Re: Global motion events

[Russell Shaw <rjshaw netspace net au>]

Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-05-14 at 13:49 +1000, Russell Shaw wrote:
>
>
> >  2. The need to have windows to catch mouse events in itself
> >
> > >    is a problem. It's a frequent GTK+ FAQ, GTK+ widgets like 
> > >    GtkLabel have complex logic for sometimes adding an event
> > >    widget, and an artificial restriction is introduced for
> > >    for drag sources and tooltips.
> >
> > Why doesn't every widget have an X window?
>
>
> The basic reason is that it looks a lot better if most widgets
> draw *on* the parent window, rather than having a separate 
> rectangular window they draw into. This allows them to merge 
> with the parent background, to have smooth shaped outlines,
> to have alpha channels, and so forth.
>
> It also allows smoother relayout (you don't have synchronization
> problems between relayout and redraw). And is somewhat more
> efficient.
>
> Regards,
> 					Owen

It makes things more complicated when some widgets have windows and
others don't. It would be good if gtk was simplified by making every
widget have an X window and work the same way, and enhancements to
the X windows were put into the X server. It would make the X server
non-standard, but it needs updating anyway. If all the client-side
anti-aliased rendering and fonts etc were put into the X server, then
gtk would be smaller and faster.