weston/doc/sphinx/toc/libweston/output.rst
Pekka Paalanen 9dccfd1ef3 doc: output management sequence diagrams
When we were designing the libweston output API, I wrote a design document
as a Phabricator wiki page. Phabricator is no longer accessible so that
information needs to be migrated to a new place. Here I am converting most of
it into libweston Sphinx documentation, particularly pulling in the sequence
diagrams I drew. This should help people understand how libweston output
configuration works.

The diagrams are committed as both MSC source files and rendered PNG files. I
did not bother tinkering with the build to run mscgen automatically and then
with the CI images to install the tool.

The Sphinx configuration need numref explicitly enabled so that figures are
automatically numbered and can be referenced by their number rather than their
whole caption text(!).

The document structure is changed a little better flowing with Output
Management being the overview page and the Heads and Outputs being the API
pages.

First I wrote the struct weston_output and weston_head descriptions in Doxygen
comments in libweston.h, but then in the API page that text would have been
buried somewhere towards the end of the page. So I put that text in ReST
instead where it comes as first on the pages as it should. The doc for the
structs only contain a link to the top of the page. Yes, the comment style in
libweston.h is a little broken. If I left the asterisk there it would show up
as a bullet point in Sphinx. OTOH putting everything from \rst in a single line
did not produce anything.

Because Sphinx cannot look in two places, the images need to be copied into the
build dir too.

mscgen: http://www.mcternan.me.uk/mscgen/

Fixes: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/weston/issues/25

Signed-off-by: Pekka Paalanen <pekka.paalanen@collabora.com>
2020-01-27 12:14:14 +00:00

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.. _libweston-output:
Outputs
=======
A :type:`weston_output` determines what part of the global compositor
coordinate space will be composited into an image and when. That image is
presented on the attached heads (weston_head).
An output object is resposible for the framebuffer management, damage tracking,
display timings, and the repaint state machine. Video mode, output scale and
output transform are properties of an output.
In display hardware, a weston_output represents a CRTC, but only if it has been
successfully enabled. The CRTC may be switched to another during an output's
lifetime.
The lifetime of a weston_output is controlled by the libweston user.
With at least a :type:`weston_head` attached, you can construct a
:type:`weston_output` object which can be used by the compositor, by enabling
the output using :func:`weston_output_enable`. The output **must not** be
already enabled.
The reverse operation, :func:`weston_output_disable`, should be used when there's
a need to reconfigure the output or it will be destroyed.
.. doxygengroup:: output
:content-only: