AntiAliased text on X [was code bloat]

[Kendall Bennett]

Keith Packard <keithp at keithp.com> wrote:

> We could measure this more precisely by temporarily modifying the software
> drawing code to treat the other pixels as transparent and see what
> performance looks like.  But, as a rough estimate, x11perf already has code
> which measures client-side text performance for antialisaed and non-antialiased
> text (in glyphs/sec):
> 
> 			non-AA	  AA
> 	Charter 10	209000	 52300
> 	Charter 24	 97600	 15800
> 	Courier 12	207000	 45200
> 
> I think this measured 4-6x speedup supports the above hypothesis
> tying AA text speed to frame buffer read performance for
> translucent pixels.  It also suggests that the performance effect
> is not strongly affected by glyph size (at least in this range). 
> 
> We should clearly give Owen's suggestion a try and see what
> results that produces. 

Yep. Is it possible to measure the speed of AA text glyphs to a system 
memory buffer (ie: not video memory)? That will give you a pretty good 
idea for how Owen's suggestion would work performance wise.

Regards,

---
Kendall Bennett
Chief Executive Officer
SciTech Software, Inc.
Phone: (530) 894 8400
http://www.scitechsoft.com

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