Re: [GNOME VFS] Re: geometry updates ...

[Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com>]

On Tuesday, July 2, 2002, at 08:17  AM, Alexander Larsson wrote:

> Ah, so the metadata changed signal is not very fine-grained. Not much 
> to do then. We can't keep saving it all the time.
>
> It worries me a bit though. Does any metadata change, even those that 
> don't affect the layout, cause a relayout. This may suck a bit when we 
> get metadata in gnome-vfs and other apps start using it.

The way this design is intended to work is that if you get metadata, 
you are supposed to keep the value you got, and if you get a signal 
that says it changed, you get the new value and only do work if the 
value changed.

So if we get information about metadata changing, then we should re-get 
the keywords lists, and if they changed, then, yes, there is some 
relayout-type work possibly necessary to display the right emblems. But 
just re-getting the keyword lists for files where the metadata changed 
should not be as expensive as doing the layout.

Then, if the notification and checking the values is too expensive, the 
next step is considering whether the change notification needs to be 
more fine grained. But we need to take the first step of only doing 
work for actual changes before we decide that's necessary.

    -- Darin