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

[Adam Porter]

If I may interject:

> We don't have a "60FPS goal."  "Frames per second" is a metric that
> applies to programs which are perpetually redrawing their windows,
> either as fast as the monitor refreshes or as fast as the CPU permits.
>
> I don't type 60 characters per second -- so there is no reason for Emacs
> to display at 60 frames per second.
>
> If you open the GUI inspector tool of any Gtk+ program, then enable its
> "frames per second" counter, you will quickly recognize that a GUI
> program such as a text editor seldom, if ever, redraws itself at such a
> rate.

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).

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.

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.