Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-30 Thread Matthias Clasen
On 1/30/06, Rodrigo Moya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Changes since 2.13.5.1

> background:
> - Added apply button (Rodney Dawes) (327335)
> - Fixed glib CRITICAL warnings (Rodney Dawes) (327327)
>

So, Gnome 2.12 had a nice working immediate apply background changer.
Why did this get changed to an odd explicit model ?
Thats a step backwards.

Matthias
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-30 Thread Evandro Fernandes Giovanini
Em Seg, 2006-01-30 às 15:06 -0500, Matthias Clasen escreveu:
> On 1/30/06, Rodrigo Moya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Changes since 2.13.5.1
> 
> > background:
> > - Added apply button (Rodney Dawes) (327335)
> > - Fixed glib CRITICAL warnings (Rodney Dawes) (327327)
> >
> 
> So, Gnome 2.12 had a nice working immediate apply background changer.
> Why did this get changed to an odd explicit model ?
> Thats a step backwards.
> 

I think it was done to follow the HIG:

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/windows-utility.html#windows-instant-apply

Cheers,
Evandro

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-30 Thread Elijah Newren
On 1/30/06, Matthias Clasen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 1/30/06, Rodrigo Moya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Changes since 2.13.5.1
>
> > background:
> > - Added apply button (Rodney Dawes) (327335)
> > - Fixed glib CRITICAL warnings (Rodney Dawes) (327327)
>
> So, Gnome 2.12 had a nice working immediate apply background changer.
> Why did this get changed to an odd explicit model ?
> Thats a step backwards.

I also feel that it looks odd and out of place (Why else would I click
on a different image than to have it be my background?).  It appears
this was done because the change was too slow -- at least that's the
valid reason I could find at
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335.  I'm with Federico
though in thinking we should make it fast instead.

Anyway, just my $0.02.
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-30 Thread Elijah Newren
On 1/30/06, Evandro Fernandes Giovanini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Em Seg, 2006-01-30 às 15:06 -0500, Matthias Clasen escreveu:
> > On 1/30/06, Rodrigo Moya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Changes since 2.13.5.1
> >
> > > background:
> > > - Added apply button (Rodney Dawes) (327335)
> > > - Fixed glib CRITICAL warnings (Rodney Dawes) (327327)
> > >
> >
> > So, Gnome 2.12 had a nice working immediate apply background changer.
> > Why did this get changed to an odd explicit model ?
> > Thats a step backwards.
>
> I think it was done to follow the HIG:
> http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/windows-utility.html#windows-instant-apply

It's worth noting that the only applicable reason from that page for
not making it instant apply is that it took longer than a second. 
It's worth noting that several have commented in
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335 saying that we should
look at making it faster, since it's close to a second (and for
several people is faster than a second) anyway.  For those of us for
whom it is faster than a second, this change is a HIG violation
AFAICT.

Cheers,
Elijah
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-30 Thread Pat Suwalski
Elijah Newren wrote:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335.  I'm with Federico
> though in thinking we should make it fast instead.

If memory serves, the background resampling and applying used to be very
snappy and got significantly slower when everything moved to cairo. At
this point, I have the X hashed background until a few seconds after my
panels show up.

--Pat
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-30 Thread Rodney Dawes
On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 13:54 -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:
> It's worth noting that the only applicable reason from that page for
> not making it instant apply is that it took longer than a second. 
> It's worth noting that several have commented in
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335 saying that we should
> look at making it faster, since it's close to a second (and for
> several people is faster than a second) anyway.  For those of us for
> whom it is faster than a second, this change is a HIG violation
> AFAICT.

No, read my mail to announce the changes to the appropriate lists. Both
reasons are valid. All of the settings in the dialog get applied at the
same time as well. So, the HIG still suggests it should be explicit
apply, even if it is fast for you.

It was done to follow these two suggestions in the HIG, as well as to
help address users experience confusion with the "Close" button, as was
discovered in some of the usability tests we conducted for
BetterDesktop. The "Close" button, ironically, did not give several of
the users in the tests, the feeling of closure.

I'd have to go through the videos again, to see which ones that are
on the site, and stated this, though. I should be able to do that soon
to answer that question if it's now dwelling in the back of your head,
as well as to answer Bryan asking it in the bug report you mention.

-- dobey

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-30 Thread Elijah Newren
On 1/30/06, Rodney Dawes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 13:54 -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:
> > It's worth noting that the only applicable reason from that page for
> > not making it instant apply is that it took longer than a second.
> > It's worth noting that several have commented in
> > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335 saying that we should
> > look at making it faster, since it's close to a second (and for
> > several people is faster than a second) anyway.  For those of us for
> > whom it is faster than a second, this change is a HIG violation
> > AFAICT.
>
> No, read my mail to announce the changes to the appropriate lists. Both
> reasons are valid. All of the settings in the dialog get applied at the
> same time as well. So, the HIG still suggests it should be explicit
> apply, even if it is fast for you.

Could you explain the reasoning?  I've read your announcement (you're
referring to the one to gnome-doc-list and gnome-i18n list, right? 
I'm not aware of any other) and the HIG page and things don't seem to
jive:

>From your announcement:

'The changing of one's background takes 1.4 seconds on average, with
Nautilus managing the background, and all of the settings need to be
applied at the same time, which means that the dialog meets both
exceptions as stated in the "Instant apply windows" section.'

vs the HIG:

'Do not make the user press an OK or Apply button to make the changes
happen, unless either:
 *  the change will take more than about one second to apply, in which
case applying the change immediately could make the system feel slow
or unresponsive, or
 * the changes in the window have to be applied simultaneously to
prevent the system entering a potentially unstable state. For example,
the hostname and proxy fields in a network properties window.'


I can understand the timing one (though that just sounds like a bug
that needs to be fixed; it was fast before as Pat points out), but I
don't remotely see how the background preferences settings can be put
into an inconsistent/unstable state with instant apply.  I could just
be missing something obvious, though.
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Thomas Wood
I was thinking of doing some work on the theme manager UI for 2.16. Should
the theme manager be switched to explicit apply too? It often takes more
than a second to apply a theme.

Maybe the problem here is that the preview isn't good enough to
demonstrate the change in settings before they are applied. The background
options of both Windows and OS X have a little box to show what the screen
will look like before the setting is applied. This way the user feels
confident about how the new setting will look, before it is applied. With
the current explicit apply it is difficult to know how your new background
will look, unless you realise the image in the selection list actually
alters to show what the background will look like.

-Thomas

On 31 Jan 2006, at 6:13 am, Elijah Newren wrote:

> On 1/30/06, Rodney Dawes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 13:54 -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:
>>> It's worth noting that the only applicable reason from that page for
not making it instant apply is that it took longer than a second. It's
worth noting that several have commented in
>>> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335 saying that we  should
>>> look at making it faster, since it's close to a second (and for
several people is faster than a second) anyway.  For those of us for
whom it is faster than a second, this change is a HIG violation
AFAICT.
>> No, read my mail to announce the changes to the appropriate lists.  Both
>> reasons are valid. All of the settings in the dialog get applied at  the
>> same time as well. So, the HIG still suggests it should be explicit
apply, even if it is fast for you.
> Could you explain the reasoning?  I've read your announcement (you're
referring to the one to gnome-doc-list and gnome-i18n list, right? I'm
not aware of any other) and the HIG page and things don't seem to jive:
>> From your announcement:
> 'The changing of one's background takes 1.4 seconds on average, with
Nautilus managing the background, and all of the settings need to be
applied at the same time, which means that the dialog meets both
exceptions as stated in the "Instant apply windows" section.'
> vs the HIG:
> 'Do not make the user press an OK or Apply button to make the changes
happen, unless either:
>  *  the change will take more than about one second to apply, in which
> case applying the change immediately could make the system feel slow or
unresponsive, or
>  * the changes in the window have to be applied simultaneously to
> prevent the system entering a potentially unstable state. For example,
the hostname and proxy fields in a network properties window.'
> I can understand the timing one (though that just sounds like a bug that
needs to be fixed; it was fast before as Pat points out), but I don't
remotely see how the background preferences settings can be put into an
inconsistent/unstable state with instant apply.  I could just be missing
something obvious, though.



