Re: Cairo Bindings now added to Gnoga

[David Botton <david@botton.com>]

> I am no expert in the matter. What is your take on this:

That is actually a much slower way of doing things than I am using with Gnoga It is using websockets for a VNC like environment.

> Broadway looks like a proper GTK (and thus Cairo) backend.

Not at all, it is just broadcasting images. Even in GTK most of cairo's work is _not_ being done using the "native" backend as you are calling it but rather on an image surface (png) that is then transferred to the X11 context. That is no different then in Gnoga, render the image to a png and transfer to browser for render. Except that I can also transfer SVG (which interestingly enough on most browsers use Cairo to display :)

> But why not to use the native backend then?

When running a Gnoga app local it will be possible to transfer the entire image in memory to the browser and so as fast as in Gtk. Keep in mind that even over websockets you can achieve easily 20-30fps second in many situations and if transfering SVG even faster.

In summary the only difference in Cairo between GTK and Gnoga, is that in Gnoga the "buffered" image has to be transferred across the network. Once I have the webkit local app portion ready, that will also not be a factor for local apps.


> Although it might be an interesting option for embedded applications
> running under VxWorks (no GTK at all) or under Linux without X11 support.

Gnoga would be, but Broadway is slow and very intense on the processor.

In fact one area I think that Gnoga will shine in the long term is its use in embedded systems to provide a remote GUI.

David Botton