On Jan 27, 2007, at 10:39 , Michael Rueger wrote:

> tim Rowledge wrote:
>> I guess we could claim that using things like the Rome/Cairo  
>> plugin is doing a modern equivalent since it is supposed to pass  
>> off most rendering chores to the GPU. If Squeak made effective use  
>> of such
>
> The main bottleneck is that in most cases we still have at least  
> one extra bitblt as Squeak doesn't support a native surface as  
> Display yet. (at least to my knowledge and what I got from  
> discussions with Bert, he can explain that in more detail than I can).

Indeed, you would have to use a Cairo backend that actually uses the  
GPU (see http://cairographics.org/backends). Currently it uses the  
image backend to an in-memory surface, bitblts that to Display, which  
then is put onto the screen by the usual VM mechanics. No speedup  
yet, this was about rendering quality foremost.

But if we could get a handle to a cairo surface that directly draws  
onto an OS window (using the Win/Mac/Xlib backends) then we should  
see a considerable speed-up. Areitha Ffenestri Romanus :)

- Bert -