[Ayatana-dev] Nux Newsletter: Nux event signals, Unity visual effects and GLSL.

[Jay Taoko <jay.taoko@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nux event signals
As part of the new event architecture, Nux event signals have been renamed. This was done by transforming the former event signals into macros that point to the new events names. This should make the transition easier and let the team gradually move the code to the new naming.

#define OnMouseMove             mouse_move
#define OnMouseDown             mouse_down
#define OnMouseUp               mouse_up
#define OnMouseEnter            mouse_enter
#define OnMouseLeave            mouse_leave
#define OnMouseClick            mouse_click
#define OnMouseDoubleClick      mouse_double_click
#define OnMouseDrag             mouse_drag
#define OnMouseWheel            mouse_wheel
#define OnMouseDownOutsideArea  mouse_down_outside_pointer_grab_area
#define OnKeyEvent              key_down
#define OnKeyReleased           key_up
#define OnStartKeyboardReceiver begin_key_focus
#define OnStopKeyboardReceiver  end_key_focus

Unity Visual Effects
There has been some fixes and improvements to the shaders and graphics code path. And thanks to changes made in Compiz by Sam Spilsbury, we can now do interesting stuff in the Dash. The results should be available very soon. The Dash won't be dark anymore. I am making sure that all systems can render new visual effects in the Dash with good performance and visual quality.

GLSL
During Natty, only GPU from NVidia were using OpenGL GLSL shaders. All other GPUs were using the older OpenGL shader assembly language. I have enable the OpenGL GLSL code path on all GPUs that supports it. So far, all drivers seems to behave correctly.

Jay

Notes:
- We are doing new things with Unity's visual rendering and so we are bound to uncover bugs in graphics drivers. We will ry hard and work things out.
- Some of the visual features may give the impression that we are asking too much out of GPUs. However, we only use graphics features that have been around for at least 5 years. And we are planning performance fallbacks for all classes of GPUs.