Anyone seen anything about the new nvidia path rendering extension? May have some potential, and an nvidia guy responded to a post on the forum offering help if anyones interested in looking at it.
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=10108
Cheers
Sim
Sent from my iPad
On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 4:44 PM, John Cliff <john.cliff@...400...> wrote:
Anyone seen anything about the new nvidia path rendering extension? May have some potential, and an nvidia guy responded to a post on the forum offering help if anyones interested in looking at it.
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=10108
Cheers
Sim
The official NVIDIA drivers are proprietary and I guess that Nouveau does not support that yet and would probably require some nasty reverse engineering to do it. We shouldn't put effort on supporting a vendor-specific API that requires users to install proprietary drivers.
If these features become standard OpenGL in the future, then we hope that libre drivers will implement them and then we may consider supporting them. But we would still have to be careful to make it optional, so that the users always have a choice.
happy hacking, Felipe Sanches
16.10.2011 04:49, Felipe Sanches kirjoitti:
On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 4:44 PM, John Cliff<john.cliff@...400...> wrote:
Anyone seen anything about the new nvidia path rendering extension? May have some potential, and an nvidia guy responded to a post on the forum offering help if anyones interested in looking at it.
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=10108
Cheers
Sim
The official NVIDIA drivers are proprietary and I guess that Nouveau does not support that yet and would probably require some nasty reverse engineering to do it. We shouldn't put effort on supporting a vendor-specific API that requires users to install proprietary drivers.
Not all inkscape users on linux have any qualms about the propietary drivers, be it due to ideology or any other reason. There are still some clear advantages like better power management and video acceleration (vdpau) as far as I can tell. And remember, linux is just one of the platforms inkscape supports. Wouldn't this extension be available in Windows (and OS X?) as well?
If these features become standard OpenGL in the future, then we hope that libre drivers will implement them and then we may consider supporting them. But we would still have to be careful to make it optional, so that the users always have a choice.
Why would you make acceleration optional, as long as there's no downside? Isn't it enough to check for the extension and use it if it's available?
happy hacking, Felipe Sanches
- Jari
Not all inkscape users on linux have any qualms about the propietary drivers, be it due to ideology or any other reason.
Inkscape is a free software project. Then, we shouldn't implement something that *REQUIRES* users to install proprietary drivers.
This means that if we implement support for this vendor-specific, non-standard, hw accel API, we'll have to do it in a way that does not block people from using the current sw-only rendering. Eighter because using the sw renderer may be the only way of working with fully free software, or because the user may choose to stick to old hardware that does not yet support this technology.
Even if you argue that software freedom concerned users may not be a majority of our user-base (and it's not trivial to figure out whether that's the case or not), we shouldn't accept proprietary denpendencies in our code-base.
Felipe Sanches
And there is also the issue of verifying whether their SDK taints our code licensing...
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Felipe Sanches <juca@...2270...> wrote:
Not all inkscape users on linux have any qualms about the propietary drivers, be it due to ideology or any other reason.
Inkscape is a free software project. Then, we shouldn't implement something that REQUIRES users to install proprietary drivers.
We shouldnt require something that requires them to install proprietary drivers, but to outright ignore the possibilty because its not free is just daft. The graphics card your running on isnt open, the processor your using isnt open, yet we use them. Personally I dont mind using proprietary drivers, I already made the choice to buy their hardware, why cant I choose to use their driver? If theres a speed gain to be had, we would we not even consider it based on ideology? Main thought was can it be a Cairo backend?
This means that if we implement support for this vendor-specific, non-standard, hw accel API, we'll have to do it in a way that does not block people from using the current sw-only rendering. Eighter because using the sw renderer may be the only way of working with fully free software, or because the user may choose to stick to old hardware that does not yet support this technology.
Even if you argue that software freedom concerned users may not be a majority of our user-base (and it's not trivial to figure out whether that's the case or not), we shouldn't accept proprietary denpendencies in our code-base.
Felipe Sanches
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 1:48 PM, John Cliff <john.cliff@...400...> wrote:
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Felipe Sanches <juca@...2270...> wrote:
Not all inkscape users on linux have any qualms about the propietary drivers, be it due to ideology or any other reason.
Inkscape is a free software project. Then, we shouldn't implement something that REQUIRES users to install proprietary drivers.
We shouldnt require something that requires them to install proprietary drivers, but to outright ignore the possibilty because its not free is just daft.
I am not ignoring the possibility. I am explicitely opposing it.
The graphics card your running on isnt open,
the processor your using isnt open, yet we use them. Personally I dont mind using proprietary drivers, I already made the choice to buy their hardware, why cant I choose to use their driver? If theres a speed gain to be had, we would we not even consider it based on ideology? Main thought was can it be a Cairo backend?
