General Graphics Interface (GGI) was a project that aimed to develop a reliable, stable and fast

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. ...

system that works everywhere. The intent was to allow for any program using GGI to run on any

computing platform A computing platform, digital platform, or software platform is the infrastructure on which software is executed. While the individual components of a computing platform may be obfuscated under layers of abstraction, the ''summation of the requi ...

supported by it, requiring at most a recompilation. GGI is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

, subject to the requirements of the

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

. The GGI project, and its related projects such as KGI, are generally acknowledged to be dead.

Goals

The project was originally started to make switching back and forth between virtual consoles, svgalib, and the X display server subsystems on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

more reliable. The goals were: *Portability through a flexible and extensible

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

for the applications. This avoids bloat in the applications by only getting what they use. *Portability in cross-platform and in backends *Security in the sense of requiring as few privileges as possible The GGI framework is implemented by a set of

portable Portable may refer to: General * Portable building, a manufactured structure that is built off site and moved in upon completion of site and utility work * Portable classroom, a temporary building installed on the grounds of a school to provide a ...

user-space

libraries A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

, with an array of different backends or targets (e.g. Linux framebuffer,

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

), of which the two most fundamental are LibGII (for input-handling) and LibGGI (for graphical output). All other packages add features to these core libraries, and so depend on one or both of them. Some targets talk to other targets. These are called pseudo targets. Pseudo targets can be combined and work like a pipeline. One example: display-palemu, for example, emulates palette mode on truecolor modes. This allows users to run applications in palette mode even on machines where no palette mode would be available otherwise. display-tile splits large virtual display into many smaller pieces. You can spread them on multiple monitors or even forward them over a network.

History

Andreas Beck and Steffen Seeger founded The GGI Project in 1994 after some experimental precursors that were called "scrdrv". Development of scrdrv was motivated by the problems caused by coexisting but not very well cooperating graphics environments (mainly X and SVGAlib) under the Linux operating system at this time which frequently lead to lockups requiring a reboot. The first scrdrv design was heavily influenced by the graphics subsystem of the DJ DOS extender and some concepts from the SANE project. The basic problem that scrdrv solved was that it provided a kernel mode driver that knew enough of the video hardware to set up modes, thus allowing to get into a sane state even from a messed-up or crashed graphics application. The first official version appeared in 1995. About 1996, GGI 1.0 was released under the LGPL license. GGI only consisted of the core lib named ''libggi''. It included input handling, a set of 2d graphic primitives and some userspace drivers for graphic boards along with a Linux kernel patch with the userspace interface for the drivers. The patch was known as KGI, the Kernel Graphics Interface. In 1997, GGI went into a complete re-design. Many new ideas and a decision from Linux made GGI to what it became in GGI 2.0 released in August 2001 under the MIT release. A set of talks about GGI, KGI and EvStack were given at LinuxExpo 98. For GGI 2.0, KGI was split off and became its own project named ''The KGI Project''. GGI 2.0 consisted of a set of libraries. During the 2.0 beta phase in late 1998 the license of the libraries was changed from LGPL to a MIT-style license. Much work was also done on the buildsystem to support more operating systems. It worked on FreeBSD, code for OpenBSD, NetBSD and even

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

were there as well as some support for more hardware platforms. Input handling was moved into a library called libgii. Generic GGI code was in libgg, a sublib within libgii. The core graphic library, libggi, has a lightweight set of graphic primitives that was common enough to write any kind of graphic application, while higher-level API went into other libraries on top of libggi. These were called GGI extensions. libggi support a set of targets, most of them were Linux specific: fbdev, X, aa, vcsa,

terminfo Terminfo is a library and database that enables programs to use display terminals in a device-independent manner. Mary Ann Horton implemented the first terminfo library in 1981–1982 as an improvement over termcap. The improvements include * fas ...

and some pseudo targets such as tile, multi, palemu and trueemu. The GGI extensions featured higher-level API. libggiwmh provides functionality for windowed only targets, at that time this was only X. libggimisc provided some basic stuff like vga splitline. GGI 2.0.2 was released in December 2002. The most user visible change was from the scratch re-designed X backend. Another noticeable change was the huge documentation improvement. Last, but not least, the release cycles changed. From this release on, there was a development and a stable tree. The stable tree is open for bugfixes only, the development tree got the name, following the BSD scheme, -current. GGI 2.1.x runs on many Operating Systems:

GNU Hurd GNU Hurd is a collection of microkernel servers written as part of GNU, for the GNU Mach microkernel. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation, designed as a replacement for the Unix kernel, an ...

, *BSD,

System V Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, an ...

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and Microsoft Windows. Support for more hardware platforms has been added.

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was fork (software development), forked. It continues to ...

even created a binary package for NetBSD/Vax! A new GGI library on top of libgii called libgiigic has been added. It allows to combine user actions with events at run time. GGI 2.2 was released in December 2005. The target auto detection has been reworked and was no longer linux centric. GGI replaced its own integer datatypes with ANSI C99 types for more portability. A target for Quartz has been added. Mac OS X users no longer depend on X11 but still can use the X11 backend. The most user visible change, however, was the support for static linked in targets. Latest release is GGI 2.2.2, a bugfix release in the GGI 2.2.x stable series. It was released in January 2007.

Adoption

Source port A source port is a software project based on the source code of a game engine that allows the game to be played on operating systems or computing platforms with which the game was not originally compatible. Description Source ports are often ...

s of

first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...

s ''

Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (1934–2020), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitche ...

'', ''

Heretic Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, particularly the accepted beliefs or religious law of a religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of heresy. Heresy in Christianity, Judai ...

'', '' Quake'' and '' Descent'' were ported to use GGI, with a Linux Doom Editor also being based on it. It was also supported by the arcade styled ''Heroes'', a

snake Snakes are elongated limbless reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (). Cladistically squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales much like other members of the group. Many species of snakes have s ...

game, and ''Thrust'', inspired by the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

game ''

Thrust Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that ...

'', as well as the

platform game A platformer (also called a platform game, and sometimes a jump 'n' run game) is a subgenre of action game in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are characterized by levels wi ...

s ''U.R.B.A.N The Cyborg Project'' and ''Dave Gnukem'', inspired by the original '' Duke Nukem'' for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

. GGI was also available as a video driver within the Simple DirectMedia Layer until version 2x.

References

The GGI Project Frequently Asked Questions List

Linux Weekly News - February 26, 1998, section: KernelGGI Project Unhappy On Linux
*Christopher Browne's Web Pages

*Peter Amstutz

1998
Linux-GGI Project
LinuxJournal article by Steffen Seeger and Andreas Beck 1996

External links

*{{Freshmeat, ggi, GGI Application programming interfaces C (programming language) libraries Cross-platform software Free computer libraries Graphics software Linux APIs Video game development software Video game development software for Linux

Goals

History

Adoption

See also

References

External links