Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
On 29/12/2020 16:29, Thorsten Behrens wrote: >> XRender. Hopefully I’m reading the code right. If I am reading that >> right, are there any distributions that ship X11 *without* XRender? >> > I believe that's the wrong question to ask - there's always going to > be a fringe use case where Xrender is not (easily) available. Old, or > remote X11 comes to mind. It would have to be -very- old not to support Xrender, which is also available via remote protocol; and is ~20 years old. I would say the probability is near zero of that being useful. I'd be well up for killing non-Xrender code-paths if that's easy and safe - but we should really just go for using statically linked skia's X11 support and kill that native X11 rendering code in big chunks. Ditto for the Mac backend, and ultimately for the GDI Windows backend. Then with a sane alpha API we could switch to in-line alpha and get some big performance improvement for rendering. I'd love to see someone looking at that. The S390x thing - I saw problems there related to Skia GPU acceleration on that, but either the CPU pixel bashing works there - or we can fix it I guess: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1144632 Looks interesting some years ago. There are huge benefits to having a much more powerful single rendering backend ~everywhere, that removes the need for lots of fallback code. So - I'd love to see the existing 'gen' backend switch quietly to using static skia rendering =) My 2 cents, Michael. -- michael.me...@collabora.com <><, GM Collabora Productivity Hangout: mejme...@gmail.com, Skype: mmeeks (M) +44 7795 666 147 - timezone usually UK / Europe ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
On Tuesday 29 of December 2020, Ilmari Lauhakangas wrote: > We could start by gathering the concrete things that we use X11 backend > for. > > One of them is UI tests, where we advise to use SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen > when we want to observe the UI while running tests or while logging UI > events in the domain specific language: > https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/UITests > > Hopefully someone can explain why we still need to do this. I think this is simply because 'gen' is the lowest common denominator and thus considered the safest. You can build LO without Gtk or KF5 backends, but 'gen' is always there. On Tuesday 29 of December 2020, julien2412 wrote: > There's also kf5 rendering (corresponding to kde, I don't know why > it's not called "kde5") which doesn't use accessibility but need a lot of The organization is KDE, the code is KDE Frameworks. Calling the VCL backend 'kde5' would be like calling the Windows one 'microsoft10'. On Tuesday 29 of December 2020, julien2412 wrote: > I understand but IMHO Skia support in LO is not enough mature (first commit > on master branch of LO is in 2019-11-27 so just 1 year whereas it's an > essential component) and above all, it needs at least one additional > maintainer (for me the main pb here) (see my response to Chris). Maturity is not measured only by time. I can easily spin this by saying that Skia is the best performing drawing code and the most maintained (or 2nd most maintained, maybe, after gtk3), and most backends AFAIK have zero maintainers. So you're ignoring the other side of the equation, such as that this whole thread is about the possibility of removing that other side of the equation. And I'd be concerned about other things, such as the fact that with Skia we're much more at the mercy of upstream than with other options. (Obviously, I'm biased.) -- Luboš Luňák l.lu...@collabora.com ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
On Tuesday 29 of December 2020, Chris Sherlock wrote: > Hi all, > > I am interested in knowing the future of the X11 VCL backend now that we > have a Skia backend. Just to avoid any possible confusion, I'd like to point out that 'X11 VCL backend' is ambiguous, because VCL backends may themselves have backends. Each VCL backend is supposed to handle its platform's windows, fonts, drawing and whatnot, but some of them defer the drawing to plugable backends. So the 'gen' VCL backend is sort of the X11 VCL backend, selected by SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen, but it has different SalGraphicsImpl backends that draw using X11, Skia or until recently GL (LO has inherited from OOo also its fine tradition of definitely not making things simple, right?). So when you say X11 VCL backend, I presume you mean the X11 drawing backend, not the X11 VCL backend itself. Skia is just a drawing backend and doesn't have its own VCL backend, it's used by the 'gen' or 'win' VCL backends. > Are there any plans afoot to remove it and just go > with the Skia backend? I'm not aware of anything specific. > If not, may I