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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread James Henstridge
Pat Suwalski wrote:

>Elijah Newren wrote:
>  
>
>>http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335.  I'm with Federico
>>though in thinking we should make it fast instead.
>>
>>
>
>If memory serves, the background resampling and applying used to be very
>snappy and got significantly slower when everything moved to cairo. At
>this point, I have the X hashed background until a few seconds after my
>panels show up.
>  
>
If this is the case, has anyone pinged Carl Worth about the slowdown, to
see if it can be fixed? (either on our end by doing the rendering in a
more efficient way, or by adding fast paths to Cairo for the particular
calls).

James.
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Calum Benson
On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 13:52 -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:

> I also feel that it looks odd and out of place (Why else would I click
> on a different image than to have it be my background?).  It appears
> this was done because the change was too slow -- at least that's the
> valid reason I could find at
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335.  I'm with Federico
> though in thinking we should make it fast instead.

And in the meantime, a bit of pointer feedback would probably relieve
any "why is nothing happening?" symptoms on the instant-apply front.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer   Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com  +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Rodney Dawes
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 12:49 +, Calum Benson wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 13:52 -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:
> 
> > I also feel that it looks odd and out of place (Why else would I click
> > on a different image than to have it be my background?).  It appears
> > this was done because the change was too slow -- at least that's the
> > valid reason I could find at
> > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335.  I'm with Federico
> > though in thinking we should make it fast instead.
> 
> And in the meantime, a bit of pointer feedback would probably relieve
> any "why is nothing happening?" symptoms on the instant-apply front.

The gnome-background-properties dialog has no idea how long it will
actually take for the settings to take effect, as it does not control
the actual drawing on the background. The gconf calls to set the keys
succeed and return instantly, which means that changing the pointer in
the capplet itself, based on that information, would be totally useless.
A timeout would still be needed, to slow the UI down.

-- dobey

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Pat Suwalski

Thomas Wood wrote:

I was thinking of doing some work on the theme manager UI for 2.16. Should
the theme manager be switched to explicit apply too? It often takes more
than a second to apply a theme.


The best way to see what your desktop will look like is to click one of 
the themes and see what your desktop looks like!


There's a handy "revert" button, and it should be quite discoverable to 
click back on the theme that was previously selected.


Is this not the case?

--Pat
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Pat Suwalski

James Henstridge wrote:

If this is the case, has anyone pinged Carl Worth about the slowdown, to
see if it can be fixed? (either on our end by doing the rendering in a
more efficient way, or by adding fast paths to Cairo for the particular
calls).


I wonder if it would make sense to implement the same technique as eog 
uses, with a first rough-pass for a very fast application, and a better 
pass when it becomes available?


--Pat
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Thomas Wood

Pat Suwalski wrote:

Thomas Wood wrote:
I was thinking of doing some work on the theme manager UI for 2.16. 
Should

the theme manager be switched to explicit apply too? It often takes more
than a second to apply a theme.


The best way to see what your desktop will look like is to click one 
of the themes and see what your desktop looks like!


There's a handy "revert" button, and it should be quite discoverable 
to click back on the theme that was previously selected.


Is this not the case?
This isn't really the issue. The problem is that the apply procedure 
takes more than a second to complete, thus violating the previously 
mentioned section of the HIG about instant apply.


-Thomas
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Owen Taylor
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 09:16 -0500, Pat Suwalski wrote:
> James Henstridge wrote:
> > If this is the case, has anyone pinged Carl Worth about the slowdown, to
> > see if it can be fixed? (either on our end by doing the rendering in a
> > more efficient way, or by adding fast paths to Cairo for the particular
> > calls).
> 
> I wonder if it would make sense to implement the same technique as eog 
> uses, with a first rough-pass for a very fast application, and a better 
> pass when it becomes available?

That's only necessary when we can't make it fast enough to begin
with! :-)

I think the first step is for someone to simply spend a little time
figuring out what is slow:

 - Gradients
 - Scaled images
 - Solid color backgrounds?

If we are scaling images *via Cairo* that is known to be slow with
older X servers; if investigation proves that actually is the problem,
it can be worked around.

Regards,
Owen


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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread James Livingston
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 14:38 +, Thomas Wood wrote:
> This isn't really the issue. The problem is that the apply procedure 
> takes more than a second to complete, thus violating the previously 
> mentioned section of the HIG about instant apply.

I saw a figure quoted that the average time to apply was 1.4 seconds.
How did that get evaluated? The machine I'm on at the moment isn't old,
but it definitely isn't that new either, and it takes under half a
second to change the background.

One thing I noticed is that the time is greatly affected by whether
Nautilus is drawing the desktop or not. I normally don't, but when
turned on the time was up to around a second. Drawing the icons and text
might take extra time, but is there something Nautilus is doing that
causes it to go that much slower?


Cheers,

James "Doc" Livingston
-- 
"Never offend people with style when you can offend them with
substance." --Sam Brown


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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Calum Benson
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 14:38 +, Thomas Wood wrote:
> Pat Suwalski wrote:
> > Thomas Wood wrote:
> >> I was thinking of doing some work on the theme manager UI for 2.16. 
> >> Should
> >> the theme manager be switched to explicit apply too? It often takes more
> >> than a second to apply a theme.
> >
> > The best way to see what your desktop will look like is to click one 
> > of the themes and see what your desktop looks like!
> >
> > There's a handy "revert" button, and it should be quite discoverable 
> > to click back on the theme that was previously selected.
> >
> > Is this not the case?
> This isn't really the issue. The problem is that the apply procedure 
> takes more than a second to complete, thus violating the previously 
> mentioned section of the HIG about instant apply.

This is true, although it doesn't usually take more than a second to
visibly do /something/, which is perhaps what the HIG should really say.

Cheeri,
Calum.


-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer   Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com  +353 1 819 9771

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Pat Suwalski

Thomas Wood wrote:

Is this not the case?


This isn't really the issue. The problem is that the apply procedure 
takes more than a second to complete, thus violating the previously 
mentioned section of the HIG about instant apply.


Then the solution should be to paint the desktop with the selected 
background colour until the image is ready. The colour could be applied 
instantly, which would give some notion of progress.


But the painting speed could definitely be fixed. Unfortunately, I've 
noticed severe slowdowns in painting throughout the desktop since Cairo 
came in. It's a worthwhile change, but optimization is required.


--Pat
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Federico Mena Quintero
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 10:14 -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:

> I think the first step is for someone to simply spend a little time
> figuring out what is slow:
> 
>  - Gradients
>  - Scaled images
>  - Solid color backgrounds?
> 
> If we are scaling images *via Cairo* that is known to be slow with
> older X servers; if investigation proves that actually is the problem,
> it can be worked around.

