changed:
-
currently work is done on support for multiple windows.

ideas:

  + each [gemwindow] represents a window
    - specifically an on-screen window or an output (ieee1394, file, ?)

  + there should be objects to output to other resssources (e.g. pbuffer,...)
    - offscreen rendering shouldn't have to worry about framerates, because it's assumed they are used every rendercycle

  + rendering is controlled by [gemcontrol]

  + it should be possible to attach [gemhead]s to certain "rendering contexts", e.g. to render a gemlist only to a specific window - offscreen windows probably need to be treated differently, because there can be multiple offscreen windows rendered in the same pass; but we still want to be able to associate more than one gem chain to an offscreen...probably we should associate onscreen windows by a name/symbol, and offscreens by a range of rendering priorities (ie. gemhead 46-52 go to offscreen 1, but 53-55 got to offscreen 2, then offscreen 1 and 2 are rendered to [gemhead 60 firstscreen])

  + RenderTrigger: each gem-object should receive a trigger message once a render-cycle. if several [GemOutput]s are connected to one [gemcontrol], gem-objects will receive the trigger-message only once and not for each GemOutput. 
  



problems and possible solutions:

  timing issues 

   what if several "contexts" run at different speed

   solution: just do it: compile each gemhead into a display-list and rebuild it only, if it was modified (what for do we have the setModified()-thingie)

  sharing display-lists:

   display-lists are server-based and can only be shared on one display/server. it is impossible to share display-lists across several (remote) displays (might only be of interest for linux)

   possible solution: http://chromium.sf.net (non-invasive!, so we don't need to care)

  compatibility:

    a big MUST is compatibility with prior versions of Gem.

    solution: use [gemwindow] and [gemcontrol] to simulate a [gemwin]



associating gemlists with contexts.

  see ContextNames


objects involved:

  [gemcontrol]

  [gemwindow], !GemOutput

  [gemhead]

  !GemBase (?)

  controlling the rendering GemcontrolGemoutput


code that is affected:

  obviously: GemOutput, [gemwindow]

  obviously: !GemMan, [gemcontrol]

  GemCache: currently rather useless; might get important again, see RenderTrigger

  *lighting* ! (lights used to be allocated globally, this will not work at all for multiple openGL-contexts,...)