[sugar] [PATCH] screenshots hurt

[Erik Garrison]

On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 03:48:54PM +0200, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 6:44 PM, Erik Garrison <erik at laptop.org> wrote:
> > I do not understand this as a temporary measure as it is completely
> > unclear why we are taking screenshots at every window manager navigation
> > event.  What problem are we trying to solve in doing so?  The resultant
> > screenshots are barely even legible when they appear in the joural.

I was trying to say that I am unclear of the motivation for having
screenshots at a heavy cost to windowmanager navigation performance.
Why is this feature more important than user comfort?

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.

> 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.

I understand that it is important to have these screenshots to resume
saved work.  The current patchset guarantees that they will exist
provided the user intentionally saves their work, or properly closes the
activity.

> 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?  If not perhaps we should
implement this patch and reintroduce the current functionality when
these features are complete.

Erik