I'm pretty sure that this is the same bug as
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4320

At Suse we have Stefan Dirsch looking into that particular bug.  This
may help the capplet, but again, someone needs to profile the capplet to
see what is going on.

  Federico

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Pat Suwalski

Owen Taylor wrote:

I think the first step is for someone to simply spend a little time
figuring out what is slow:

 - Gradients
 - Scaled images
 - Solid color backgrounds?


30 seconds of experimentation shows me that scaling and filling are 
slow, while tiling is very fast. The very strange discrepancy is that 
when setting an image smaller than the screen, centering is slow!



If we are scaling images *via Cairo* that is known to be slow with
older X servers; if investigation proves that actually is the problem,
it can be worked around.


All of my observations are on X.org 7.0.0 with the radeon driver. There 
were previously (6 months ago?) bigger performance problems, but when I 
opened a freedesktop bug about it, the whole XaaOffscreenPixmaps issues 
was brought up. I don't know how that concluded. Adding the Exa 
extension slows down my r200 card another 2-3 times. But that is getting 
off-topic.


It used to be relatively simple to spot gtk/gdk drawing problems. Now, 
it's difficult to say where the problems are, given the 
gtk-cairo-exa-newX stack.


For people interested, there is a good discussion in a now-closed bug 
that addresses some of the slow drawing issues, which I think at this 
point are history:


http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=314616

But I wonder if the relevant functions don't need to be revisited? Does 
anyone have any suggestions on how to profile these issues?


--Pat
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Thomas Wood

James Livingston wrote:

On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 14:38 +, Thomas Wood wrote:
  
This isn't really the issue. The problem is that the apply procedure 
takes more than a second to complete, thus violating the previously 
mentioned section of the HIG about instant apply.



I saw a figure quoted that the average time to apply was 1.4 seconds.
How did that get evaluated? The machine I'm on at the moment isn't old,
but it definitely isn't that new either, and it takes under half a
second to change the background.
  


I was talking about the theme manager, and asking whether it should also 
be switched to explicit apply. If you could time how long it takes to 
apply a theme on your machine, that would be a useful figure to have.



One thing I noticed is that the time is greatly affected by whether
Nautilus is drawing the desktop or not. I normally don't, but when
turned on the time was up to around a second. Drawing the icons and text
might take extra time, but is there something Nautilus is doing that
causes it to go that much slower?


Cheers,

James "Doc" Livingston
  


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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Frederic Crozat
Le mardi 31 janvier 2006 à 10:14 -0500, Owen Taylor a écrit :
> On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 09:16 -0500, Pat Suwalski wrote:
> > James Henstridge wrote:
> > > If this is the case, has anyone pinged Carl Worth about the slowdown, to
> > > see if it can be fixed? (either on our end by doing the rendering in a
> > > more efficient way, or by adding fast paths to Cairo for the particular
> > > calls).
> > 
> > I wonder if it would make sense to implement the same technique as eog 
> > uses, with a first rough-pass for a very fast application, and a better 
> > pass when it becomes available?
> 
> That's only necessary when we can't make it fast enough to begin
> with! :-)
> 
> I think the first step is for someone to simply spend a little time
> figuring out what is slow:
> 
>  - Gradients
>  - Scaled images
>  - Solid color backgrounds?
> 
> If we are scaling images *via Cairo* that is known to be slow with
> older X servers; if investigation proves that actually is the problem,
> it can be worked around.

I think the problem most people are encountering are with scaled images,
see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4320 . The only way I
found for Mandriva 2006 to ship with decent performance was to always
force cairo to use XCopyArea instead of XRenderComposite 

-- 
Frederic Crozat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Mandriva

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Pat Suwalski

James Livingston wrote:

One thing I noticed is that the time is greatly affected by whether
Nautilus is drawing the desktop or not. I normally don't, but when
turned on the time was up to around a second. Drawing the icons and text
might take extra time, but is there something Nautilus is doing that
causes it to go that much slower?


BINGO. This narrows in on the culprit. Disabling "show_desktop" makes 
the whole desktop 3-4 times more snappy, especially with EXA. It appears 
that (at least with radeon), nautilus' desktop drawing breaks very 
drastically.


But even with top-of-the-line nVidia (with closed driver), desktop 
scaling speed is very much improved without nautilus.


--Pat
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Rodney Dawes
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 10:49 -0600, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 10:14 -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> > I think the first step is for someone to simply spend a little time
> > figuring out what is slow:
> > 
> >  - Gradients
> >  - Scaled images
> >  - Solid color backgrounds?
> > 
> > If we are scaling images *via Cairo* that is known to be slow with
> > older X servers; if investigation proves that actually is the problem,
> > it can be worked around.
> 
> I'm pretty sure that this is the same bug as
> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4320
> 
> At Suse we have Stefan Dirsch looking into that particular bug.  This
> may help the capplet, but again, someone needs to profile the capplet to
> see what is going on.
> 
>   Federico

Profiling the capplet won't help at all. It's not actually doing any of
the drawing on the desktop. Someone needs to profile nautilus and/or the
gnome-settings-daemon processes. These are the places where the drawing
happens. Albeit much faster without nautilus running, it could probably
still stand to see a little bit of improvement. A quick test by quickly
changing some background images on my old Powerbook G3 (400 w/192 MB
RAM, on OS 10.2), showed that it still seemd a bit faster than we are,
even without nautilus managing the desktop.

-- dobey


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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Owen Taylor
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 12:39 -0500, Pat Suwalski wrote:
> James Livingston wrote:
> > One thing I noticed is that the time is greatly affected by whether
> > Nautilus is drawing the desktop or not. I normally don't, but when
> > turned on the time was up to around a second. Drawing the icons and text
> > might take extra time, but is there something Nautilus is doing that
> > causes it to go that much slower?
> 
> BINGO. This narrows in on the culprit. Disabling "show_desktop" makes 
> the whole desktop 3-4 times more snappy, especially with EXA. It appears 
> that (at least with radeon), nautilus' desktop drawing breaks very 
> drastically.
> 
> But even with top-of-the-line nVidia (with closed driver), desktop 
> scaling speed is very much improved without nautilus.

This is actually not surprising at all. The desktop background is 
computed twice - once by (IIRC) gnome-settings-daemon and once
by nautilus.

gnome-settings-daemon modifies the actual root window, and also
a pixmap pointed to from a root window property, so:

 - If nautilus isn't running or is killed, or whatever, you
   still have a background.
 - Transparent terminals and other hacks that need to access
   the root window image can get the pixmap.

But nautilus is covering up g-s-d's work, so it has to compute
and draw the desktop as well.

So if things roughly double in speed when you disable nautilus,
this is about what is expected.

Regards,
Owen


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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Pat Suwalski

Owen Taylor wrote:

So if things roughly double in speed when you disable nautilus,
this is about what is expected.


Perhaps this is one of those lovely O^2 operations or something, but 
it's a transition from about 30 fps to about 1 fps. There is almost 
certainly more to it


--Pat
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Federico Mena Quintero
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 15:08 -0500, Rodney Dawes wrote:

> Profiling the capplet won't help at all. It's not actually doing any of
> the drawing on the desktop. Someone needs to profile nautilus and/or the
> gnome-settings-daemon processes. These are the places where the drawing
> happens. Albeit much faster without nautilus running, it could probably
> still stand to see a little bit of improvement. A quick test by quickly
> changing some background images on my old Powerbook G3 (400 w/192 MB
> RAM, on OS 10.2), showed that it still seemd a bit faster than we are,
> even without nautilus managing the desktop.

