[Lazarus] Performance of GTK 2 and CE

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 6:44 PM, Graeme Geldenhuys
> <graemeg.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Wow, even local GTK2 is *way* slower than GTK1.  So I really wasn't
>> imagining it when I switch Lazarus IDE to GTK2.
> 
> We are aware of that. But gtk1 has a lot of other problems too, so it
> isn't exactly a good choice. Just comparing speed may give a false
> impression that gtk1 is a good choice.

I'm not saying that gtk1 is a good choice, but with the performance of 
the gtk2 IDE to a remote screen it is, regrettably, an inevitable choice.

If a gtk2 program takes 13 seconds to run on a local screen against 3 
for gtk1, well basically who cares? CPU power is cheap and users have to 
go with the flow- in just the same way that sooner or later they will 
have to abandon KDE3 in favour of KDE4 even if the user interface is 
unfamiliar and some facilities have been dropped. If a program is slow 
on a remote screen then users will just have to abandon that way of 
working- and while we're at it shouldn't we just recognise that X is 
obsolete and go straight to the hardware?

Look, I'm sorry but as long as both gtk1 and gtk2 are supported as 
standard- and particularly while gtk2 is marked "Beta" in 0.9.26 which I 
believe is the promoted stable release- it's just not feasible to brush 
UI and performance issues under the carpet. The fact is that users and 
developers won't change their hardware and way of working on a whim, 
they don't even do that without a lot of kicking and screaming when the 
whim comes from Microsoft.

I'd also suggest that saying that the machines Graeme or myself are 
running must be badly set up is not a valid defence. I can't speak for 
Graeme but in my case they're pretty much off-the-shelf Debian or 
Slackware systems, I don't fiddle with graphics setup lightly since I 
had to do far too much of that sort of thing 15 years ago when Linux was 
rather less mature than it is these days.

We've already probably lost Andy who found that CE performance was 
unacceptable, and I don't think he was particularly impressed by his 
initial problems with the documentation. What's more I'm in a position 
where I find myself wondering whether I should start looking at C# or 
possibly Embarcadero's current offering and quite simply tell our 
customers that there's no viable alternative to MS products.

If we can't find a way to sort out these two issues- documentation and 
performance/compatibility- we won't make any friends, no matter how good 
the IDE and language.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]