Re: New OS to use gnustep!

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 4 Mar 2013, at 09:40, David Chisnall wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> That's really awesome news!
> 
> We have a CoreGraphics implementation, mostly written by Eric, called Opal, 
> but it's not integrated.  Ivan also implemented a significant amount of 
> CoreAnimation.  Unfortunately, neither of them are integrated into the rest 
> of the system.
> 
> The first step is probably to implement a back end using Opal.  This would 
> take the Display PostScript calls and call the CoreGraphics equivalents 
> instead.  Once this is done, you can mix CoreGraphics and AppKit drawing 
> calls into the same context.
> 
> Integrating CoreAnimation is a bit more tricky.  The current back end 
> interface doesn't have a notion of layers.  This would need to be added, 
> along with some ability to have different rendering targets for different 
> contexts.
> 
> Once that's done, there is room for some optimisation.  For example, we 
> should be able to draw views in different layers in parallel and cache the 
> result so that we don't need to redraw the entire view hierarchy.
> 
> I think Gregory has done a little bit of work along the lines of integrating 
> Opal with the back end, so maybe he can comment.
> 
> We're planning on having a developer meeting in Cambridge, probably at the 
> end of June: it would be great if you could send someone along.  

That sounds really good to me ... I'd like to get to Cambridge then (possibly 
bringing family) for the hackathon.  Currently I'm free the last two weekends 
in June and the first in July (possibly I could take some time off during the 
week), but it would help if we had firmer dates.