Re: [Evolution] Redraw glitch

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Zach Frey <zfrey lanich com> writes:

> [Copying gnome-components-list since this is probably more appropriate
> there ...]
> 
> Federico wrote:
> > Zach Frey <zfrey lanich com> writes:
> > > While it's taking this time, I minimize Evolution, and then restore.
> > > The shortcut and folder bars redraw, but the actual message panes
> > > do not.  So, I get these big blank spots where they are supposed to
> > > be.
> > 
> > This is normal.  The toplevel Evolution shell and the components
> > (mail, calendar, addresbook) live in different processes.  So your
> > shell process is running and refreshing its part of the screen, but
> > the mailer is blocking.
> 
> This may be "normal," but it is *UGLY*.  :^(
> 
> Please tell me this is simply due to the early state of Evolution, and
> not an inherent property of Bonobo objects.

As Michael says, this is an inherent property of X. If a program
is blocking, it can't redraw itself. (Actually, this is an inherent
property of almost every windowing system.)

> Otherwise, it sounds as if practical Bonobo objects will almost
> always need to be multi-threaded; one to do the real work and one to
> take care of X redraws in response to window manager events.

Bonobo certainly greatly increases the complexity of interactions
between different objects. There are multiple ways to handle these
types of complex interactions and avoid blocking while doing so, and
we are still feeling out what the best way of doing this is. Threading
is one method, though certainly not the only method, of doing
so. There is at least some sentiment growing that we'll need to make
use of more extensive threading in GNOME in the future.

Regards,
                                        Owen