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Forum Topic - Relationship between Photon and GF: (3 Items)
   
Relationship between Photon and GF  
Hello,

I have started studying QNX graphics architecture, and I have been digging into both Photon microGUI and GF 
documentations, including architecture appendices. However, I am still a bit confused, and I hope someone can enlighten 
me.

First, it's clear to me that Photon runs on the top of GF. What is unclear is:


1. What's the role of io-graphics? Isn't io-display the one who loads the graphics driver? If so, how can I place a 
region representing a device driver in the region space, if the graphics driver has already been loaded by io-display? 
Or hasn't it?

2, Which process is responsible for managing regions? I suppose it's Photon, right? So, is it right to affirm that when 
Photon is launched, it will create some default regions, such as the device region and the root region?

Everything is still pretty new to me. In my mind, I am still trying to visualize the implementation details that lie 
between Photon and QF, specially, the role of each component, being them:
1. io-display
2. io-graphics
3. Photon
4. pwm (is this just a region which emits cooked events?)
5. video device drivers (who loads them?)

Thank you so much for your patience :)
Re: Relationship between Photon and GF  
*This is a very simplified view*

1.	The io-graphics is a Photon process that creates a graphics region, that captures the photon draw events and converts
 its contents into appropriate gf_*() calls. Io-display doesn’t render – it is a resource manager that handles 
concurrent access to the H/W and some specific H/W operation (such as mode switching). Rendering is done by the io-
graphics which  has the H/W driver loaded too. 

1.a) You can create a graphics region to capture photon draw streams. Parsing the streams is not a trivial matter.

2.	Yes – Photon is the region manager, and your assumptions on what it does are correct – just like the docs say.

3.	Take a look at this doc: http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0/topic/com.qnx.doc.photon_prog_guide/embed.html it 
describes a list of processes that you need to get a Photon UI system going.
Re: Relationship between Photon and GF  
Thank you very much Misha! It all makes sense to me. Once again, thank you.