Clutter in Fremantle (Alpha SDK)

Hi,

How is Clutter supposed to work in applications in Fremantle? Will
the Clutter-GTK library be included in the final SDK?

I have tried to run a Clutter application that works in desktop
environment. It compiles fine, but nothing happens when starting it in
the Alpha SDK. Also, even the simplest example application from
Programming with Clutter tutorial does not work [1].

Is this somehow related to this statement: "It is assumed that we
will have only one OpenGL drawing context, and thus a single process
running in the system will be using Clutter at a time. This process will
be the window manager and the implementor of all challenging graphical
UI effects on the screen." [2]

What is the trick to get a working Clutter stage in Fremantle
application?

BR,

Henrik

[1]
http://www.openismus.com/documents/clutter_tutorial/0.8/docs/tutorial/html/sec-stage.html#sec-stage-basics
[2] http://maemo.org/development/sdks/maemo5_alpha_overview/

--
Henrik Hedberg - http://www.henrikhedberg.net/

Hendrik,
I assume that to use clutter in your application is to somehow get the
window manager to shutdown the opengl context and then open yours for the
duration before once again reopening the window manager.

A somewhat challenging prospect!

Whilst its possible to use x11 compositing to bring in a gtk or qt window, I
assume there is no extension to composite an opengl window itself.
And since its "difficult" to allow sharing of data between applications this
is not something that could be fixed elegently.

really makes you appreciate the underlying beauty of x11 :)

I'm getting round this by designing my framework to allow both standalone
unshared instances to be run (multiple XV overlays are allowed) and I have
also put the core principles in place for dynamically loading shared
application widgets into the playground.
It should be as simple as a change in the makefile to switch a properly
designed application between standalone or shared :)

gary


On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 7:37 AM, Henrik Hedberg <
henrik.hedberg@innologies.fi> wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> How is Clutter supposed to work in applications in Fremantle? Will
> the Clutter-GTK library be included in the final SDK?
>
> I have tried to run a Clutter application that works in desktop
> environment. It compiles fine, but nothing happens when starting it in
> the Alpha SDK. Also, even the simplest example application from
> Programming with Clutter tutorial does not work [1].
>
> Is this somehow related to this statement: "It is assumed that we
> will have only one OpenGL drawing context, and thus a single process
> running in the system will be using Clutter at a time. This process will
> be the window manager and the implementor of all challenging graphical
> UI effects on the screen." [2]
>
> What is the trick to get a working Clutter stage in Fremantle
> application?
>
> BR,
>
> Henrik
>
> [1]
>
> http://www.openismus.com/documents/clutter_tutorial/0.8/docs/tutorial/html/sec-stage.html#sec-stage-basics
> [2] http://maemo.org/development/sdks/maemo5_alpha_overview/
>
> --
> Henrik Hedberg - http://www.henrikhedberg.net/
>

Hi,

Am Dienstag 17 März 2009 schrieb Henrik Hedberg:
> How is Clutter supposed to work in applications in Fremantle? Will
> the Clutter-GTK library be included in the final SDK?
I have tried to check the clutter-gtk libs into the fremantle extras-devel
but this failed due to some problems in the sdk, see:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4197

I have been able to compile it locally and to run the demo application
that comes with clutter-gtk.

Till

ext Henrik Hedberg wrote:
> Hi,
>
> How is Clutter supposed to work in applications in Fremantle? Will
> the Clutter-GTK library be included in the final SDK?
>
> I have tried to run a Clutter application that works in desktop
> environment. It compiles fine, but nothing happens when starting it in
> the Alpha SDK. Also, even the simplest example application from
> Programming with Clutter tutorial does not work [1].
>
> Is this somehow related to this statement: "It is assumed that we
> will have only one OpenGL drawing context, and thus a single process
> running in the system will be using Clutter at a time. This process will
> be the window manager and the implementor of all challenging graphical
> UI effects on the screen." [2]
>
I have tried and got both native OpenGL-ES2.0 applications and Qt4.5
OpenGL-ES2.0
applications working together with Hildon desktop composite window manager.
I tried same thing with clutter but there is some issue with it. I have
not yet
had time to investigate more, i just returned from my Bossa conference trip.

We are here considering to set up wiki pages avbout how to use 3d
acceleration
in Fremantle and collect there instructions needed to get it running.

Kate

> What is the trick to get a working Clutter stage in Fremantle
> application?
>
> BR,
>
> Henrik
>
> [1]
> http://www.openismus.com/documents/clutter_tutorial/0.8/docs/tutorial/html/sec-stage.html#sec-stage-basics
> [2] http://maemo.org/development/sdks/maemo5_alpha_overview/
>
>

Till Harbaum wrote 17.03.2009 13:38:

> Am Dienstag 17 März 2009 schrieb Henrik Hedberg:
>> How is Clutter supposed to work in applications in Fremantle? Will
>> the Clutter-GTK library be included in the final SDK?
> I have tried to check the clutter-gtk libs into the fremantle extras-devel
> but this failed due to some problems in the sdk, see:
> https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4197
>
> I have been able to compile it locally and to run the demo application
> that comes with clutter-gtk.

