Re: [Qemu-devel] GTK GUI for QEmu

[Jim C. Brown]

On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 12:55:12PM -0600, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> >Fabrice mentioned some time ago that SDL isn't the best choice on
> >Windows because of keyboard issues... Is that still the case?
> 
> Probably.  I was hoping to punt on the issue of Win32 and instead rely 
> on a native Win32 GUI.  I'm not sure GTK on Win32 is going to be that 
> great from a performance perspective.
> 

I haven't tried to benchmark that case. The bigger issue with GTK on W32 was
the need for a 3rd party library (too large, too hard to install, etc etc).

I wouldn't rely on the hope of a native W32 gui showing up anytime soon though.
Yours is the third attempt to bring a native GTK gui to qemu - AFAIK we have
yet to see the first attempt for a W32 gui.

By taking advantage of GTK's portability, we can get a consistent GUI across
both platforms, and have the developers (the majority of whom are on Unix)
work on code which benefits the users (many of whom use W32).

Fabrice also wants a native W32 gui, and that is not really a bad idea. But
since GTK code is so easy to use on both W32 and on Unix/X, I think that any
GTK gui for qemu should support both until the native version arrives.

> FWIW, I'm going to benchmark the my latest optimizations for fullscreen 
> mode and post the results later today.  If scaling can be done with 
> little performance impact, I think it's clearly the right thing to do.
> 

I don't necessarily see a problem with adding support for changing the X server
resolution. However, it is probably harder to do right - it is really difficult
to center the viewport on just the window you want and nothing else. I can't
really think of any advantages in making the host handle this.

-- 
Infinite complexity begets infinite beauty.
Infinite precision begets infinite perfection.