DIB Engine & GSoC

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

 Benoit Pradelle [mailto:ze_real_neo at yahoo.fr] wrote:

>I'm not really familiar with Wine (and the Windows API) and I don't
understand
>why do you think that it will be such an hard work. For me, the work will
consist
>in redirect the GDI calls from the X11 pseudo-driver to some new functions
>which will draw circles, lines, etc.. over DIBs.
>Do I misunderstand the work to do or under evaluate it ?

Well, technically a DIB engine is not necessarily that complicated and
directly
integrating it into GDI is also doable. It will probably require somewhat
modified
GDI internal data structures and even a few changes to the display driver
interface.

The tricky part is to do it in such a way that the current implementation
does never
really break. And I think it is clear that one can not do it by applying one
giant
patch that transitions from the current sitution to a full blown DIB engine.
This
can't really work anyhow as you do not want to have to implement every
single DIB
operation right away.

So after you have done the design and architeccture of a somewhat working
implementation,
a large part of the work will be about making small incremental patches that
can
be applied to the Wine source without breaking Wine in between the patches.

And as Stefan already mentioned I think it would be important to discuss
everything
with Alexandre first. He is probably the best person for this as he
understands
that part very well and you also will have to get your patches past him.
Without
some good talk it is unlikely that you can create patches that he feels
confident
enough to apply.

>And I've understand by reading this mail-list how important are regression
tests
>and fluent transitions in functionalities for Wine.

That is very good, however automatic regression testing for display issues
is
not always possible so to some extend it is also about running all kinds of
graphic intense packages and finding problems or differences to how it was
before. 

Rolf Kalbermatter