Re: how efficient is the canvas

[John R Sheets <dusk ravendusk org>]

Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> 
> >       Also, is the canvas efficient with hundreds or even thousands of
> >  text items?  Obviously they're going to take up RAM and so forth, I'm not
> >  expecting the canvas to be magic, just is it reasonable to use it for
> >  situations like that?  Thanks.
> 
> The canvas provides nested groups (with nested bounding boxes) for
> efficiency.  For an HTML renderer in the canvas, though, I would not
> use a million text items.  I would write a custom canvas item to
> render HTML paragraphs or logical blocks of a similar reasonable size.
> The rest of the stuff, like images, should be able to use the stock
> canvas items just fine.

How about lots of small, identical graphics?  It's my
understanding that GnomeCanvasImageItem copies the GdkImlibImage
into each new canvas item, as each one can be transformed
separately.  Does any canvas item exist that would allow image
sharing (at the cost of individual transforms), to cut down on
loading/rendering times?  I'm writing an application with lots of
small tiles, most of which use the same graphics file, so
something like this will really help to optimize things.  I
assume it'll take a new canvas item.  I'll write it eventually,
if I have to, but I wanted to find out if anyone else is working
on such a canvas item first....

Thanks,
John