Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?

[Timothy Miller]

Jon Smirl wrote:
> An experimental feature I've heard being proposed is to generate font
> bitmaps dynamically on the card. The idea is to load the TrueType
> glyphs onto the card and then generate a temp bitmap when you know
> exactly the size/subpixel alignment that you need. Implementing this
> probably means you need 3D FP transform units. This is just an
> experiment proposal, no one has built it yet so no one knows if it is
> going to work very well. It might be an opportunity to try for some
> patents.


I would expect glyphs to be rendered into bitmaps on-demand and cached.
I would expect the cache to have such a HIGH hit rate that it's not 
worth dedicating hardware to the relatively infrequent event of 
rasterizing a glyph.

Now, providing the means to efficiently use those cached bitmaps, on the 
other hand, is definately worth the effort.

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