Re: XAML is good, but the threat is Avalon

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Re: XAML is good, but the threat is Avalon
by Kurt Cagle on Tuesday 30/Mar/2004, @17:56

You're spot on about the vector representation of Avalon. It will be hardware accelerated, and will take advantage of the 3D chips that will be standard issue in most machines three years from now. HOWEVER, I see this as being a good thing for an analogous system in Linux.

Currently, most 3D cards are optimized for handling 3D calculations, and their 2D libraries are small and somewhat anemic in comparison. However, chip makers are not idiots -- they're talking with Microsoft, are putting their 2D libraries on steroids, and are at the same time going to be optimizing for all of the requirements that the next generation of vector languages will require. When it gets down to the level of the chip, you can actually do things like using 3d apps to render text buffers more efficiently than you could with the 2d equivalents, you can get transparencies (alpha channel masks), composited layers, filters and even buffered library references all handled via hardware.

The benefit that Avalon offers is that Microsoft can establish that these improvements need to be in place to make this feasible, but the chips will be on the market well before Longhorn ships. There is not THAT much difference between the graphical layers of Avalon and of SVG, and the latest SVG 1.2 proposals are all indications that the W3C seems to recognize the inherent danger in trying to turn a graphics spec into an interface language by itself. This means that Linux should have access to the same level of hardware that Avalon will, and vector thinking there is already in full swing.

LibSVG is not at this point even at the level of ASV3, but it will be, soon enough. KSVG is taking its first tentative steps now with KDE 3.2, and we have two years of evolution to come on it. The central question comes down to being able to determine the point where you leave the abstraction of graphics and enter the abstraction of UI. I suspect that when Longhorn ships with Avalon, Linux will have planted its flag there first.

Kurt Cagle

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