Re: Draining the font swamp
Matt Zimmerman wrote: - Xfont, which provides font services (including selection and rendering) through the X server. This is basically obsolete in favour of client-side fonts. Why is this? Client side fonts are bad for several reasons: 1) You end up with the mess you point out, where you have several different client side font systems. 2) That leads to code that is harder to maintain and configure and troubleshoot. 3) Performance suffers. The X server is in the best position to render fonts using any hardware acceleration provided by the video card, and allows for those fonts to be shared by all applications, reducing duplication and waste. Also for remote X sessions, you want the fonts rendered on the server so much less data needs exchanged between the client and server. Other than the fact that the client side implementations have advanced beyond the X server ones in recent times, is there any advantage to client side font rendering over server side? If not, then we should push to bring the client side advancements back into the server where font rendering belongs. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Draining the font swamp
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 10:52:46AM -0400, Phillip Susi wrote: 3) Performance suffers. The X server is in the best position to render fonts using any hardware acceleration provided by the video card, and allows for those fonts to be shared by all applications, reducing duplication and waste. Also for remote X sessions, you want the fonts rendered on the server so much less data needs exchanged between the client and server. Measurements have shown that over pretty much any sort of common network, latency is more of a problem than bandwidth. Server-side fonts require multiple round-trips between the server and the client for rendering, whereas client-side fonts only require the initial display. Performance-wise, we have the XRender extension for precisely this sort of situation. Other than the fact that the client side implementations have advanced beyond the X server ones in recent times, is there any advantage to client side font rendering over server side? If not, then we should push to bring the client side advancements back into the server where font rendering belongs. Font choice and layout is hard, and doesn't become any easier just because you've moved that code to a binary that runs as root. Nobody is going to argue in favour of putting a layout engine like Pango in the X server, and most of the rest of the stack is similarly well outside the scope of the X server. The client-side font revolution happened 5 years ago, and we've ended up with massively improved font support as a result. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: ReadyBoost Technology for Ubuntu and Linux
* [Florian Zeitz] Linux has been able to do this for ages, but it has been considered a bad idea, because it wears the memory sticks flash. In theory all it takes is: 1. # mkswap /dev/sdX (where sdX is your memory stick) 2. Edit your fstab to say: /dev/sdX none swap sw,pri=2 0 0 UUID=stuff none swap sw,pri=1 0 0 instead of UUID=stuff none swap sw 0 0 3. # swapon -a Then again, this is nothing at all like ReadyBoost. What ReadyBoost apparently does is to use the flash drive as a secondary disk cache (note: disk cache, not swap) for often read, rarely written data. The point being that while the disk can deliver 50MBps and the flash drive can only deliver maybe 20MBps, you still read a 4k block of data faster from the flash drive because the much lower seek time makes up for the lower sustained data rate. Of course, the most read data will be present in the disk cache in RAM anyway, so ReadyBoost only provides an advantage for not-quite-as-often read data, or maybe during boot. It is also quite clearly more beneficial (except maybe during boot) to add the same amount of RAM instead of ReadyBoost flash drive to your system, but 2GB flash drive is cheaper than 2GB RAM. There's also little reason to think that this needs to wear out the flash drive very quickly. If you store system files (or more correctly, blocks from system files) like the contents of /bin, /lib, /etc, and most of /usr, these are files that hardly ever change (except during dist-upgrade or the occasional security update), but still represent a lot of small reads and would as such benefit from being read from a 1ms seek time flash drive instead of a 10ms seek time hard drive. To answer the original question, I've not heard of anything like ReadyBoost for Linux. Googling for it, I mostly find explanations from people who did not understand ReadyBoost, and present solutions like the one I quoted. Øystein -- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. ..of course, the virus would tell you the same thing.. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: ReadyBoost Technology for Ubuntu and Linux
Am Montag, den 21.05.2007, 19:32 +0200 schrieb Florian Zeitz: ... I think it might be worth implementing if done properly (it seems using ReadyBoost in it's current form in Vista can actually slow down the system sometimes). The technique to slow down your computer and waste sticks for some milliseconds will not go into the linux kernel i guess. http://www.google.de/search?q=20060090031 But i think harddrive manufacturers will build in larger caches doing the same job much better. regards, Sven signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Draining the font swamp
On Mon, 2007-05-21 at 15:09 -0400, Phillip Susi wrote: How does server side fonts require more round trips? It should amount to a single message that specifies what font to use, what text to render, and where. Only after a detailed exchange to determine the character-set coverage of the font in question, and to perhaps request additional fonts to cover those characters that are missing; then to calculate the metrics of the font to see whether it will fit into the assigned area, and perform word-wrapping (each requiring more metric checking round-trips). Lots of back-and-forth. With client side fonts, the client has to have the fonts in the first place, then has to render them The server has to both of these too, so it doesn't matter which side you put the having or the rendering. then send them as a bitmap to the server. If you want to do things like anti aliasing, then the client has to read a bitmap from the server, then render the font into it, then send the resulting bitmap back to the server. Not true. This is what the Xrender extension is all about. The client just needs to send the rendered font, which may in fact be a series of X protocol (or GL, etc.) drawing commands. At the worst, it'd be a transparent pixmap. Just one send, regardless. Scott -- Scott James Remnant Ubuntu Development Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: ReadyBoost Technology for Ubuntu and Linux
On Monday 21 May 2007 13:32:46 Florian Zeitz wrote: Oystein Viggen wrote: * [Florian Zeitz] Linux has been able to do this for ages, but it has been considered a bad idea, because it wears the memory sticks flash. In theory all it takes is: 1. # mkswap /dev/sdX (where sdX is your memory stick) 2. Edit your fstab to say: /dev/sdX none swap sw,pri=2 0 0 UUID=stuff none swap sw,pri=1 0 0 instead of UUID=stuff none swap sw 0 0 3. # swapon -a Then again, this is nothing at all like ReadyBoost. I'll have to admit that I now know that I know nothing. Back when I wrote the message you quoted all articles I had read about ReadyBoost said it was just swapping on flash drives. Right now after doing some research I'm a bit confused, because most sites contradict each other. It seems that ReadyBoost is actually a cache for about everything from swap file over system data to often read user data. I think it might be worth implementing if done properly (it seems using ReadyBoost in it's current form in Vista can actually slow down the system sometimes). I've been suprised about how little even people who work w/ MS products every day really understand ReadyBoost. In one of the recent issues of Microsoft Technet magazine, I don't have it in front of me, but Mark from SysInternals fame has written a really good article about it. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Draining the font swamp
On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 01:13:56AM +0100, Nicolas Spalinger wrote: - Whether we still need all these horrible bitmap fonts You mean the fonts available in the x-fonts* packages? I think the names are xfonts-*. Last time I checked, X server won't start without the fixed bitmap font from xfonts-base. I would suggest a poll on usage and possible demotion to universe or specific langpacks. Might be different for CJK fonts. I believe the general consensus among Chinese users is that bitmap fonts are preferred for small font size. There is a technique called embedded bitmap that can put bitmap fonts of different size into a TrueType font, and libfreetype handles this correctly. There are currently one set of fonts (with two typefaces) in Debian/Ubuntu that has embedded bitmaps. A sad thing, however, is that although there is a group actively working on a set of Chinese bitmap fonts and has improved the quality quite a bit, their work can't be embedded into the existent TrueType font due to licensing restrictions. So I am afraid in the short term stand-alone bitmap fonts are still necessary for Chinese users who are picky about font rendering. Ming 2007.05.21 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