ask the reason? It seems maintenance heavy. I think the reason is that it does not seem maintenance heavy. What are the specific reasons that you do find it otherwise? The X11 drawing code had relatively few commits in the last year if I exclude all the generic cleanup changes and my Skia-related commits. Also, X11 is the stable lowest common denominator, i.e. the safe fallback, which may be another reason to keep it. > If we are, do we have a potential release where we believe that Skia is > stable enough to use and remove the X11 backend? We apparently believe that Skia is stable enough to be the default on our largest platform, for both 7.0 and 7.1. Unless users are disabling it in masses, presumably it is stable enough to use (although admittedly a default is not the same as removing other options, so I'm unsure about the "and remove" part). But if the reason for wanting to remove the X11 code is XRender (lack thereof), then it might be simpler to hard-require XRender and let X11 be. -- Luboš Luňák l.lu...@collabora.com ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
On Tuesday 29 of December 2020, Chris Sherlock wrote: > On 29 Dec 2020, at 6:43 pm, r...@rene-engelhard.de wrote: > > Big endian architectures where skis does not work? > > > > In debian: s390x > > > > Regards > > > > René > > Oh! I didn’t know about that… ouch. > > I asked before, but in the X11SalGraphicsImpl::supportOperation(), it seems > to be checking to see if the X Server supports XRender. Hopefully I’m > reading the code right. If I am reading that right, are there any > distributions that ship X11 *without* XRender? I doubt somebody on this list knows enough to tell for sure how likely it's to encounter X11 without XRender. Before LO I used to be a window manager maintainer and I'm not sure. XRender works even remotely, so I expect it's not available only if the X server doesn't support it, which means either too old, custom X11 implementation maybe, or broken drivers? That's a question for X11 developers. But if XRender support is the problem, then it might be sufficient to ask if we can afford to hard-require it. I'd say if René wouldn't have a problem with it then I doubt anybody else would. -- Luboš Luňák l.lu...@collabora.com ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
> On 30 Dec 2020, at 3:31 am, Thorsten Behrens wrote: > > Chris Sherlock wrote: > >> I asked before, but in the X11SalGraphicsImpl::supportOperation(), >> it seems to be checking to see if the X Server supports >> XRender. Hopefully I’m reading the code right. If I am reading that >> right, are there any distributions that ship X11 *without* XRender? >> > I believe that's the wrong question to ask - there's always going to be a > fringe use case where Xrender is not (easily) available. Old, or > remote X11 comes to mind. > > So either we suck it up, deprecate the feature, give it some time & remove it > - or we don't if it's ~easy to retain. ;) I would be all for that! The question is, how do we get consensus for this, and if we get it how long do we keep it deprecated for before we remove it? Chris ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
Chris Sherlock wrote: > On 29 Dec 2020, at 6:43 pm, r...@rene-engelhard.de wrote: > >> If not, may I ask the reason? It seems maintenance heavy. > > > > Big endian architectures where skis does not work? > > > > In debian: s390x > > > Currently, skia doesn't even build on x86 (and their upstream has, uh, portability pretty low on their list). > I asked before, but in the X11SalGraphicsImpl::supportOperation(), > it seems to be checking to see if the X Server supports > XRender. Hopefully I’m reading the code right. If I am reading that > right, are there any distributions that ship X11 *without* XRender? > I believe that's the wrong question to ask - there's always going to be a fringe use case where Xrender is not (easily) available. Old, or remote X11 comes to mind. So either we suck it up, deprecate the feature, give it some time & remove it - or we don't if it's ~easy to retain. ;) My 2c, -- Thorsten signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
Hi, Am 29. Dezember 2020 07:13:08 MEZ schrieb Chris Sherlock : > Are there any plans afoot to remove it and just >go with the Skia backend? Hopefully not,... >If not, may I ask the reason? It seems maintenance heavy. Big endian architectures where skis does not work? In debian: s390x Regards René ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