I compiled the Clutter-GTK, and it really worked! So, the trick is
"documented" somewhere in the gtk-clutter-embed.c source file. :) Thank
you for the hint.

However, I think that the Clutter-GTK should be included in the
official SDK. Could someone from Maemo Software comment on this?

Henrik

--
Henrik Hedberg - http://www.henrikhedberg.net/

ext Henrik Hedberg wrote:
> However, I think that the Clutter-GTK should be included in the
> official SDK. Could someone from Maemo Software comment on this?

Yes, it needs to be. Hopefully in the beta SDK will be there.

A reason for the delay has been that we are aiming to have Clutter 1.0
in the final release. Before integrating that version it was not
critical to have the clutter-gtk bindings in the SDK.

--
Quim Gil
open source advocate
Maemo Software @ Nokia

Quim Gil wrote 17.03.2009 14:29:

> A reason for the delay has been that we are aiming to have Clutter 1.0
> in the final release. Before integrating that version it was not
> critical to have the clutter-gtk bindings in the SDK.

Thank you for this very important information. It should be noted
that Clutter 1.0 is not API compatible with Clutter 0.8. All developers
interested in Clutter should look at the Clutter 0.9, which is the
development branch leading towards the Clutter 1.0.

http://www.clutter-project.org/blog/?p=66
http://www.clutter-project.org/docs/clutter/0.9/

Henrik

--
Henrik Hedberg - http://www.henrikhedberg.net/

Hi,

but there's no clutter-gtk for clutter-0.9 yet.

Till

Am Dienstag 17 März 2009 schrieb Henrik Hedberg:
> Quim Gil wrote 17.03.2009 14:29:
>
> > A reason for the delay has been that we are aiming to have Clutter 1.0
> > in the final release. Before integrating that version it was not
> > critical to have the clutter-gtk bindings in the SDK.
>
> Thank you for this very important information. It should be noted
> that Clutter 1.0 is not API compatible with Clutter 0.8. All developers
> interested in Clutter should look at the Clutter 0.9, which is the
> development branch leading towards the Clutter 1.0.
>
> http://www.clutter-project.org/blog/?p=66
> http://www.clutter-project.org/docs/clutter/0.9/
>
> Henrik
>

On Tue, 2009-03-17 at 08:37 +0100, ext Henrik Hedberg wrote:
> Hi,

Hi,

>
> How is Clutter supposed to work in applications in Fremantle? Will
> the Clutter-GTK library be included in the final SDK?
>
> I have tried to run a Clutter application that works in desktop
> environment. It compiles fine, but nothing happens when starting it in
> the Alpha SDK. Also, even the simplest example application from
> Programming with Clutter tutorial does not work [1].
>
> Is this somehow related to this statement: "It is assumed that we
> will have only one OpenGL drawing context, and thus a single process
> running in the system will be using Clutter at a time. This process will
> be the window manager and the implementor of all challenging graphical
> UI effects on the screen." [2]

This we have assumed in the design, but it does not mean that multi-
context does not work. As Kate has already proven, multi-context works.
But as long as you have hildon-desktop running in the background, you
will not render directly to the screen even if you use
Clutter/QtGraphicsView/EGL+OpenGLES2.0/whatnot in your application. When
hildon-desktop is running, it is the only one drawing on the screen
(with the exception of XVideo). So, killing hildon-desktop is the only
way to get direct rendering to the screen at the moment. (We might have
something more elegant for this in the future...)

> What is the trick to get a working Clutter stage in Fremantle
> application?

I don't know yet, I haven't had the time to play with it...

BR; Kimmo

> BR,
>
> Henrik
>
> [1]
> http://www.openismus.com/documents/clutter_tutorial/0.8/docs/tutorial/html/sec-stage.html#sec-stage-basics
> [2] http://maemo.org/development/sdks/maemo5_alpha_overview/
>

Kimmo Hämäläinen wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-03-17 at 08:37 +0100, ext Henrik Hedberg wrote:

>> Is this somehow related to this statement: "It is assumed that we
>> will have only one OpenGL drawing context, and thus a single process
>> running in the system will be using Clutter at a time. This process will
>> be the window manager and the implementor of all challenging graphical
>> UI effects on the screen." [2]
>
> This we have assumed in the design, but it does not mean that multi-
> context does not work. As Kate has already proven, multi-context works.
> But as long as you have hildon-desktop running in the background, you
> will not render directly to the screen even if you use
> Clutter/QtGraphicsView/EGL+OpenGLES2.0/whatnot in your application. When
> hildon-desktop is running, it is the only one drawing on the screen
> (with the exception of XVideo). So, killing hildon-desktop is the only
> way to get direct rendering to the screen at the moment. (We might have
> something more elegant for this in the future...)

Could you clarify what does this mean in practice? Is the
performance of 3D rendering significantly slower in applications, for
example? I suppose that even if off-screen rendering is used it is still
hardware accelerated. Thus, compositing in window manager level should
not be a big issue, and we can live with that (for now) if everything
just work fast enough. Who needs direct rendering anyway. :)

BR,

Henrik

--
Henrik Hedberg - http://www.henrikhedberg.net/