Re: a wishlist [Re: getting things moving]
- From: Tor <tor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wilyfans@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2003 19:37:57 +0200
On 2003-08-01 CE Richard C Bilson wrote,
> By "non-local" I assume you mean wily running on one computer and
> displaying on another. If you're not going to assume that graphic
> operations are "non-local", what are you going to assume? That wily is
> always running on a local display? Or are you suggesting a different
> set of code for each case?
The problem is with X11. X11 is -- as we all know :) -- network transparent,
but lacks some features that we (or at least I) want: antialiased fonts
and double buffering. To get these with decent performance, you would ideally
run wily on a local display, or be prepared to do a lot of special hacks.
Second point of trouble, wanting to use plan9's libdraw API. libdraw is
also based on a network transparent protocol, but is very different from
X11. Current libXg which is based on an old libdraw API. libXg translates
libdraw calls to X11 calls. With the newer libdraw drawing model, X11 cannot
quite keep up (porter duff imaging operators IN and OVER are not supported
by core X11).
> Let me just say, as a data point, that most of my uses of wily are in
> "non-local" mode. Typically these are on fast computers over fast
> networks, but even so I'm not thrilled at the prospect of my editor
> becoming less responsive for the sake of a facelift.
That is the problem: in order to give wily a good facelift, responsiveness
will have to be sacrificed because of limitations with X11. The new RENDER
extension can help there, but is still not supported by any X server other
than XFree86, and even there it does not work with all drivers. (at least
not last time I checked...)
--
55.7N 13.2E
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