Re: backart - default backend?

[Riccardo]

Hey,

On Tuesday, February 15, 2005, at 02:20 PM, MJ Ray wrote:

> 2. it seemed slower in normal light use - seems like more
> anti-aliasing done, but maybe related to failing font searchs;

it is. Although I have found it depends on the videocard/driver/x11. 
Xlib is fast anyway.

> 3. it didn't work remotely.
it does, but it works extremely bad performance-wise. Which is 
understandable since it moves a lot more data around.
I have found ou;t that generally gnusteps display system works badly on 
exported displays, only gtk2 is worse. Scrolling an image on a 10Mbit 
network and 2 fast computers is unusably slow, even the opening of the 
window itself is a pain. Using xlib is fast when it comes to menus, but 
for example price is unusable.
OTOH, similar applications that deal with images (even simple XV) work 
much much faster, often unnoticeably.
GTk1 based Gimp is usable remotely...

> With -xlib, I found:
> 1. I needed to set the string encoding and a font mask, but
> then it used my already-installed fonts;
> 2. it antialiases text once the right default is set;
> 3. it worked remotely (but I broke it since).

I don't suffer 1. and never used 2. XLib works out of the box on a 
standard linux system.

What I really ask is, what does art gives me? Let's revert the 
question :)
I don't care for aa... and I know that it handles some image compositing 
stuff better than xlib.
Actually one thing I might perceive as an advantage: the fonts are the 
same when you export display, this makes a more consistent use. On the 
other hand there are no fonts essentially, you need to install a second 
fontset just for it...

> The suggested change looks like it asks installers to work
> harder, uses more disk space and antialiases things which don't
> need it on modern screens. It may be that I've forgotten the
> benefits of back-art because I've not used it for some time
> and nothing I use really hammers the backend libs.
possibly the same here...

-R