[brlcad-users] Change to the framebuffer interface

[Christopher S. M. <mor...@ar...>]

A pretty fundamental change to the default behavior of framebuffer windows 
is being tested out in the latest sources that I wanted to share with 
folks.  The change is to make lingering windows actually be the *default* 
option instead of transient windows that flash at you and go away.

This is often a new-user complaint and often a cause for confusion, as it 
was a portability carry-over from days of old when there were devices that 
could not linger or where lingering didn't make sense.  Today, however, 
the framebuffer is predominantly used as a window to display images where 
lingering is what most people want almost all of the time.

So, lingering as a default is now implemented and being tested.  If there 
are no major obstacles, it will likely be made part of the 7.12.0 release. 
The impact will likely be that most of you will be able to unset your 
FB_FILE environment variables and can stop using -F/dev/Xl when rendering. 
All of the various framebuffer interfaces now also support a 't' option 
that will provide the former transient window behavior (and 'l' will 
continue to work, doing nothing now that it's the default).

Anyways, just wanted to give folks a heads up on this change coming down 
the pipeline.

Cheers!
Sean