Around 13 o'clock on Dec 17, Jonathan Rockway wrote:

> Remote X is very important, and very widely used.  Network
> transparency is what makes X unique and useful.  If you don't want
> that overhead check out DirectFB or whatever that other windowing
> system project is called.

This was one of the prime motivators for the Render extension.
Applications were already doing many of the things Render is built for, 
but without server-side support running them over the wire is essentially 
impossible.

Render makes client-side font management perform better over the wire than 
server-side font management.

Applications have been using client-side fonts for a long time.  All that 
this Xft change does is acknowledge this in a more formal way.  Desktops 
that incorporate Render support will be able to accelerate this operation; 
legacy desktops will have somewhat slower support.  Not that client-side 
fonts have ever been a significant performance issue for existing 
applications; the only care needed is to avoid round trips -- you might 
not want to enable anti-aliasing when running to that ancient X terminal; 
regular bitmap text will run fast enough.

It's time to admit that server-side fonts have never been sufficient for 
any but the most rudementary of applications and move on.

Keith Packard        XFree86 Core Team        Compaq Cambridge Research Lab


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