[Sugar-devel] SVG performance

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 2:12 AM, Bernie Innocenti <bernie at codewiz.org> wrote:
> Sascha Silbe wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 08, 2008 at 07:51:54AM -0500, Walter Bender wrote:
>>
>>> I think the solution may be as simple as going back to GIF files.
>> Please don't. Using vector graphics helps scaling Sugar to non-XO devices.
>
> We had a quick look today, and it seems Gdk.PixBuf.new_from_file():
>
> http://library.gnome.org/devel/gdk-pixbuf/stable/gdk-pixbuf-file-loading.html#gdk-pixbuf-new-from-file
>
> With some instrumentation, it was apparent that it takes a long time
> to render some SVG files.  One in particular took half a second on a
> laptop with a fast processor!  A visual inspection of the problem
> files reveals they mostly contain just a <path> with a few dozen
> points in it.
>
> It seems GDK supports SVG through a loader plugin.  Can we put the
> blame on librsvg for this slowness?  Are there alternative SVG
> renderers we could try?

Dom Lachowicz told me long ago that librsvg being slow on the XO
wouldn't surprise him, as no efforts have been done in optimizing it
for slower machines. So there should be some low hanging fruit if
someone wished to get their hands dirty.

Regards,

Tomeu