On Fri, May 26, 2000 at 04:05:06AM -0500, Erich Zigler wrote:
> I've been toying around with the latest Blackbox (0.60.3), and I disabled
> the window frame pixmaps. But I havent seen a signifigant drop in the
> ammount of memory X is using. Im running FreeBSD-4.0 STABLE and XFree86 4.0.
> Im also curious if anyone has had any luck compiling X or blackbox with
> Pentium specific optimizations and how it worked out.
>
Hmm. Well here's the best way I know of to demonstrate the difference
that --disable-styled-frames can make :
1. Rebuild and install blackbox _without_ using --disable-style-frames.
2. Switch your style to the Minimal style provided with blackbox.
3. Exit blackbox and X, and then start them up again so we start
with a clean slate.
4. Running top, and keep an eye on the X memory as you start up
a few programs -- the difference's in the next step will be most
notable if you create a number of large windows of different sizes.
5. Now switch the theme to TDF. If you're on a slower box, pay
attention to how long it takes Blackbox to switch the theme --
it can take a little while, and it'd take _much_ less time if you
were using --disable-styled-frames. Regardless, you should see a
noticeable jump in the amount of memory X is using.
The point here is that TDF uses styled frames, while Minimal does
not, and most of the increased X consumption is because of that. In
everyday use you'll end up with a little less of a savings with
--disable-styled-frames than you'll see here, just because Minimal is
a _very_ minimal style. But this should give you an idea of how much
--disable-styled-frames can or cannot save you.
Another interesting thing to compare is difference in the time it takes
Blackbox to redraw windows after resizing under these two themes (again,
when you don't use --disable-styled-frames).
Jeff Raven
