XServer & Magnification: Outcome of Discussions

• together DAMAGE, XFIXES, and COMPOSITE are solving many of our magnification issues
• notification
• interaction
• performance
• Current graphics hardware has plenty of power, problem is getting to it using X
  
• X DISPLAY/SCREEN model of desktop is getting obsolete; 'session' model is better
• XInput has problems for HIDs which may need short-term fixes
• XEvIE, XKB,(subset), DAMAGE, and XFIXES  should be standardized.
• we may be able to exceed, rather than meet, current magnification practice
• COMPOSITE is not quite mature enough yet, needs more exposure
  

Actions

• Investigate pixel shaders for text smoothing, etc.
• Decide which versions of above extensions to promote in our first FSG standard(s)
  
• Add API to XFIXES to separate "set cursor"  from "show cursor"
  
• Extend XInput to allow disambiguation of HIDs
• specify and prototype compositing-manager hints (in order to implement some mag features)
• do proof-of-concepts of various XEvIE/mouse-coordinate approaches
  

Issues (also actions - to investigate and discuss further)

• Need solution for 'spurious cursor' problem before taking advantage of COMPOSITE fully
• COMPOSITE may still be too slow for some (non-mag) users, slowing adoption
  
• Input devices (HIDs) are still a problem
• need strategy for cascading/multiple or pluggable Compositing Managers
• Should CMs be able to redirect output (to a different SCREEN, for instance?)
• current client-side gnome-mag APIs are too GNOME-centric
• should we try to share existing 'gnome-mag' implementation source code ?
• X security is getting tightened, which may require replacement of some of our current mouse and keyboard manipulation techniques
• XEvIE is being pulled in several, possibly conflicting directions
• mouse coordinate transformation problem is not yet solved, another COMPOSITE obstacle