Re: Widget smoothness (was: Unidentified subject!)

[Derek Simkowiak <dereks kd-dev com>]

> I don't think smooth scroll is a must have... It can grow up cpu
> utilization, and it's something not strictly necessary...

	It is one of those eye-candy things that can make a big difference
to people coming from an MS or Mac background.  I believe it is important
to have it--regardless of whether or not it's an effective use of
processor power, the current state of the personal computing world is that
people like to see it, and have already become accustomed to it under
other platforms.

	Do we want people to fire up a GTK+-based app (or Gnome, for that
matter) and have it seem primitive?  MS's IE, one of the most-used apps in
the world (as sad as that is) has had the smooth scroll feature for a
couple of years now--an app without it will feel like 1995 to all
non-technical endusers who will be switching to Linux in the near future.

	If CPU utilization really is an issue, we could build in an option
into the toolkit to turn it off.  Personally, I do not believe it would be
that big a deal (testing is necessary to confirm either viewpoint).

>  Faster redrawing (with double-buffering) is something to have,
> because it can even decrease cpu utilization...

	Although a pixmap buffer would obviously cut CPU usage, I don't
see how double-buffering can decrease processor usage more than a single
buffer. If you have the time, please email me (privately) explaining how
that works...?


Thank You,
Derek Simkowiak
dereks@kd-dev.com