<center>
<h1>Mesa Frequently Asked Questions</h1>
-Last updated: 7 March 2003
+Last updated: 30 March 2003
</center>
<br>
<h2><a name="part1">1.1 What is Mesa?</a></h2>
<p>
<a name="part1">Mesa is an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification.
-OpenGL is a high-level programming library for interactive 3D graphics.
+OpenGL is a programming library for writing interactive 3D applications.
See the </a><a href="http://www.opengl.org/">OpenGL website</a> for more
information.
</p>
<p>
-Mesa 5.0.x supports the OpenGL 1.4 specification.
+Mesa 5.x supports the OpenGL 1.4 specification.
</p>
<h2>1.2 Does Mesa support/use graphics hardware?</h2>
<p>
-Yes. Specifically, Mesa serves as the OpenGL core for the XFree86/DRI
-OpenGL drivers. See the <a href="http://dri.sf.net/">DRI website</a> for
-more information.
+Yes. Specifically, Mesa serves as the OpenGL core for the open-source
+XFree86/DRI OpenGL drivers. See the <a href="http://dri.sf.net/">DRI
+website</a> for more information.
</p>
<p>
There have been other hardware drivers for Mesa over the years (such as
are the modern ones.
</p>
-<h2>1.3 What purpose does (software) Mesa serve today?</h2>
+<h2>1.3 What purpose does Mesa (software-based rendering) serve today?</h2>
<p>
-Commercial, hardware-accelerated OpenGL implementations are available for
-many operating systems today.
+Hardware-accelerated OpenGL implementations are available for most popular
+operating systems today.
Still, Mesa serves at least these purposes:
</p>
<ul>
-<li>Mesa is used as the core of the XFree86/DRI hardware drivers.
-</li><li>Mesa is quite portable and allows OpenGL to be used on systems that have
- no other OpenGL solution.
-</li><li>Software rendering with Mesa serves as a reference for validating the
+<li>Mesa is used as the core of the open-source XFree86/DRI hardware drivers.
+</li>
+<li>Mesa is quite portable and allows OpenGL to be used on systems
+ that have no other OpenGL solution.
+</li>
+<li>Software rendering with Mesa serves as a reference for validating the
hardware drivers.
-</li><li>A software implementation of OpenGL is useful for experimentation, such
- as testing new rendering techniques.
-</li><li>Mesa can render images with deep color channels: 16-bit integer and 32-bit
- floating point color channels are supported.
+</li>
+<li>A software implementation of OpenGL is useful for experimentation,
+ such as testing new rendering techniques.
+</li>
+<li>Mesa can render images with deep color channels: 16-bit integer
+ and 32-bit floating point color channels are supported.
This capability is only now appearing in hardware.
-</li><li>Mesa's internal limits (max lights, clip planes, texture size, etc) can be
+</li>
+<li>Mesa's internal limits (max lights, clip planes, texture size, etc) can be
changed for special needs (hardware limits are hard to overcome).
-</li></ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
<h2>1.4 How do I upgrade my DRI installation to use a new Mesa release?</h2>
<p>
-You don't! The Mesa source code lives inside the XFree86/DRI source tree
-and gets compiled into the individual DRI driver modules.
+You don't! A copy of the Mesa source code lives inside the XFree86/DRI source
+tree and gets compiled into the individual DRI driver modules.
If you try to install Mesa over an XFree86/DRI installation, you'll lose
-hardware rendering (because Mesa's libGL.so is different than the XFree86
-libGL.so).
+hardware rendering (because stand-alone Mesa's libGL.so is different than
+the XFree86 libGL.so).
</p>
<p>
The DRI developers will incorporate the latest release of Mesa into the