Documentation?

[Jim Gettys]

On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 19:08 -0400, Patrick O'Donnell wrote:

> >We did fix it, with composite, in a way better than before.  You don't
> >have to run a compositing manager that does anything visual at all; you
> >don't have to have one iota of transparency, drop shadows, or even
> >anti-aliased fonts.
> 
> It's not really the same, though, is it?  It's a bit disingenuous to
> claim that it's a simple substitution, when in the one case the
> application merely sets a bit in the window attributes and in the
> other we have to find and configure (or write?  I'm still not clear on
> that) a whole separate module with its attendant learning curve.  And
> we have to make sure our customers install and configure it properly
> -- not an easy task, I can tell you!
> 
> I freely acknowlege that backing store and saveunders were *hints*,
> depending on them for efficiency was as bad idea 20 years ago as now,
> and that we have no basis to "complain" when X.org chooses to ignore
> the request.  Nevertheless, one is given a free lunch for 20-odd
> years, then suddenly one is made to work for it, it's natural to
> grumble a bit.

Except that if you were running this same application on anyone's
default gnome or KDE environment (or several other window managers) you
(or your customers) would never notice....

And if you don't want to even change window manager and are using an
antique without compositing support, just install and start running
xcompmgr...

Your free lunch returns...
                           - Jim

-- 
Jim Gettys <jg at freedesktop.org>