code bloat [was Re: Semaphore assembly-code bug]

Adam Jackson ajax at nwnk.net
Mon Nov 1 09:00:25 PST 2004


On Monday 01 November 2004 10:35, Roland Mainz wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> > Um I don't think chucking X is the answer.  The problem is that it's
> > embarassingly slow compared to any modern GUI.  If the display were as
> > snappy as WinXP I don't care if it's 200MB.  On my desktop I constantly
> > see windows redrawing every freaking widget in situations where XP would
> > just blit from an offscreen buffer or something.
>
> That sounds more like that backing-store is turned off in your
> Xserver... ;-/

Backing store and XAA are mutually exclusive.  If you do an XAA-accelerated 
operation to a region with a backing store, then you invalidate the backing 
store.  Woops.

XAA goes to a lot of effort to accelerate the primitives no one uses, and 
desperately needs to be taken out behind the barn and shot.  KAA accelerates 
probably a tenth of the ops XAA accelerates, but they're the right tenth so 
the code is simpler and the performance way better.

So, yeah, chucking X is not the answer, but chucking XAA probably is.

- ajax
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