DirectFB -- a new embedded Linux graphics standard

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(Last updated: Oct. 23, 2001)

For the special requirements of embedded devices we developed a small, powerful, flexible and easy to use technology for accelerated and enhanced graphics support: DirectFB.

DirectFB is a thin library that provides developers with hardware graphics acceleration, input device handling and abstraction, integrated windowing system with support for translucent windows and multiple display layers on top of the Linux Framebuffer Device. It is a complete hardware abstraction layer with software fallbacks for every graphics operation that is not supported by the underlying hardware. DirectFB adds graphical power to embedded systems and sets a new standard for graphics under Linux.

Hardware accelerated graphics

DirectFB provides the following graphics operations:

Rectangle filling/drawing
Triangle filling/drawing
Line drawing
Flat shaded triangles
(Stretched) blitting
Blending with an alphachannel (a.k.a. texture alpha)
Blending with a constant alpha blend factor (a.k.a. alpha modulation)
Nine different blending functions respectively for source and destination, so all
Porter/Duff rules are supported
Colorizing (a.k.a. color modulation)
Source color keying
Destination color keying

Management

DirectFB has its own resource management for video memory. Resources like display layers or input devices can be locked for exclusive access, e.g. for fullscreen games. DirectFB provides abstraction for the different graphics targets like display layers, windows and any general purpose surfaces. The programming effort for switching from windowed to fullscreen and back is minimized to setting the desired cooperative level.

DirectFB Modules

The API and structure of DirectFB is designed to provide an easy way of implementing the following parts:

Graphics acceleration (currently Matrox G200/G400, ATI128, Voodoo 3, NeoMagic and CyberPro)
Input devices (currently keyboard, serial and PS/2 mice, joysticks)
Image Provider (currently PNG, GIF and JPEG)
Video Provider (currently Video4Linux, AVI (using avifile), MPEG1/2 (using libmpeg3), macromedia flash (using libflash))
Font Provider (currently DirectFB bitmap font, TrueType via FreeType 2)

Please note: The above information is quoted from the directfb.org homepage.

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