Okay, so let's profile all the parts involved to see where the problem
is.

Can you build the whole gnome-control-center module with no inlining and
debug info (-O2 -fno-inline works well), and then run sysprof while
changing backgrounds quickly?

Do that with and without nautilus running.

As far as I know, we have two main slow paths:

1. Nautilus redrawing its background.  It doesn't do anything special;
it just sets the desktop window's background to the pixmap that g-s-d
maintains; then it does gtk_widget_queue_draw() on the desktop window.
This goes through the normal double-buffering code in GTK+.  The test
code here does exactly what Nautilus does:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4320#c3

2. G-s-d generating a new background pixmap.  This is the
create-a-pixmap, paint-a-gradient, scale-an-image thing.  No idea if
this is slow, but it certainly doesn't need to be.  

Running sysprof on the whole stack will tell you who is at fault.

It would be good to know how much time (2) takes.  Stick printf()s at
the beginning and end of the "change-the-background" process in g-s-d,
and make them print timestamps.

  Federico

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Davyd Madeley
On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 08:58:22AM -0500, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 12:49 +, Calum Benson wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 13:52 -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:
> > 
> > > I also feel that it looks odd and out of place (Why else would I click
> > > on a different image than to have it be my background?).  It appears
> > > this was done because the change was too slow -- at least that's the
> > > valid reason I could find at
> > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335.  I'm with Federico
> > > though in thinking we should make it fast instead.
> > 
> > And in the meantime, a bit of pointer feedback would probably relieve
> > any "why is nothing happening?" symptoms on the instant-apply front.
> 
> The gnome-background-properties dialog has no idea how long it will
> actually take for the settings to take effect, as it does not control
> the actual drawing on the background. The gconf calls to set the keys
> succeed and return instantly, which means that changing the pointer in
> the capplet itself, based on that information, would be totally useless.
> A timeout would still be needed, to slow the UI down.

At this stage in the game, I think we should look at doing three
things:
 (1) reverting the UI change, it is a bandaid fix to a deeper
 problem;
 (2) shipping GNOME 2.14 with gtk-engines 2.6, leaving people who
 giving us more time to optimise gtk-engines/cairo/X
 (3) attempting to profile Nautilus and find out why it is that
 little bit slower

It will be absolutely appaulling if we ship Cairo based gtk-engines
(which most people will not appreciate) while claiming that we've
sped up all these things (pango, GSlice, etc.) only to have all of
our actual window drawing shot to pieces. Once we're on 2.15, we can
start using the new gtk-engines again, hopefully with Cairo 1.2 and
start looking at what is making it slow (still).

People have suggested adding D-BUS interfaces to Nautilus to know
when the background is done being changed, but I think this is also
unrequired. We obviously have a fast code path and a slow code path,
and there has to be a logical explanation for this. If it is
unfixable, then perhaps D-BUS should be our bandaid.

--d

-- 
Davyd Madeley

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-01-31 Thread Glynn Foster
Hi,


On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 17:11 -0600, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> Can you build the whole gnome-control-center module with no inlining and
> debug info (-O2 -fno-inline works well), and then run sysprof while
> changing backgrounds quickly?

Changing backgrounds quickly doesn't really help, since
XSetWindowBackgroundPixmap() isn't being called each time, at least when
nautilus has been disabled [I'm only checking that case right now] - or
that's what I'm seeing while using DTrace.

Also, the default set of backgrounds have completely different sizes and
types as a quick browse through /usr/share/pixmaps/backgrounds will
show. It might be cunning to pick one relatively plain background,
duplicate it a couple of times and change the colour of it, then edit
the xml files in /usr/share/gnome-background-properties for different
wallpaper options.

I'm also not really noticing the slowness that people are experiencing,
or at least background changing seems reasonably responsive - this may
be due to some cairo patches that we've applied locally, I'm not sure.


Glynn

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-01 Thread Federico Mena Quintero
On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 16:04 +1300, Glynn Foster wrote:

> Changing backgrounds quickly doesn't really help, since
> XSetWindowBackgroundPixmap() isn't being called each time, at least when
> nautilus has been disabled [I'm only checking that case right now] - or
> that's what I'm seeing while using DTrace.

What does "each time" represent here?  Each time you select a different
wallpaper, or change an option (gradient/color/etc)?

> Also, the default set of backgrounds have completely different sizes and
> types as a quick browse through /usr/share/pixmaps/backgrounds will
> show. It might be cunning to pick one relatively plain background,
> duplicate it a couple of times and change the colour of it, then edit
> the xml files in /usr/share/gnome-background-properties for different
> wallpaper options.

Let's use the real-world data we have, that is, the real stuff
in /usr/share/pixmaps/backgrounds.

I'm interested in knowing

- how long do we take to load the image from disk and decode it.  For a
1400x1050 JPEG, this takes 0.27 seconds for me from looking at strace.

- how long do we take to generate the pixmap we set on the root window,
based on the decoded pixbuf.  No idea how long that takes.  Test the
various cases:  this is the cross product of { solid image, image with
alpha} x { solid color, gradient } x { tiled/untiled image covers the
background completely, background shows through }.  libbackground has
some fancy code to detect the various coverage conditions; ensure that
that code is working correctly.

- how long does nautilus take to pick up the pixmap and repaint its
desktop window.  That takes about 1 second for me, due to XRENDER bugs.

  Federico

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-01 Thread Kjartan Maraas
man, 30,.01.2006 kl. 13.52 -0700, skrev Elijah Newren:
> On 1/30/06, Matthias Clasen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On 1/30/06, Rodrigo Moya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Changes since 2.13.5.1
> >
> > > background:
> > > - Added apply button (Rodney Dawes) (327335)
> > > - Fixed glib CRITICAL warnings (Rodney Dawes) (327327)
> >
> > So, Gnome 2.12 had a nice working immediate apply background changer.
> > Why did this get changed to an odd explicit model ?
> > Thats a step backwards.
> 
> I also feel that it looks odd and out of place (Why else would I click
> on a different image than to have it be my background?).  It appears
> this was done because the change was too slow -- at least that's the
> valid reason I could find at
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335.  I'm with Federico
> though in thinking we should make it fast instead.
> 
I agree with this sentiment too. The old one both looks better and feels
better. What's the rationale for removing the icons on the buttons etc
btw?

Cheers
Kjartan


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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-01 Thread Alan Horkan

> From: Davyd Madeley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Rodney Dawes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: Desktop Development List ,
>  Calum Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: control-center 2.13.90 released
>
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 08:58:22AM -0500, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> > On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 12:49 +, Calum Benson wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 13:52 -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:
> > >
> > > > I also feel that it looks odd and out of place (Why else would I click
> > > > on a different image than to have it be my background?).  It appears
> > > > this was done because the change was too slow -- at least that's the
> > > > valid reason I could find at
> > > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335.  I'm with Federico
> > > > though in thinking we should make it fast instead.
> > >
> > > And in the meantime, a bit of pointer feedback would probably relieve
> > > any "why is nothing happening?" symptoms on the instant-apply front.
> >
> > The gnome-background-properties dialog has no idea how long it will
> > actually take for the settings to take effect, as it does not control
> > the actual drawing on the background. The gconf calls to set the keys
> > succeed and return instantly, which means that changing the pointer in
> > the capplet itself, based on that information, would be totally useless.
> > A timeout would still be needed, to slow the UI down.
>
> At this stage in the game, I think we should look at doing three
> things:
>  (1) reverting the UI change, it is a bandaid fix to a deeper
>  problem;

If the hope is to change it back when things get faster then this current
change is inflicting unnecessary software churn on users.