Regarding your comments about "opennes" of processors and video cards... hardware is hardware, software is software: there are different technical and political considerations about each and we dont have to treat hw and sw the same way, since hw and sw are not the same thing.
I think that there is a consensus that Inkscape is a project committed to software freedom. Since drivers are software, it seems to me that our policy towards drivers is the same.
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Felipe Sanches <juca@...2270...> wrote:
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 1:48 PM, John Cliff <john.cliff@...400...> wrote:
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Felipe Sanches <juca@...2270...> wrote:
Not all inkscape users on linux have any qualms about the propietary drivers, be it due to ideology or any other reason.
Inkscape is a free software project. Then, we shouldn't implement something that REQUIRES users to install proprietary drivers.
We shouldnt require something that requires them to install proprietary drivers, but to outright ignore the possibilty because its not free is just daft.
I am not ignoring the possibility. I am explicitely opposing it.
The graphics card your running on isnt open, the processor your using isnt open, yet we use them. Personally I dont mind using proprietary drivers, I already made the choice to buy their hardware, why cant I choose to use their driver? If theres a speed gain to be had, we would we not even consider it based on ideology? Main thought was can it be a Cairo backend?
Regarding your comments about "opennes" of processors and video cards... hardware is hardware, software is software: there are different technical and political considerations about each and we dont have to treat hw and sw the same way, since hw and sw are not the same thing.
we dont treat them the same way as we wouldnt have computers to play with otherwise...
I think that there is a consensus that Inkscape is a project committed to software freedom. Since drivers are software, it seems to me that our policy towards drivers is the same.
I thought we were committed to creating an open source SVG editor. We always used to leave the politics of platform etc out of it, which is why we have such a huge userbase on windows. you can definitely count me out of your consensus.
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 9:55 AM, John Cliff <john.cliff@...400...> wrote:
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Felipe Sanches <juca@...2270...> wrote:
I think that there is a consensus that Inkscape is a project committed to software freedom. Since drivers are software, it seems to me that our policy towards drivers is the same.
I thought we were committed to creating an open source SVG editor. We always used to leave the politics of platform etc out of it, which is why we have such a huge userbase on windows. you can definitely count me out of your consensus.
I think John is absolutely right here. I remember times when we've had releases held up for months because of Windows specific issues (in fact almost every release gets held up due to them whether it being bugs or packaging). But given that we even make it cross-platform for OSX and Windows shows that we *already* cater to proprietary setups/platforms to reach our goal of creating a cross-platform open source SVG editor.
Now the more important issue is that we don't need to discuss politics on this mailing list. Additionally, this conversation *doesn't even belong* on this mailing list, as Krzysztof rightly brought up in the forum thread, this would be something to implement in cairo, not Inkscape.
Cheers, Josh
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 8:03 PM, Felipe Sanches wrote:
I think that there is a consensus that Inkscape is a project committed to software freedom. Since drivers are software, it seems to me that our policy towards drivers is the same.
In general I would prefer Inkscape to stay out of policies and politics. Our mission is to create a vector graphics editor that rocks the world. And if, while at that, it will kick ten kinds of crap out of some proprietary solutions, personally, I'll be the last person to complain.
We used to have an agreement in the team that OpenCL is the way to go for rendering. There is absolutely no technical reason why Inkscape couldn't check whether this or that feature is available (like OpenCL or some extension of it) and then switch to use it. There's only willingness of developers to work on this.
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org
On Sun, 2011-10-16 at 21:50 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
In general I would prefer Inkscape to stay out of policies and politics.
Inkscape should probably stay involved in it's own policies, and that may include policies on free and open source for technical reasons.
While I agree we shouldn't talk politics, I also disagree that we should stop talking Inkscape's own internal politics on Free and Open Source. It's clear that lots of users and many developers care that Inkscape is Free Software and care that development happens with that consideration in mind. That's why we always assumed the consensus was pro-foss, it's weaved into the projects cultural fabric.
Of course I might be wrong, and all the developers might be anti-foss and just stick around for the technicals, but I don't think that's true and it's reflected in the goal of the project to make an open source SVG editor, not just an SVG editor.
I do admit however that I'm biased as I'd never be found working on the windows port and certainly wouldn't delay the release. I have politics and it does effect how I see situations, if you cut that out of the discussion here then we're all going to be left trying to guess what the hell each of us is actually trying to achieve. Keep it in but keep it respectful.
Martin.
On Oct 16, 2011 1:26 PM, "Martin Owens" <doctormo@...400...> wrote:
On Sun, 2011-10-16 at 21:50 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
In general I would prefer Inkscape to stay out of policies and politics.