Ilmari Lauhakangas wrote > On 29.12.2020 11.11, julien2412 wrote: >> ... > kf5 comes from KDE Frameworks 5. Thank you, I'll try to remember this one. Ilmari Lauhakangas wrote > The extra libs to install are (on Debian & Ubuntu): > > qtbase5-dev libkf5coreaddons-dev libkf5i18n-dev libkf5config-dev > libkf5windowsystem-dev libkf5kio-dev Yep I had installed them, just meant it needed extra libs. Still, gen rendering is nearer to Windows rendering than kf5 too (at least it seems too). Ilmari Lauhakangas wrote > Yeah, but if gen/x11 stops having a practical use, then it will merely > be an extra thing to test with its own quirks, causing constant > maintenance effort. I understand but IMHO Skia support in LO is not enough mature (first commit on master branch of LO is in 2019-11-27 so just 1 year whereas it's an essential component) and above all, it needs at least one additional maintainer (for me the main pb here) (see my response to Chris). -- Sent from: http://document-foundation-mail-archive.969070.n3.nabble.com/Dev-f1639786.html ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
On 29 Dec 2020, at 6:43 pm, r...@rene-engelhard.de wrote: > > Hi, > > Am 29. Dezember 2020 07:13:08 MEZ schrieb Chris Sherlock > : >> Are there any plans afoot to remove it and just >> go with the Skia backend? > > Hopefully not,... > >> If not, may I ask the reason? It seems maintenance heavy. > > Big endian architectures where skis does not work? > > In debian: s390x > > Regards > > René Oh! I didn’t know about that… ouch. I asked before, but in the X11SalGraphicsImpl::supportOperation(), it seems to be checking to see if the X Server supports XRender. Hopefully I’m reading the code right. If I am reading that right, are there any distributions that ship X11 *without* XRender? Chris ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
Hello Ilmari, I use gen rendering when trying to be nearer of a Windows config. Indeed, I'm on pc Debian x86-64 with master sources and by default it uses gtk3. Badfully, gtk3 uses accessibility part which has been quite broken since years (but I suppose no one will want to remove it). So sometimes, I got some assertion or bug with gtk3 which prevents me to reproduce the real bug. There's also kf5 rendering (corresponding to kde, I don't know why it's not called "kde5") which doesn't use accessibility but need a lot of extra libs to install (there are also all related Plasma and Wayland things that I don't know enough so sometimes it's not easy to reproduce kde specific bugs). Finally gen rendering which "seem" (perhaps I'm wrong here) not to use extra libs and in which some window dialogs are not modal (I don't know why) is a good complement to test (even if I dislike UI above all open file window dialog). Julien -- Sent from: http://document-foundation-mail-archive.969070.n3.nabble.com/Dev-f1639786.html ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
Hello Chris, Just my personal opinion of course but I think my message from 2020-04-25 is still relevant (see http://document-foundation-mail-archive.969070.n3.nabble.com/SKIA-on-Windows-Roadmap-ESC-agenda-item-tt4277989.html#a4278039), I'll just quote myself: " 1) if Luboš doesn't want or can't anymore fix the Skia bugs, whatever the reasons, who will be able to fix these bugs? Indeed, 95% of Skia patches are from Luboš. So for me it's a risk. Ideally there should be someone not from Collabora, nothing against this company but LO shouldn't rely exclusively from it for this very central part. 2) Even if Luboš does a great job fixing Skia bugs, there are only 6 opened now on about 50 bugs declared on tdf#129062 (Meta Skia). However it seems only LO people declared Skia bugs therefore I expect far more bugs when it'll be default in 7.0. So I think we should keep the possibility to revert the default option for 7.0.1/7.0.2 just in case. For those who would consider this as very hypothetical, just consider Firebird experience. 3) Is there some documentation to facilitate newcomers or not LO newcomers devs to work on this? (I found nothing in https://wiki.documentfoundation.org) " About 2) there are now 14 open bugs now. I had put this kind of comments here: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132323 (Make SKIA default. Move OpenGL and GDI rendering to Expert configuration) I always support removing old things if they're broken, experimental, (eg: I removed VLC support and tried to remove TB AB but stuck because public API) but I'm against if they're still used and there's no ready replacement. Also, as long as Luboš is the only person able to maintain support of Skia, I think it's too risky. Julien -- Sent from: http://document-foundation-mail-archive.969070.n3.nabble.com/Dev-f1639786.html ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