As I'm on older crappy hardware I guess I should sit out this release
cycle entirely as an even slower Gnome would probably kill it.

>  (2) shipping GNOME 2.14 with gtk-engines 2.6, leaving people who
>  giving us more time to optimise gtk-engines/cairo/X

I expect this would be unpopular with developers (especialy dobey).
How many developers have really crappy hardware?  (ie > 3 years old)

-- Alan H.
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-01 Thread Shaun McCance
On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 17:49 +, Alan Horkan wrote:
> > From: Davyd Madeley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > At this stage in the game, I think we should look at doing three
> > things:
> >  (1) reverting the UI change, it is a bandaid fix to a deeper
> >  problem;
> 
> If the hope is to change it back when things get faster then this current
> change is inflicting unnecessary software churn on users.
> 
> As I'm on older crappy hardware I guess I should sit out this release
> cycle entirely as an even slower Gnome would probably kill it.
> 
> >  (2) shipping GNOME 2.14 with gtk-engines 2.6, leaving people who
> >  giving us more time to optimise gtk-engines/cairo/X
> 
> I expect this would be unpopular with developers (especialy dobey).
> How many developers have really crappy hardware?  (ie > 3 years old)

Developers be damned.  Let's take care of our users.

Whizbang flashiness is great, but if we can't deliver
it quickly on moderate hardware, then it needs to sit
on the sidelines until we can.  My machine is around
two years old.  It is not a crappy machine.  I had to
go back to an old gtk-engines because I just couldn't
handle it anymore.

--
Shaun


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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-02 Thread Rodney Dawes
On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 17:49 +, Alan Horkan wrote:
> > From: Davyd Madeley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: Rodney Dawes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Cc: Desktop Development List ,
> >  Calum Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Subject: Re: control-center 2.13.90 released
> >
> > On Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 08:58:22AM -0500, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 12:49 +, Calum Benson wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 13:52 -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > I also feel that it looks odd and out of place (Why else would I click
> > > > > on a different image than to have it be my background?).  It appears
> > > > > this was done because the change was too slow -- at least that's the
> > > > > valid reason I could find at
> > > > > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335.  I'm with Federico
> > > > > though in thinking we should make it fast instead.
> > > >
> > > > And in the meantime, a bit of pointer feedback would probably relieve
> > > > any "why is nothing happening?" symptoms on the instant-apply front.
> > >
> > > The gnome-background-properties dialog has no idea how long it will
> > > actually take for the settings to take effect, as it does not control
> > > the actual drawing on the background. The gconf calls to set the keys
> > > succeed and return instantly, which means that changing the pointer in
> > > the capplet itself, based on that information, would be totally useless.
> > > A timeout would still be needed, to slow the UI down.
> >
> > At this stage in the game, I think we should look at doing three
> > things:
> >  (1) reverting the UI change, it is a bandaid fix to a deeper
> >  problem;
> 
> If the hope is to change it back when things get faster then this current
> change is inflicting unnecessary software churn on users.

The hope is to fix all of the problems. Not following the HIG is
something that I would consider a problem. I fixed the dialog to follow
the HIG. And the oversimplification of the problems into "i think it's
ugly, so we shouldn't do this" is just silly. The change was not done
solely to work around the performance issue. Any claims that it was, are
obviously misinformed and oversimplifying the set of problems that the
change was meant to solve.

> As I'm on older crappy hardware I guess I should sit out this release
> cycle entirely as an even slower Gnome would probably kill it.
> 
> >  (2) shipping GNOME 2.14 with gtk-engines 2.6, leaving people who
> >  giving us more time to optimise gtk-engines/cairo/X
> 
> I expect this would be unpopular with developers (especialy dobey).
> How many developers have really crappy hardware?  (ie > 3 years old)

I could care less what version of gtk-engines we ship. It's not the
problem, and I don't use any of the engines in it anyway. I doubt that
the problem is even the fact that gtk+ uses cairo. Cairo can fill a
full-screen rectangle on my crappy 3 year old Radeon 7500 in about
0.0007 seconds. That's also with X 6.8.2. On my Radeon FireGL X1 at a
lower resolution, on X 6.9.0, it takes about 0.007 seconds for the same
test case code that Federico pointed me to, to run. That's significantly
slower, for a significantly better video card. However, in both cases,
the amount of time taken, is nowhere near the amount of time it takes to
actually render the background. I don't know why gtk-engines was even
mentioned in this thread, or why Davyd alluded to it being the cause of
the slowness, on his blog.

-- dobey

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-02 Thread Iain *
On 2/1/06, Federico Mena Quintero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> - how long does nautilus take to pick up the pixmap and repaint its
> desktop window.  That takes about 1 second for me, due to XRENDER bugs.

Part of that second is a 300ms timeout before nautilus does anything,
to let GConf change all the values.

See libnautilus-private/nautilus-directory-background.c:328

iain
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-02 Thread Davyd Madeley
On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 09:23:36AM -0500, Rodney Dawes wrote:

> > As I'm on older crappy hardware I guess I should sit out this release
> > cycle entirely as an even slower Gnome would probably kill it.
> > 
> > >  (2) shipping GNOME 2.14 with gtk-engines 2.6, leaving people who
> > >  giving us more time to optimise gtk-engines/cairo/X
> > 
> > I expect this would be unpopular with developers (especialy dobey).
> > How many developers have really crappy hardware?  (ie > 3 years old)
> 
> I could care less what version of gtk-engines we ship. It's not the
> problem, and I don't use any of the engines in it anyway. I doubt that
> the problem is even the fact that gtk+ uses cairo. Cairo can fill a
> full-screen rectangle on my crappy 3 year old Radeon 7500 in about
> 0.0007 seconds. That's also with X 6.8.2. On my Radeon FireGL X1 at a
> lower resolution, on X 6.9.0, it takes about 0.007 seconds for the same
> test case code that Federico pointed me to, to run. That's significantly
> slower, for a significantly better video card. However, in both cases,
> the amount of time taken, is nowhere near the amount of time it takes to
> actually render the background. I don't know why gtk-engines was even
> mentioned in this thread, or why Davyd alluded to it being the cause of
> the slowness, on his blog.

There are known issues with Cairo and doing large exposes and how is
breaks XAA. This is why minimising windows for many people is now
mind-bendingly slow, as is coming back from screensave. Some people
have started shipping a workaround in their X.org configs I
understand (to turn off XAA offscreen pixmaps) and I don't know if
EXA is affected.

I don't have any details beyond this, you will need to talk to a
graphics person.

