Hi,
We must consider that workstations are not our only target.
Increasing so in the future. Depending on something like libart or
cairo for a small netbook or a handheld is too much of a burden.
Absolutely not true. Modern handhelds don't just come with a GPU,
they come with a GPU which has a fully programmable shader pipeline.
There's a reason why UIKit is fundamentally different to AppKit; the
constraints of modern handhelds are very different to the constraints
of an '80s workstation. Compositing is now much faster because it can
be done in hardware and wasting RAM (for buffers) is vastly better
than wasting CPU cycles drawing: RAM uses a roughly constant amount
of power, while the CPU uses more when it's in use, so you get better
power usage by using a CoreAnimation-like model than the old AppKit
model. You also have a vastly higher ratio of RAM to pixels on an
older handheld like the Nokia 770 than you had on the best
workstations NeXT ever sold.
Things are not so rose as you describe. It is clear that if you think in
terms of an Atom based netbooks we do not need to worry, those are small
workstations in almost every aspects. But there are other devices,
netbooks based on MIPS, ARM processors. So there are handhelds.
I have one of the Letux netbooks of GoldenDelicious, they have a much
more limited framebuffer than devices you describe. So ti also
instructive to watch and know about the problems and performance
differences Nikolaus or Felipe have when running on interesting
non-mainstream devices.
If apple decides to put so powerful cpu's in their devices that they
burn the white plastic and they start to underclock the CPU... that is
their decision. Their devices are expensive anyway and don't always
perform as fast as the should either.
The point is that if we have the same dependencies and the same
requirements and the same performances of other toolkits, why should
somebody wants to use GNUstep? (admitted that we are in any case
inferior in several areas)? Just because obj-c is cool? For most that is
a problem even...
If on the contrary we distinguish ourselves because we run efficiently
on a 100$ device, we have a new market segment and we are interesting.
I think many here miss what flexibility can mean for us. Distinction.
I found LindauSTEP discussions to be very very interesting in this regard.
Riccardo
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