Re: Snappy GUI response

On Fri, 2003-07-04 at 14:48, Keith Packard wrote:
> Around 11 o'clock on Jul 4, Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> > Figuring out a window manager protocol extension so that GTK+ could
> > always track where a window on the screen is without synchronous
> > roundtrips would definitely be nice, though one round trip per configure
> > isn't going to make a *huge* difference.
> 
> It's not one-per-configure; the ICCCM doesn't assure the position of the
> frame will remain constant while the window is unmoving, so Gtk+ performs
> this expensive dance every time Mozilla queries the position of the frame;
> which it does with some regularity because of ECMA-script semantics.

Not quite sure what you mean by "frame position", but whatever mozilla
is looking for, it could certainly be fixed *inside* Mozilla by a
check-once-a-second-or-on-configure-notify, since there is no guarantee
that querying the server will give you up-to-date information anyways.

> > One exception to this is terminal output speed, which depending on the
> > terminal implementation can end up being pretty much a pure benchmark
> > of how fast the system can composite AA characters.
> 
> Yes, scrolling long documents has finally become somewhat limited by text 
> output performance -- and that is actually more limited by frame buffer 
> read speed than anything else...

Which is why no-RENDER + the constant-color stuff I was fooling has
a leg up on RENDER. Though RENDER reading the frame buffer in 16-bit
chunks is certainly not helping it. 

Regards,
						Owen