Re: mc, mdi, mem About this list

[Marko Macek <Marko Macek gmx net>]

> 
>    > 3. Fantastically slow due to the sucky nature of the X Shape 
>    > Extension. 
> 
>    I repeat again: we have conflicting data on the performance problems 
>    with shape... 
> 
>    Some people see this problem: some do not. From profile data, it looked 
>    to me quite possible there were window manager bugs that were causing 
>    excess ConfigureWindow operations. Anything is slow if you do it much 
>    more often than necessary. 

Using XShape is slow beyond usability when the WM has opaque window move
and resize enabled. (I like them both very much). Lots of
configure/expose events are generated during such operations.
 
>    IF there is a problem, then it is quite possible to work on region performance 
>    in the server, with the only caveat that it is painful to debug if you 
>    get things wrong. 

I am not sure XShape can be improved by orders of magnitude (without
serious memory overhead). I have recently tried WindowBlinds (for
Windows) that has E-style shaped themes and it is about as slow as X.
 
>    I again make a plea for some serious effort to go into proper analysis 
>    of this problem rather than the mach-1 handwaving that has gone on to date. 

The solution to having transparent text on the desktop is really 
simple actually: 

Create a single screen-sized window for the desktop (non-shaped) 
and draw everything in it). This is the way that will be specified 
in the new GNOME/KDE WM spec. (It is already possible to do with the 
current WM spec).

Apart from removing XShape out of the picture, it has several 
other advantages:

- GNOME has full control of the desktop background and WMs can't mess
with it. This means that desktop-background will actually work
predictably.
- desktop is just another (focusable) window, so you can easily do
keyboard navigation.
- desktop and icon view in gmc could share most of the code. (It would
be nice to have other views on the desktop).

Mark
-- 
... GUI: WPS.
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Marko.Macek@gmx.net                 http://www.kiss.uni-lj.si/~k4fr0235/