--d

-- 
Davyd Madeley

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-02 Thread Matthias Clasen
On 2/1/06, Shaun McCance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Developers be damned.  Let's take care of our users.
>
> Whizbang flashiness is great, but if we can't deliver
> it quickly on moderate hardware, then it needs to sit
> on the sidelines until we can.  My machine is around
> two years old.  It is not a crappy machine.  I had to
> go back to an old gtk-engines because I just couldn't
> handle it anymore.
>

But you're a developer, so you don't get to complain :-)
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-02 Thread Davyd Madeley
On Wed, Feb 01, 2006 at 06:27:33PM -0600, Shaun McCance wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 17:49 +, Alan Horkan wrote:
> > > From: Davyd Madeley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > At this stage in the game, I think we should look at doing three
> > > things:
> > >  (1) reverting the UI change, it is a bandaid fix to a deeper
> > >  problem;
> > 
> > If the hope is to change it back when things get faster then this current
> > change is inflicting unnecessary software churn on users.
> > 
> > As I'm on older crappy hardware I guess I should sit out this release
> > cycle entirely as an even slower Gnome would probably kill it.
> > 
> > >  (2) shipping GNOME 2.14 with gtk-engines 2.6, leaving people who
> > >  giving us more time to optimise gtk-engines/cairo/X
> > 
> > I expect this would be unpopular with developers (especialy dobey).
> > How many developers have really crappy hardware?  (ie > 3 years old)
> 
> Developers be damned.  Let's take care of our users.
> 
> Whizbang flashiness is great, but if we can't deliver
> it quickly on moderate hardware, then it needs to sit
> on the sidelines until we can.  My machine is around
> two years old.  It is not a crappy machine.  I had to
> go back to an old gtk-engines because I just couldn't
> handle it anymore.

Shaun has nailed it here. We should also consider our third-party
developers. We're talking about people who have no interaction with
the community and have simply been complaining about the degrading
quality of GNOME releases (these people do exist).

--d

-- 
Davyd Madeley

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-02 Thread Luis Villa
On 2/2/06, Rodney Dawes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > If the hope is to change it back when things get faster then this current
> > change is inflicting unnecessary software churn on users.
>
> The hope is to fix all of the problems. Not following the HIG is
> something that I would consider a problem. I fixed the dialog to follow
> the HIG.

Rotely following the HIG (rotely following any guidelines) because
they are guidelines, instead of working to fix underlying problems, is
the height of idiocy. Or laziness. Or both.

Luis (thinking maybe the HIG should have a note: 'If your software
used to be fast enough for 'OK', and now it isn't, you should get out
the profiler and fix the performance instead of getting out glade.' Or
maybe the first page of the HIG should say, in bold print, 'Fix the
problem, not the symptom.' I'd say it should say 'don't be an idiot'
but maybe that isn't clear enough.)
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-02 Thread Alan Horkan

On Wed, 1 Feb 2006, Shaun McCance wrote:

> Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 18:27:33 -0600
> From: Shaun McCance <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: desktop-devel-list@gnome.org
> Subject: Re: control-center 2.13.90 released
>
> On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 17:49 +, Alan Horkan wrote:
> > > From: Davyd Madeley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > At this stage in the game, I think we should look at doing three
> > > things:
> > >  (1) reverting the UI change, it is a bandaid fix to a deeper
> > >  problem;
> >
> > If the hope is to change it back when things get faster then this current
> > change is inflicting unnecessary software churn on users.
> >
> > As I'm on older crappy hardware I guess I should sit out this release
> > cycle entirely as an even slower Gnome would probably kill it.
> >
> > >  (2) shipping GNOME 2.14 with gtk-engines 2.6, leaving people who
> > >  giving us more time to optimise gtk-engines/cairo/X
> >
> > I expect this would be unpopular with developers (especialy dobey).
> > How many developers have really crappy hardware?  (ie > 3 years old)
>
> Developers be damned.  Let's take care of our users.

(Yeah but I know Dobey is going to hate me for complaining and he did the
hard work so I should try and be nice about it.)

To rephrase what I said earlier if the user interface is being changed
with the expectation of chaning it back for the following release of Gnome
then it is is likely to cause unnecesary confusion.

> Whizbang flashiness is great, but if we can't deliver
> it quickly on moderate hardware, then it needs to sit
> on the sidelines until we can.  My machine is around
> two years old.  It is not a crappy machine.  I had to
> go back to an old gtk-engines because I just couldn't
> handle it anymore.

All I know is Gnome is not yet a more responsive solution than Windows
2000 on the same machine.  There are still a variety of reasons to prefer
Gnome though.

-- 
Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/


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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-03 Thread Rodrigo Moya
On Thu, 2006-02-02 at 23:39 +, Iain * wrote:
> On 2/1/06, Federico Mena Quintero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > - how long does nautilus take to pick up the pixmap and repaint its
> > desktop window.  That takes about 1 second for me, due to XRENDER bugs.
> 
> Part of that second is a 300ms timeout before nautilus does anything,
> to let GConf change all the values.
> 
> See libnautilus-private/nautilus-directory-background.c:328
> 
hmm, can't we just use a ChangeSet and do all changes at once and thus
remove the timeout?
-- 
Rodrigo Moya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-03 Thread Christopher Aillon

On 02/02/2006 09:23 AM, Rodney Dawes wrote:

The hope is to fix all of the problems. Not following the HIG is
something that I would consider a problem. I fixed the dialog to follow
the HIG.


I'd just like to point out that at least 2 of the 3 people listed in the 
HIG's credits[1] have expressed[2] this is the wrong solution[3], so it 
seems to me that perhaps the HIG as published is confusing and needs to 
be fixed, but I'd say that in any case if the HIG authors are saying 
this decision is wrong, "following the HIG" doesn't sound as good an 
argument anymore



[1] http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/credits.html
[2] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335#c9
[3] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327335#c26
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-03 Thread Iain *
On 2/3/06, Rodrigo Moya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-02-02 at 23:39 +, Iain * wrote:
> > On 2/1/06, Federico Mena Quintero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > > - how long does nautilus take to pick up the pixmap and repaint its
> > > desktop window.  That takes about 1 second for me, due to XRENDER bugs.
> >
> > Part of that second is a 300ms timeout before nautilus does anything,
> > to let GConf change all the values.
> >
> > See libnautilus-private/nautilus-directory-background.c:328
> >
> hmm, can't we just use a ChangeSet and do all changes at once and thus
> remove the timeout?

Apparently we do, this is the comment just above the timeout

/*
 * Wallpaper capplet changes picture, background color and
placement with
 * gconf_change_set API, but unfortunately, this operation is
not atomic in
 * GConf as it should be. So we update background after small
timeout to
 * let GConf change all values.  */

Is this a bug in GConf? Was it a bug which has since been fixed? Can
it be fixed? Should it be?

iain
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-03 Thread Elijah Newren
On 2/3/06, Iain * <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 2/3/06, Rodrigo Moya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-02-02 at 23:39 +, Iain * wrote:
> > > Part of that second is a 300ms timeout before nautilus does anything,
> > > to let GConf change all the values.
> > >
> > > See libnautilus-private/nautilus-directory-background.c:328
> > >
> > hmm, can't we just use a ChangeSet and do all changes at once and thus
> > remove the timeout?
>
> Apparently we do, this is the comment just above the timeout
>
> /*
>  * Wallpaper capplet changes picture, background color and
> placement with
>  * gconf_change_set API, but unfortunately, this operation is
> not atomic in
>  * GConf as it should be. So we update background after small
> timeout to
>  * let GConf change all values.  */
>
> Is this a bug in GConf? Was it a bug which has since been fixed? Can
> it be fixed? Should it be?

Isn't this a bug in the capplet?  Why in the world should it be
working in terms of change sets?  If I change the image, the
background should be updated.  Immediately.  If I also want to change
from fill screen to tiling or whatever, fine.  That should also
update, but instantly.  I shouldn't have to do a bunch of stuff to
multiple things and then say "Ah, okay, I'm done twiddling stuff now
so go ahead and update."