On 29.12.20 12:10, Tomaž Vajngerl wrote: Hi, On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 3:25 PM Ilmari Lauhakangas mailto:ilmari.lauhakan...@libreoffice.org>> wrote: On 29.12.2020 8.13, Chris Sherlock wrote: > I am interested in knowing the future of the X11 VCL backend now that we have a Skia backend. Are there any plans afoot to remove it and just go with the Skia backend? > > If not, may I ask the reason? It seems maintenance heavy. > > If we are, do we have a potential release where we believe that Skia is stable enough to use and remove the X11 backend? We could start by gathering the concrete things that we use X11 backend for. Just for clarification, the idea is to remove X11 graphic drawing backend and use skia instead, but X11 would still be used for windows/frames, so AFAIK gen would still exist, it would just use skia. oh, that's good to know. the main value of the "gen" backend for me is that it "always works", because it depends on ancient X11 libraries that haven't changed in years. there were bibisect repos in the past (particularly ones built on Ubuntu) where the only VCLplug that worked for me was "gen", or possibly the GTK2 one but that was removed already. i hope that because Skia is statically linked that "gen" will continue with this track record. ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
Hi, On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 3:25 PM Ilmari Lauhakangas < ilmari.lauhakan...@libreoffice.org> wrote: > On 29.12.2020 8.13, Chris Sherlock wrote: > > I am interested in knowing the future of the X11 VCL backend now that we > have a Skia backend. Are there any plans afoot to remove it and just go > with the Skia backend? > > > > If not, may I ask the reason? It seems maintenance heavy. > > > > If we are, do we have a potential release where we believe that Skia is > stable enough to use and remove the X11 backend? > > We could start by gathering the concrete things that we use X11 backend > for. > > One of them is UI tests, where we advise to use SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen > when we want to observe the UI while running tests or while logging UI > events in the domain specific language: > https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/UITests > > Hopefully someone can explain why we still need to do this. > > Just for clarification, the idea is to remove X11 graphic drawing backend and use skia instead, but X11 would still be used for windows/frames, so AFAIK gen would still exist, it would just use skia. > Ilmari > Tomaž ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
On 29.12.2020 11.11, julien2412 wrote: I use gen rendering when trying to be nearer of a Windows config. Indeed, I'm on pc Debian x86-64 with master sources and by default it uses gtk3. Badfully, gtk3 uses accessibility part which has been quite broken since years (but I suppose no one will want to remove it). So sometimes, I got some assertion or bug with gtk3 which prevents me to reproduce the real bug. There's also kf5 rendering (corresponding to kde, I don't know why it's not called "kde5") which doesn't use accessibility but need a lot of extra libs to install (there are also all related Plasma and Wayland things that I don't know enough so sometimes it's not easy to reproduce kde specific bugs). kf5 comes from KDE Frameworks 5. The extra libs to install are (on Debian & Ubuntu): qtbase5-dev libkf5coreaddons-dev libkf5i18n-dev libkf5config-dev libkf5windowsystem-dev libkf5kio-dev Finally gen rendering which "seem" (perhaps I'm wrong here) not to use extra libs and in which some window dialogs are not modal (I don't know why) is a good complement to test (even if I dislike UI above all open file window dialog). Yeah, but if gen/x11 stops having a practical use, then it will merely be an extra thing to test with its own quirks, causing constant maintenance effort. Ilmari ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Re: Dropping X11 VCL backend
On 29.12.2020 8.13, Chris Sherlock wrote: I am interested in knowing the future of the X11 VCL backend now that we have a Skia backend. Are there any plans afoot to remove it and just go with the Skia backend? If not, may I ask the reason? It seems maintenance heavy. If we are, do we have a potential release where we believe that Skia is stable enough to use and remove the X11 backend? We could start by gathering the concrete things that we use X11 backend for. One of them is UI tests, where we advise to use SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen when we want to observe the UI while running tests or while logging UI events in the domain specific language: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/UITests Hopefully someone can explain why we still need to do this. Ilmari ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
Dropping X11 VCL backend
Hi all, I am interested in knowing the future of the X11 VCL backend now that we have a Skia backend. Are there any plans afoot to remove it and just go with the Skia backend? If not, may I ask the reason? It seems maintenance heavy. If we are, do we have a potential release where we believe that Skia is stable enough to use and remove the X11 backend? Chris ___ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
