Re: Emacs design and architecture. How about copy-on-write?

[Po Lu]

Adam Porter <adam@alphapapa.net> writes:

> There would seem to be numerous scenarios in which a 60 FPS (or
> higher) redraw rate would be desired, such as smooth scrolling
> (i.e. pixel-by-pixel at a high speed), whether text or images are in
> the buffer (especially if Emacs one day gains improved support for
> images, i.e. displaying an image across lines of text without
> splitting it into many smaller images).

Pixel-by-pixel scrolling triggers redisplay optimizations, and Emacs is
capable of equaling a 60 or 30 Hz display refresh rate when these
optimizations are applied.  This was measured when
pixel-scroll-precision-mode was first written.

> As well, as we all know, Emacs is much more than merely a text editor;
> it's a platform upon which a variety of different applications are
> run.

All of which edit or present text.

> Finally, attaining high redraw rates means leaving a large margin,
> helping to maintain acceptable performance under heavier loads, ones
> we may not anticipate at this time.
>
> So I think it's very much a worthwhile goal to be able to redraw at
> 60+ FPS.

I disagree.  It is by far more important to run Lisp (such as Gnus, or
JSON RPC decoding) in the background.