Re: [Gnash-commit] gnash configure.ac ChangeLog doc/C/sources.xml

[Rob Savoye]

Udo Giacomozzi wrote:
> Hello Rob,

> There is not only YouTube, Flash is used for a lot of other movies ;)

  According to *end users*, not developers, and this includes developers
as end users, OpenGL is preferred for it's much higher performance. Most
people do run hardware accelerated graphics enabled systems. We are a
minority view on rendering, and we have to accept that. In the README
(I'll check in the new version shortly) I mention that OpenGL is faster,
but that AGG is the preferred backend due to quality of the rendering.
We're only talking about people building Gnash that don't read READMEs.

> Just like your commit that slowed Gnash down by 75% (!) and nobody
> seems to care about. It's okay for me since we (as a team, I
> personally have other priorities) decided to not focus on performance
> but then we should decide what we want.

  I am not convinced this correctly identified the problem. You backed
out everything I changed and it made no changes, so I fail to see the
point. I am sorry you are obviously upset that AGG is not currently the
default for people that build Gnash from source. This is *not a big
deal*, let's not blow this out of proportion. On the OLPC and most every
device I run Gnash on *does* default to the AGG backend.

> BTW, is AGG really so much slower when playing YouTube so that one
> notices the difference?

  Yes.

> So all this discussion is unnecessary?

  No. Can we *please* just let this drop ? I'm sure we'll revisit this
issue whenever we do the following release... The package builders will
configure things however they choose, so it's out of our hands, truly.

> Agree. I personally don't care about the release details, but I'd like
> that we all agree on priorities. It's pointless to fiddle with tiny
> details (TimelineInfo) when the render fails on simple rendering
> tasks.

  The TimelineInfo changes caused almost more trouble for this release
than it was worth. We should continue to improve both the quality and
performance of all the renderers Gnash uses. I totally appreciate the
energy and time you have put into the AGG renderer. My wanting to use GL
as the default for source builds is not meant to slight AGG at all. I'm
just trying to reduce the incoming stupid bug reports.

  Some of us *are* focused on the release, so it's normal we have
differing priorities.

        - rob -