Inkscape should probably stay involved in it's own policies, and that may include policies on free and open source for technical reasons.
We certainly are involved with our own policies. This is one of the reasons our board exists, to avoid the politics and to protect the project on every level possible. Any developers with political agendas should take their issues to the board's list... but be warned, just because you have strong feelings doesn't mean the board will agree. For those who don't know, the board is comprized of: Bryce Harrington, Dr. Nathan Hurst, MenTaLguY, Ted Gould, Aaron Spike and myself.
In prior board votes, open/free solutions *always* take priority over non-open solutions... however that doesn't mean that they're always completely excluded. Basically, in a recent vote that I still need to share the results of with the list (it will be posted by the end of the week), the board has shown priority for the following order: FOSS principles come first, secondly we don't shun things that are gratis, and thirdly we still respect the commercial side (we have a list of Inkscape books on our site for example). Also speaking of votes, since our development community can't seem to reach a consensus about a change in version numbering, I'm going to be taking that to the board as well.
Political issues are flat out tough. They have a tendency to divide communities, and this is one of the ways the board helps protect the integrity of the community... by being there to prevent people from getting at each other's throats over ideologies.
While I agree we shouldn't talk politics, I also disagree that we should stop talking Inkscape's own internal politics on Free and Open Source. It's clear that lots of users and many developers care that Inkscape is Free Software and care that development happens with that consideration in mind. That's why we always assumed the consensus was pro-foss, it's weaved into the projects cultural fabric.
I think that it's a HUGE assumption to think that "lots of users" care about Free and Open Source. I talk to, interact with, and read comments from our users generally 6/7 days of the week. An overwhelming majority of them care primarily about one thing, it's free (as in price) and they can use it and feel good about not breaking the law. Seriously, do you know how aggravating it is to see people refer to it as "freeware" just about every day? People who care about FOSS principals would never misrepresent a proper foss project like that. Similarly, of the handful of people I've personally switched to ubuntu, they care about price (also in the form of getting more time out of aging hardware), legality, and community... not politics.
User argument aside... as mentioned above, FOSS principals are a priority of the project.
I do admit however that I'm biased as I'd never be found working on the windows port and certainly wouldn't delay the release. I have politics and it does effect how I see situations, if you cut that out of the discussion here then we're all going to be left trying to guess what the hell each of us is actually trying to achieve. Keep it in but keep it respectful.
As the the effective release/project manager for a few years now, I *hate* delaying releases for Windows. Likewise, Bryce hated delaying releases for Windows. If those devs don't step up, why should everyone else suffer? But as long as we choose to continue supporting that platform, it's one of the evils that comes with it. By the same token, I have the same level of loathing for our Linux policies too. I hate that we have policy which blocks us from requiring the latest and greatest library versions because we need to support LTS releases for the sake of not leaving out potential new developers. As much as I hate these things, I still respect why we handle things like we do... true openness, inclusiveness, and a unified community.
Cheers, Josh
On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 9:24 PM, Martin Owens <doctormo@...400...> wrote:
On Sun, 2011-10-16 at 21:50 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
In general I would prefer Inkscape to stay out of policies and politics.
Inkscape should probably stay involved in it's own policies, and that may include policies on free and open source for technical reasons.
While I agree we shouldn't talk politics, I also disagree that we should stop talking Inkscape's own internal politics on Free and Open Source. It's clear that lots of users and many developers care that Inkscape is Free Software and care that development happens with that consideration in mind. That's why we always assumed the consensus was pro-foss, it's weaved into the projects cultural fabric.
your changing what was said, it wasnt that we were pro-FOSS it was
"a project committed to software freedom. Since drivers are software, it seems to me that our policy towards drivers is the same."
we're committed to being a good open source SVG editor. Being pro FOSS is a no brainer. I'm not aware we have 'policies' other than patch first, discuss later.
We're not a FOSS evangelism project, we're not some organisation that talks lots about how good FOSS is but never actually produces any. "I wont work with that as its not FOSS" is just the kind of blinkered attitude that pisses me off. Lets rephrase that shall we, "I refuse to make the most of your hardware because that drivers from a big company." "I insist on making this app not as good as it could be because my politics are more important to me than my product" "Sod the user experience, it can be slow as a dog as long as its open"
The fact that Bryce and co were open to all is the reason I got into inkscape, I was on windows (my laptop still is, my desktop is Ubuntu, my phone and tablet are apple) and the fact that the build worked out of the box for windows was a major draw. The fact that they were welcoming and helped me out on chat when I got stuck was awesome, the fact that other than the odd jibe they didnt try to ram linux down my throat did more to get me interested than any linux geek I ever met.
