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[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Render speed test with imlib/xrender/sdl/pixbuf/ftwl
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[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Render speed test with imlib/xrender/sdl/pixbuf/ftwl

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To: Freeciv-Dev <freeciv-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Freeciv-Dev] Re: Render speed test with imlib/xrender/sdl/pixbuf/ftwl
From: Jason Dorje Short <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2005 16:24:54 -0500

Raimar Falke wrote:

Also note that I can only say that ftwl is used correctly. Please
suggest any other improvements of the usage of the other libs.
Note that most (99%) of our graphics don't use alpha.  And with some 
tilesets (speciallly designed for older computers or for gui-xaw) no 
graphics use alpha.  For graphics without alpha drawing is much faster. 
 For instance with gdk2 I measure drawing with pixmap+mask to be 4x 
faster than drawing with pixbufs.  So the current method in the gtk2 
client uses pixmap+mask for all sprites that don't use alpha, and pixbuf 
for those that do.
This is a reason why cairo xlib drawing is slow also.  They use xrender 
even when there is just a 1-bit mask.  I consider this a bug in cairo 
(although because of cairo's design it is fixable, whereas with 
gdkpixbuf the problem is unfixable).  It's probably also a bug in 
xrender, which should try to use the fast drawing if possible.
Summary: use server-side drawing where possible, client-side drawing 
where necessary.  Design the interface so that this may happen 
transparently in the backend.
-jason



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