Resizing child windows

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)]

On Fri, 7 Sep 2007 20:41:15 +0100 Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>
babbled:

> 
> Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote:
> 
> > > 	Needless to say, but apart from reducing flickering, an
> > > 	application with windowless child widgets is much more
> > > 	light-weight and resource friendly as we don-F-F’t allocate
> > > native-A-A windows for every single widget.
> > > 
> > > It's only "resource friendly" if you ignore the overhead of processing
> > > (as well as transmitting) all of those MotionNotify events.
> > 
> > that overhead is really nothing to worry about. for every time u need to
> > reconfigure
> 
> How often is that? It's a lot less frequent than motion events.

its incredibly more expensive than a motion event by several digits in factor -
and much more noticeable.

> > u need to not just draw but also move/resize a bunch of windows
> 
> Most child widgets don't need to be reconfigured if the parent is
> reconfigured (unless you're dividing the space equally between the
> children, which is usually bad for aesthetic reasons as well as for
> efficiency).
> 
> > and also handle their stacking when you have them overlap?
> 
> How common are overlapping widgets?

not very because most modern widget sets just don't allow it - but it is
allowed by some and in demand for some purposes - as i said before - when you
get more exotic, core x goes out the window in usefulness.

> > for that matter
> > non-rectangular event regions - see how wonderfully efficient x gets with
> > window shapes having to be generated and set/reset from client to server
> > side, instead of simply handling it with much more efficiency client-side.
> 
> How common are non-rectangular widgets? Beyond that, how common are
> non-rectangular widgets which are non-rectangular for reasons which
> aren't purely cosmetic?

it is purely cosmetic - but users LIKE IT. artists and designers LIKE IT. they
are actually very common when you give the designers a chance to have some fun.

> > once you
> > get sufficiently exotic - x's event stream breaks down and you DIY. since
> > the cost difference is really negligible (these days) you go for just 1
> > model for simplicity. they are doing the right thing by their design and
> > needs. zack isn't dumb by any stretch of the imagination and he knows his
> > way around x.
> 
> It isn't the right thing by my needs. But then I do actually rely upon
> network transparency quite heavily (my main X terminal is my WindowsXP
> box; that *needs* a monitor, so it may as well be the one which gets
> it, and thus acts as X terminal for everything else).

x is pretty horrid over the network, efficiency-wise. RDP is better. we don't
even have any compression for image puts in any way or form. xlib itself can be
quite round-trip heavy if you aren't careful. it's almost a moot point trying
to be efficient over a network.

> But then I guess it depends upon whether you're interested in form or
> function. If someone thinks that non-rectangular, translucent widgets
> and animated cursors are worth spending resources on, then they're
> probably going to decide things rather differently to how I would.

it is worth it. users like it. they like aesthetics. it matters to them. just
take a look at apple.

> -- 
> Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>
> 


-- 
------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------
The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler)    raster at rasterman.com
裸好多
Tokyo, Japan (東京 日本)