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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: KFontCombo speed
From:       Lars Knoll <knoll () kde ! org>
Date:       2001-07-25 13:05:24
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On Wednesday 25 July 2001 14:50, Malte Starostik wrote:
> On Mittwoch, 25. Juli 2001 13:32, Lars Knoll wrote:
> > Still the performance problem remains. It just doesn't make sense if the
> > app loads every font available. It can take ages over a slower network
> > connection, or keep the XServer hanging for 20 seconds when you load a
> > big unicode font. At the same time, it will take up rather significant
> > amounts of ram in XServer and Client. A short calculation gives about 20k
> > per 8bit font; up to 1.5M for a large Unicode font. About a third-half of
> > this data is on the client and is often not shared between clients
> > (depending on the XServer implementation). Now multiply that with the
> > number of fonts I have on my machine: about 50-100.
> >
> > Summary: This font combo makes it very hard to use KDE on not so powerful
> > devices without adding too much in terms of useablity.
> >
> > All this is btw a rather small problem if you use Xft, but it is a huge
> > one for old xlfd based fonts. So if you really want this feature enable
> > it only when using Xft.
>
> Would it be an option to disable it by default if Xft is not used and
> enable it for Xft? Apparently I forgot to add a GUI for that option between
> the current and last freezes :(

IMO, that's a must. Without Xft it is way too expensive to load all these 
fonts.

The other must (when using Xft) is, to check if the font has latin1 
characters, and if not display the font name in the applications default font 
(and maybe show a smaple afterwards). Getting an empty font name for some 
fonts is not acceptable, and would annoy many of the thai users (the problem 
mainly occurs with some thai fonts).

> For anyone annoyed by this, kdeglobals (or a particular app's config file),
> section [KDE], DisplayFontItems=true|false :)

There might always be a config file to turn features on and of, but you 
should remember that 99% of the users will never find this (even if it's 
available in some confg dialog), and just complain about the slowness of KDE.

Lars

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