Using prerendered cards [was: Re: Aisleriot/Blackjack cards]

[Christian Persch <chpe gnome org>]

Hi;

> Hello again. Your reference to Ornamental prompted this reaction, although
> I have other thoughts as well. I thought Ornamental looked very Chinese.
> Maybe it's the predominance of red. Anyway, I didn't have a good reaction.
> 
> I like the Dondorf, but of course have no idea of the performance issues you
> mentioned. To me, it was the best-looking of all the styles that were shown.
> 
> I'm currently using the set you sent me, under Ubuntu 7.10, but they still have
> rendering issues that I think should be addressed. When I launch FreeCell
> (full screen) on my P3/500, the green background comes up, but then I have
> to wait almost a full TWO MINUTES before the cards appear. If it's going to
> take that long, some kind of "patience" message should be provided to users.
> Either that or throw up some place-holder rectangles so the user doesn't
> think the program has frozen up, or at least some kind of progress icon.

Which card theme is that, Dondorf? It should render very fast, even on a
slow computer... can you make sure that the dondorf.svg file is from the
latest gnome-games-extra-data version, and not from some old version?

> Once the cards have been rendered in a size, why can't they be stored on
> my disk? Full-screen will always be the same, unless I replace my monitor.

They can. You can generate a prerendered card set with an utility that
gnome-games provides (/usr/lib/gnome-games/gnome-games-render-cards in
ubuntu). E.g. like this:

$ sudo /usr/lib/gnome-games/gnome-games-render-cards --theme dondorf
--output-directory /usr/share/gnome-games-common/card-themes 30 40 50 60
80 100 120

(all on one line; the numbers are the widths of the cards to generate;
you can generate as many sizes as you want).

Then you can run aisleriot from the console:
$ export AISLERIOT_CARDS_SCALABLE=0
$ sol
	
and it'll use the prerendered theme(s) instead of the scalable ones. 

You can also experiment if setting
$ export GAMES_CARDS_SUBRENDERING=0
     makes any difference in the rendering speed for your computer?

And there's 
$ export AISLERIOT_PIXBUF_DRAWING=0
to speed up the drawing when dragging cards around, at the expense of
smooth antialiasing on the card edges.

Regards,
	Christian