Of course I might be wrong, and all the developers might be anti-foss and just stick around for the technicals, but I don't think that's true and it's reflected in the goal of the project to make an open source SVG editor, not just an SVG editor.
I never said I was anti FOSS, why the heck would I have ever done anything on inkscape if I was? I simply said that the aim of inkscape was to be a good open source svg editor, not to push politics on people. If playing nice with a non open source API can make us better then I dont have an issue with it. I'm all for open source, I'm just not rabidly pro FOSS to the extent that I'll refuse to even look at a bit of tech which is potentially offering a roughly 10x increase in speed over the other options currently available.
I do admit however that I'm biased as I'd never be found working on the windows port and certainly wouldn't delay the release. I have politics and it does effect how I see situations, if you cut that out of the discussion here then we're all going to be left trying to guess what the hell each of us is actually trying to achieve. Keep it in but keep it respectful.
Martin.
For the record, I'm trying to make a really good open source SVG editor, you can leave all the politics out of it.
Lets rephrase that shall we, "I refuse to make the most of your hardware because that drivers from a big company."
That's unfair! That's not what I said. I'm not complaining about companies beeing big. Actually, some big companies such as RedHat do develop freedom-respecting software. While other companies (eighter big or small, that's irrelevant) and even individuals by themselves develop proprietary stuff we should avoid. So my point was that I refuse - and will continue to oppose if needed - to add proprietary dependencies in Inkscape. There's absolutely no relation to companies sizes...
On Sun, 2011-10-16 at 09:01 +0300, Jari Rahkonen wrote:
be it due to ideology or any other reason.
We all should be aware that those other reasons you allude to are not simply other political ideals. We should concern ourselves with the exclusion of users with different hardware(1), with the sustainability and longevity of proprietary codebases(2) and the increased costs to us in investing in them(3).
I know there are plenty of people who object to ideologies, but we should at least agree that proprietary code comes with hidden costs that we must carefully weigh up on any decision to adopt new technology.
My own opinion is that application software has no business talking hardware APIs and that a path should be beaten through xorg or another graphics stack or library to at least give the opportunity to flatten out the support for the functionality and not just offer it to other graphics hardware but also to other application software too.
This is just the wrong level for this.
Martin,
(1), ATI, Intel and some SIS, with standards like opengl being important for cross support. (2), See all the studies done on the mess created in propritary development, see the ati proprietary driver for a perfect proof. I don't even want to see the nvidia code base tbh. (3), Increased complexity of the rendering engine at this level would be very bad.
Is there any plan to include NV_path_rendering in the OpenGL standard?
2011/10/16 Martin Owens <doctormo@...400...>
On Sun, 2011-10-16 at 09:01 +0300, Jari Rahkonen wrote:
be it due to ideology or any other reason.
We all should be aware that those other reasons you allude to are not simply other political ideals. We should concern ourselves with the exclusion of users with different hardware(1), with the sustainability and longevity of proprietary codebases(2) and the increased costs to us in investing in them(3).
I know there are plenty of people who object to ideologies, but we should at least agree that proprietary code comes with hidden costs that we must carefully weigh up on any decision to adopt new technology.
My own opinion is that application software has no business talking hardware APIs and that a path should be beaten through xorg or another graphics stack or library to at least give the opportunity to flatten out the support for the functionality and not just offer it to other graphics hardware but also to other application software too.
This is just the wrong level for this.
Martin,
(1), ATI, Intel and some SIS, with standards like opengl being important for cross support. (2), See all the studies done on the mess created in propritary development, see the ati proprietary driver for a perfect proof. I don't even want to see the nvidia code base tbh. (3), Increased complexity of the rendering engine at this level would be very bad.
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel
Well, Personally I'm fed up with this sort of stuff that excludes other types of GPU (remember PhysX...). Inskapes's developers have better things to do (in term of time) than doing something only useful for half of users (basically). I have a i7 2600K now (8 Gigas of memory), with good ATI (HD 6950) and it's always a pain to render complicated filters. No offense, it's just a fact to say that : OK to work on fast rendering, NOK for special GPU or CPU.
And yeah, that's right, I'm fed up with nVidia and its political monopoly.
Cheers, Teto.
Le 15/10/2011 21:44, John Cliff a écrit :
Anyone seen anything about the new nvidia path rendering extension? May have some potential, and an nvidia guy responded to a post on the forum offering help if anyones interested in looking at it.
http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=10108
Cheers
Sim
Sent from my iPad
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel
participants (8)
-
Alexandre Prokoudine -
Felipe Sanches -
Fernando Lagos -
Jari Rahkonen -
John Cliff -
Josh Andler -
Martin Owens -
Teto