re: so, is this claim about pango still true? or does nobody actually care?

[andrew openldev org]

> is this still true? does anybody care? is there a way to avoid pango
> entirely and still get AA fonts inside GTK2? will this ever be fixed
> before everyone is using h/w acceleration to print button labels?
> 
> the issue raised here will *kill* ardour dead, and would force us to
> also have to abandon GTK for Qt (a move I would really, really not want
> to make). some clarification would help ....

Everyone has something to complain about. Yes, Gtk+ 2.x is much slower
than Gtk+ 1.x, but you also have to take into consideration two things.

First, there are a ton of new features in 2.x that are very useful such as new
widgets. Second, computers are a lot faster now. Look at what he is saying:
40%-60% of a 1.2 GHz processor. Well, first of all, that is a very slow processor,
but I don't think that is constant.

I am running an Athlon 2500+ and a Sempron 2800+ in my laptop and have
never seen any problems with the speed of Gtk+ that were significant. Of
course there is always room for improvement, but from what I have been 
seeing in discussions across the net, there is a big focus on making Gtk+
more efficient.

Lastly, I would like to say one thing. Gtk+ 1.x may be faster, but I refuse to
use any applications that still use it. Compared to Gtk+ 2.x applications, they
look horrible. I can't stand it because, yes they may be using X fonts which
are faster, but it also has the blocky/amateur look that comes with that.

In conclusion, if speed is a concern, I would recommend just maintaining
both the Gtk+ 1.x & 2.x trees because your team has already put a lot of
work into both. On the other hand, if you realize that most people are
running machines capable of handling a larger library, 2.x is very worth
using. (Don't use Qt. You will alienate every Gnome user because Qt looks
terrible on Gnome. Take this from someone that cannot even look at KDE
because it tears me apart. It's an aesthetic thing...)

I hope this helps. And just to note, I'm not trying to start a flame about
Gnome vs. KDE ... to each his own even though this is the Gtk list...

---
Andrew Krause
andrew openldev org
www.openldev.org