPRECATED, the source
compatibility is still guaranteed.
Intel CE3100 and CE4100 have several planes (framebuffers) and a
hardware blender to blend the planes togeteher to produce the final
image.
clutter_cex100_set_plane() lets you configure which framebuffer clutter
will use for its rendering.
This adds a separate variable name "CLUTTER_SONAME_INFIX" to define the
infix for the clutter library that gets linked. Currently the WINSYS
corresponds to the directory we enter when building to compile the
window system and input support, but it is desirable to be able to
define multiple flavours that use the same WINSYS but should result in
different library names.
For example we are planning to combine the eglx and eglnative window
systems into one "egl" winsys but we will need to preserve the current
library names for the eglx and eglnative flavours.
Various headers are build in builddirs (clutter-marshal.h, mkenums
headers and cogl-define.h) so we need to add the corresponding include
paths for gtk-doc to build its scanner.
We should explain what a "key frame" is for ClutterAnimator, possibly
with some sort of visual cue.
This allows me to demonstrate my poor skills at using Inkscape, as well
as my overall bad taste for graphics design.
As part of an incremental process to have Cogl be a standalone project we
want to re-consider how we organise the Cogl source code.
Currently this is the structure I'm aiming for:
cogl/
cogl/
<put common source here>
winsys/
cogl-glx.c
cogl-wgl.c
driver/
gl/
gles/
os/ ?
utils/
cogl-fixed
cogl-matrix-stack?
cogl-journal?
cogl-primitives?
pango/
The new winsys component is a starting point for migrating window system
code (i.e. x11,glx,wgl,osx,egl etc) from Clutter to Cogl.
The utils/ and pango/ directories aren't added by this commit, but they are
noted because I plan to add them soon.
Overview of the planned structure:
* The winsys/ API is the API that binds OpenGL to a specific window system,
be that X11 or win32 etc. Example are glx, wgl and egl. Much of the logic
under clutter/{glx,osx,win32 etc} should migrate here.
* Note there is also the idea of a winsys-base that may represent a window
system for which there are multiple winsys APIs. An example of this is
x11, since glx and egl may both be used with x11. (currently only Clutter
has the idea of a winsys-base)
* The driver/ represents a specific varient of OpenGL. Currently we have "gl"
representing OpenGL 1.4-2.1 (mostly fixed function) and "gles" representing
GLES 1.1 (fixed funciton) and 2.0 (fully shader based)
* Everything under cogl/ should fundamentally be supporting access to the
GPU. Essentially Cogl's most basic requirement is to provide a nice GPU
Graphics API and drawing a line between this and the utility functionality
we add to support Clutter should help keep this lean and maintainable.
* Code under utils/ as suggested builds on cogl/ adding more convenient
APIs or mechanism to optimize special cases. Broadly speaking you can
compare cogl/ to OpenGL and utils/ to GLU.
* clutter/pango will be moved to clutter/cogl/pango
How some of the internal configure.ac/pkg-config terminology has changed:
backendextra -> CLUTTER_WINSYS_BASE # e.g. "x11"
backendextralib -> CLUTTER_WINSYS_BASE_LIB # e.g. "x11/libclutter-x11.la"
clutterbackend -> {CLUTTER,COGL}_WINSYS # e.g. "glx"
CLUTTER_FLAVOUR -> {CLUTTER,COGL}_WINSYS
clutterbackendlib -> CLUTTER_WINSYS_LIB
CLUTTER_COGL -> COGL_DRIVER # e.g. "gl"
Note: The CLUTTER_FLAVOUR and CLUTTER_COGL defines are kept for apps
As the first thing to take advantage of the new winsys component in Cogl;
cogl_get_proc_address() has been moved from cogl/{gl,gles}/cogl.c into
cogl/common/cogl.c and this common implementation first trys
_cogl_winsys_get_proc_address() but if that fails then it falls back to
gmodule.
ClutterBehaviourPath has been changed and ClutterBehaviourBspline has
been removed; now we use ClutterPath everywhere we need to describe a
path. This warrants a chapter in the migration guide.
The Clutter API reference should have a section on how to port
applications from older version of Clutter to the new API.
The first guide deals on how to port animations created with
ClutterEffect to clutter_actor_animate().
Clutter copies the gtk-doc from the usual gtk+ template, and
has a version.xml.in containing only:
@VERSION@
Without a newline at the end. Unfortunately, it appears that
autoconf has started adding a newline to the generated version.xml
which then is used as the payload for the "version" XML entity.
Instead of using a secondary file we can make configure generate
the whole clutter-docs.xml and cogl-docs.xml files from a template;
this way we also get the ability to substitute more autoconf variables
into the documentation -- if needs be.
Clutter uses checks on various environment variables and installs
various command line switches. The API reference should list them
and document them both.
The ClutterAlpha API reference page should also list the
easing modes Clutter provides by default, by showing the
curves used by each entry in the AnimationMode enumeration.
We can also remove the incomplete graph showing the old
alpha functions.