However, I think I finally understand why Rodney was claiming that
this was a group change operation and was invoking the second point of
the HIG instead of just the timing issue.  But it looks like he just
inherited buggy code, and that it was the change_set stuff that should
have been questioned rather than the instant apply.  IMVAO anyway.
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-03 Thread Federico Mena Quintero
On Fri, 2006-02-03 at 12:45 -0700, Elijah Newren wrote:

> Isn't this a bug in the capplet?  Why in the world should it be
> working in terms of change sets?  If I change the image, the
> background should be updated.  Immediately.  If I also want to change
> from fill screen to tiling or whatever, fine.  That should also
> update, but instantly.  I shouldn't have to do a bunch of stuff to
> multiple things and then say "Ah, okay, I'm done twiddling stuff now
> so go ahead and update."

We used to have a problem where gnome-settings-daemon or something else
would read the background keys, and then re-set all of them to the same
values unnecessarily.  Nautilus would then pick up several key changes,
and redraw the background each time.  I believe the timeout comes from
that old problem.

I don't know if it still happens.  Can someone test this?  Write a
program that monitors the background-related keys, and have it print the
time when the keys get changed.  Start the session, and see if the
program prints anything - it shouldn't.

[You could also use such a program to test that the background capplet
only changes one key at a time.  If Elijah's "immediate changes" work,
there should not be a need for a change set.]

  Federico

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-06 Thread Federico Mena Quintero
On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 12:04 -0600, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:

Has anyone figured these out? :)

> - how long do we take to load the image from disk and decode it.  For a
> 1400x1050 JPEG, this takes 0.27 seconds for me from looking at strace.
> 
> - how long do we take to generate the pixmap we set on the root window,
> based on the decoded pixbuf.  No idea how long that takes.  Test the
> various cases:  this is the cross product of { solid image, image with
> alpha} x { solid color, gradient } x { tiled/untiled image covers the
> background completely, background shows through }.  libbackground has
> some fancy code to detect the various coverage conditions; ensure that
> that code is working correctly.
> 
> - how long does nautilus take to pick up the pixmap and repaint its
> desktop window.  That takes about 1 second for me, due to XRENDER bugs.

This last one should be better on Radeon cards if you cvs update your
GTK+.  I put a workaround for the relevant Cairo/XRENDER bugs.

  Federico

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-06 Thread Matthias Clasen
On 2/6/06, Federico Mena Quintero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 12:04 -0600, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
>
> Has anyone figured these out? :)
>

I have put a patch which removes the delays from the capplet and
gnome-settings-daemon
in http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=330168
With that patch, background switching is acceptably fast for me.

Note that the patch is against control-center-2.12.3, since Fedora has
switched back to the 2.12 version of the background capplet...

Matthias
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-06 Thread Elijah Newren
On 2/6/06, Matthias Clasen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I have put a patch which removes the delays from the capplet and
> gnome-settings-daemon
> in http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=330168
> With that patch, background switching is acceptably fast for me.
>
> Note that the patch is against control-center-2.12.3, since Fedora has
> switched back to the 2.12 version of the background capplet...

Was there a reason to do that instead of using Glynn's patch from bug
327335 to revert this specific change?
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-06 Thread Matthias Clasen
On 2/6/06, Elijah Newren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Was there a reason to do that instead of using Glynn's patch from bug
> 327335 to revert this specific change?

1) I was not aware of that bug and patch
2) We also want the icons back

Matthias
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-06 Thread Pat Suwalski

Matthias Clasen wrote:

2) We also want the icons back


Yes, this is definitely still a big issue. Unlike the instant-apply 
behaviour, this particular change was never explained in detail.


The dialog looks very much out of place without them. I find the dialog 
harder to use without them.


--Pat
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-06 Thread Rodney Dawes
On Mon, 2006-02-06 at 16:16 -0500, Pat Suwalski wrote:
> Matthias Clasen wrote:
> > 2) We also want the icons back
> 
> Yes, this is definitely still a big issue. Unlike the instant-apply 
> behaviour, this particular change was never explained in detail.

1) GtkOptionMenu is deprecated.
2) GtkComboBox makes it very difficult to add icons to the drop-down.
3) The icons were a total hack anyway, and broke a11y functionality
4) We have too many icons in use in the desktop, and so I, as well as
   the artists who maintain the icons, want to reduce that number
5) To help separate the controls within the dialog for managing the
   wallpapers and properties on them, and the buttons for the dialog

This is also a problem that we've seen a lot of in the file chooser
dialog in testing as well. Users will often click the "Add" button
on the left, under the bookmarks list, because they want to "add"
a wallpaper or attachment to a mail, or whatever. So, I removed the
icons from the Add/Remove buttons to help with this as well, although
I can't do it in the file chooser itself. Some users would also try
to click the "Add Wallpaper" button, in an attempt to set the wallpaper,
as they don't expect it to change immediately when selected, and do not
know that the close button won't revert their selection.

-- dobey


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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-06 Thread Pat Suwalski

Rodney Dawes wrote:

1) GtkOptionMenu is deprecated.
2) GtkComboBox makes it very difficult to add icons to the drop-down.


These two are valid points.


3) The icons were a total hack anyway, and broke a11y functionality
4) We have too many icons in use in the desktop, and so I, as well as
   the artists who maintain the icons, want to reduce that number
5) To help separate the controls within the dialog for managing the
   wallpapers and properties on them, and the buttons for the dialog


These I have a hard time buying.

Taking this from the opposite approach, how on earth is a user supposed 
to know the difference between "Scaled" and "Fill Screen" without that 
little icon to show what's going to happen?


I personally find the "tiled" icon very helpful, as well as the "Add" 
and "Remove" icons. They tell me a lot, help me make a quick decision.


The gradient icons are less useful, but they show a little preview of 
what will happen without the composed textured like in the larger 
preview icons. They are needed.


It used to be that adding icons to interfaces would help "dumb users" 
(or me on a Monday morning). Now we're being told the opposite?


--Pat
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-06 Thread Davyd Madeley

Quoting Pat Suwalski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:


Rodney Dawes wrote:

1) GtkOptionMenu is deprecated.
2) GtkComboBox makes it very difficult to add icons to the drop-down.


(1) is true, however it's also not going away any time soon;
(2) could be described as 'complete cock', it is quite possible to add these
icons in. It is admittedly a little bit more work than it was with
GtkOptionMenu, but not 'very difficult'.

--d

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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-06 Thread Matthias Clasen
On 2/6/06, Rodney Dawes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> 1) GtkOptionMenu is deprecated.
> 2) GtkComboBox makes it very difficult to add icons to the drop-down.
>

What a silly excuse. Everybody else seems to
manage. We even ship a porting guide in.the
api docs and an illustrated example in gtk-demo.
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-07 Thread Pat Suwalski
Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
>> - how long does nautilus take to pick up the pixmap and repaint its
>> desktop window.  That takes about 1 second for me, due to XRENDER bugs.
> 
> This last one should be better on Radeon cards if you cvs update your
> GTK+.  I put a workaround for the relevant Cairo/XRENDER bugs.

I applied the patch (gtk2-117163-cairo-repeat-pattern-workaround.diff),
to Gentoo's gtk+-2.8.11 and it makes Gnome much smoother and snappier,
even running at 600MHz off of battery.

I feel that combined with the removal of the 300ms delay, the problem is
solved.

Now, if only to get the useful icons back... sigh...

