Re: GTK+ 2 speed

["Robert Thorpe" <Robert Thorpe antenova com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gtk-list-bounces gnome org
> [mailto:gtk-list-bounces gnome org] On Behalf Of Michael Torrie
> > To be specific, redrawing is slow.  Moving from a terminal to X with
> > Alt-Ctrl-F7 it takes a couple of seconds for all the
> widgets to redraw
> > themselves.
> 
> This is a very interesting observation.  It illustrates greatly the 
> principle of perceived speed vs real speed.  In this case the 
> perceived speed is bad, but the real speed is actually quite 
> acceptable.  For example, under windows XP if all windows were forced 
> to redraw simultaneously, I've seen this exact same thing.

On Windows there are two similar operations, using Alt-tab to move
between applications and pressing the "desktop" button which minimizes
all windows.  On my machine both of these are much faster, taking much
less than a second.

BTW I don't think Alt-Ctrl-F7 does cause all windows to redraw, I think
it only causes the visible ones to redraw, but I'm not sure.

> As we transition X11 to the new
> OpenGL-backed technology, we won't see this problem you describe 
> anymore.  A switch from text to graphics console and everything will 
> be restored fairly instantly because each window has its own OpenGL 
> backing store offscreen that is instantly composited onto the screen 
> by the high-speed video card operations.  In this case, everything, 
> including GTK seems an order of magnitude faster, when in fact GTK is 
> the same speed as it was before.

That will be good.
 
> Thus for your application's speed criteria, this example you mentioned

> of gnome's slowness is not valid.

I remain to be convinced, I'll compare the speed of some apps more
carefully.

>  That said,
> perceived speed is very important to the end user and I think GTK does

> a pretty good job.
> Certainly I've not noticed any lag under normal circumstances for 
> several years now.  I'm using very complicated gnome apps including 
> evolution, gimp, gaim, galeon, and inkscape.
> 
> In any event, I find gtk2 apps to run very well even on 64 MB, 200 MHz

> machines.  Just don't expect a heavy desktop to be acceptable.  XFCe 
> is light enough that even complicated
> gtk2 apps run quite well.

I'll try it.