[sugar] [PATCH] screenshots hurt

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 4:47 PM, Erik Garrison <erik at laptop.org> wrote:
> By "problem" I was referring to the issue that the screenshots are used
> to resolve.  I now am clear that the problem is that users can't figure
> out what's what in their journal without screenshots.  The current
> patchset attempts to resolve this issue in a way that doesn't affect
> the performance of window change events in Sugar.

I can think of a couple of limitation with your approach (aside from
the implementation issue we discussed in irc, which can be easily
fixed):

1 If you close the an activity while the frame is up, you will get a
screenshot with some black areas.
2 If you close a non-active activity from the frame (icon palette) you
would get a completely black screenshot.

I would be personally fine with these imperfections to get better
window management performance.

>> Because with the current approach we can only take these screenshots
>> while the window is visible on the screen, and taking them on window
>> navigation events is the only way to ensure they are always updated.
>
> If the activity is still running, then why does an updated screeshot
> have to appear in the journal?  The user can easily reach the activity
> by the same navigational system that takes them to the journal.

That's not a big loss to me.

>> There are a couple of ways we can take them only when saving the document:
>>
>> 1 Use gtk offscreen rendering (should be available in F10)
>> 2 Use a composite manager (which has several side effects...)
>
> Can these be implemented and tested quickly?

Surely not for 8.2, *maybe* for 9.1.

Marco