--Pat
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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-09 Thread Glynn Foster
Hey,

On Mon, 2006-02-06 at 16:10 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On 2/6/06, Elijah Newren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > Was there a reason to do that instead of using Glynn's patch from bug
> > 327335 to revert this specific change?
> 
> 1) I was not aware of that bug and patch
> 2) We also want the icons back

So what's the situation of this - are the various patches going to be
reverted? It seems like there's a *strong* disagreement for these
changes by many people in this thread that these changes. 

It seems to me that from a corporate point of view, there's 2 vendors,
Red Hat and Sun, have already reverted these changes and shipping a
different version of the capplet. Aside from the 'design by committee'
set of blog posts that I haven't had a chance to catch up on, anyone
willing to give a summary of where things stand? 

I notice that these changes landed *after* 2.13.5 - that's well late in
the cycle, no? It feels like we should at least revert now, find some
status quo and then get some good discussion for making those changes in
the 2.16 timeframe.

thoughts?


Glynn


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Re: control-center 2.13.90 released

2006-02-09 Thread Shaun McCance
On Thu, 2006-02-09 at 22:25 +1300, Glynn Foster wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> On Mon, 2006-02-06 at 16:10 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> > On 2/6/06, Elijah Newren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > 
> > > Was there a reason to do that instead of using Glynn's patch from bug
> > > 327335 to revert this specific change?
> > 
> > 1) I was not aware of that bug and patch
> > 2) We also want the icons back
> 
> So what's the situation of this - are the various patches going to be
> reverted? It seems like there's a *strong* disagreement for these
> changes by many people in this thread that these changes. 
> 
> It seems to me that from a corporate point of view, there's 2 vendors,
> Red Hat and Sun, have already reverted these changes and shipping a
> different version of the capplet.

Which, on top of everything else, makes it damn near
impossible to write good upstream documentation for
this capplet.  Our policy is that we always describe
stock upstream Gnome.  When vendor versions of Gnome
are different, upstream documentation is incorrect.
And vendors aren't usually in the habit of checking
the documentation against their patches.

Here's where somebody sends a reply saying that it's
a vendor problem, and it's their responsibility to
make sure they ship documentation consistent with
their Gnome.  So here's where I reply that, by and
large, vendors don't, and it's actually not all that
easy to do so.  And when the documentation is wrong,
guess who that reflects poorly on?  That's right,
our documentation team.  And we just further train
users that the documentation is useless, making them
less likely to look at the documentation even when
it is correct and complete.

Explicit apply needs to be explicitly documented,
because it is a deviation from the norm.  I don't,
on the other hand, feel the need to ramble on about
instant apply in every dialog's help.  So we'll have
this help page that will say "You must click Apply
to use the settings you've selected."  And then the
user will look at the Close button and conclude that
we're off our rockers.

--
Shaun


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Re: Performance (was Re: control-center 2.13.90 released)

2006-01-31 Thread Thomas Wood

Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller wrote:

Hi,
Do we have a general performance problem currently? My Fedora Rawhide
(FC5) desktop is slow as hell atm. I thought at first it was a
distribution/development edition issue, but talking to people running
Dapper at the office they are experiencing the same. 


One example, starting Totem for the first time takes about 30 seconds on
my system now. Stopping and restarting totem multiple times lets me get
that down to around 8-10 seconds. 


Christian
  
It'd be interesting if you could try changing your theme (I assume you 
are using Clearlooks) to Glider and seeing what difference that makes. 
The Glider theme uses the Smooth engine, which is not currently using 
cairo. Clearlooks on the other hand, is now using cairo almost 
exclusively. If there is a significant difference in speed then we may 
need to look at holding back cairo enabled gtk-engines in GNOME, at 
least until significant speed improvements are made to cairo.


-Thomas
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Re: Performance (was Re: control-center 2.13.90 released)

2006-01-31 Thread Jan de Groot
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 15:31 +, Thomas Wood wrote:
>
> It'd be interesting if you could try changing your theme (I assume you 
> are using Clearlooks) to Glider and seeing what difference that makes. 
> The Glider theme uses the Smooth engine, which is not currently using 
> cairo. Clearlooks on the other hand, is now using cairo almost 
> exclusively. If there is a significant difference in speed then we may 
> need to look at holding back cairo enabled gtk-engines in GNOME, at 
> least until significant speed improvements are made to cairo.
> 
> -Thomas

I switched back from Clearlooks cairo version to the Mist theme:
everything is nice and fast now. With cairo-clearlooks, clicking a
cleared number in gnome-mines, I could follow the bombsquad clearing the
field of known not-mine squares. With Mist, these fields get uncovered
instantly.

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Re: Performance (was Re: control-center 2.13.90 released)

2006-01-31 Thread Thomas Wood

Jan de Groot wrote:

On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 15:31 +, Thomas Wood wrote:
  
   
It'd be interesting if you could try changing your theme (I assume you 
are using Clearlooks) to Glider and seeing what difference that makes. 
The Glider theme uses the Smooth engine, which is not currently using 
cairo. Clearlooks on the other hand, is now using cairo almost 
exclusively. If there is a significant difference in speed then we may 
need to look at holding back cairo enabled gtk-engines in GNOME, at 
least until significant speed improvements are made to cairo.


-Thomas



I switched back from Clearlooks cairo version to the Mist theme:
everything is nice and fast now. With cairo-clearlooks, clicking a
cleared number in gnome-mines, I could follow the bombsquad clearing the
field of known not-mine squares. With Mist, these fields get uncovered
instantly.
  


Actually, Mist is already using cairo, so your test only shows that Mist 
is a faster theme than Clearlooks. This was hopefully already known, 
since Mist is a lot simpler than Clearlooks. One of the biggest problems 
for Clearlooks in terms of speed, is it's use of gradients, and that has 
always been an issue whether it has used GDK or cairo. To get a 
definitive answer, we need people to test is the difference between 
using Clearlooks with cairo (gtk-engines 2.7.x) and with GDK 
(gtk-engines 2.6.x).


-Thomas
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Re: Performance (was Re: control-center 2.13.90 released)

2006-01-31 Thread Jan de Groot
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 21:05 +, Thomas Wood wrote:
> > I switched back from Clearlooks cairo version to the Mist theme:
> > everything is nice and fast now. With cairo-clearlooks, clicking a
> > cleared number in gnome-mines, I could follow the bombsquad clearing the
> > field of known not-mine squares. With Mist, these fields get uncovered
> > instantly.
> >   
> 
> Actually, Mist is already using cairo, so your test only shows that Mist 
> is a faster theme than Clearlooks. This was hopefully already known, 
> since Mist is a lot simpler than Clearlooks. One of the biggest problems 
> for Clearlooks in terms of speed, is it's use of gradients, and that has 
> always been an issue whether it has used GDK or cairo. To get a 
> definitive answer, we need people to test is the difference between 
> using Clearlooks with cairo (gtk-engines 2.7.x) and with GDK 
> (gtk-engines 2.6.x).
> 
> -Thomas

Actually, together with switching to Mist, I also switched back to the
old GDK version of gtk-engines. I will try some tests with gtk-engines
2.7.x tomorrow to see if there's a noticable speed difference.

For the clearlooks themes with cairo: having a card that does RENDER
accelleration can speed up quite a lot. Switching from a Matrox G550 to
a Radeon 8500LE really shows good results for cairo. But I guess we
should also think about those people who still have hardware that does
not support render accelleration that much (I have X terminals with 4MB
Matrox Millennium cards in them, they're terrible slow since the switch
to GTK 2.8)

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