Re: Motif support

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Akira Kyle <akira@akirakyle.com>
> Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2021 21:16:07 -0700
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>, Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es>, 
>       Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
> I know emacs supports these, my point was more about things that
> didn't exist when the current architecture of the display engine was
> conceived and thus assumptions that were made about hardware for the
> sake of performance do not necessarily now hold with newer hardware
> (for example subpixel font rendering on hidpi). I'm by no means an
> expert in how the display code has evolved since then so I can't say
> whether a "rewrite from scratch" of that code today would look the
> same as it does now. My point about firefox is that that code looks
> vastly different today than it did 20 years ago (eg with webrender and
> potential other components coming from servo) because the whole
> architecture had to be rethought in order to take full advantage of
> hardware acceleration (and they did a lot of experimenting to figure
> out the "best" architecture).

I do know how the display code works and how it evolved, but frankly I
don't understand what you are trying to say, concretely.  I understand
the vague thoughts and ideas of the technological advances in GUI vs
the development of the Emacs display, but do you actually have
something specific to suggest about that, like what could the Emacs
display engine do differently using some of these technologies?
because I think we all understand the general issues; it's specific
practical ideas that are missing, if we really want to modernize the
Emacs display code.

And even if you are talking about a complete redesign of the display
engine, then again, to make that even marginally practical, please
present specific ideas of such a redesign.  That at least could give
someone motivation to sit down and develop those ideas at some point.

> Sure, but the question isn't a binary one (hardware accelerated vs
> not) but how well is the available hardware being utilized which is a
> much more difficult question to answer.

The question that interests me is which part(s) of the Emacs display
code you'd like to accelerate using this hardware.