From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Why is Emacs so slow when used remotely? Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:50:32 +0200 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Message-ID: References: <76f5ba95-cc68-4326-a962-f515c0fb70cd@y31g2000vbt.googlegroups.com> <3ebca0e6-c698-44dd-a4fd-6166233f5eba@q26g2000vbn.googlegroups.com> <87ocbqsq3g.fsf@puma.rapttech.com.au> <87tylizq1x.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> <87d3s6s1y3.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1291868812 7904 80.91.229.12 (9 Dec 2010 04:26:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 04:26:52 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Dec 09 05:26:48 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PQY5e-0001Xf-02 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:26:46 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:54853 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PQY5c-000151-Os for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:26:44 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!newsfeed6.news.xs4all.nl!newsfeed5.news.xs4all.nl!xs4all!news.wiretrip.org!news2.arglkargh.de!newsfeed.straub-nv.de!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 21 Injection-Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:50:31 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx03.eternal-september.org; posting-host="akJkb/0A17YyfaiDlwImNg"; logging-data="24571"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/THt6FFXgDEsduVwBmHL/d" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.2 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:zkRe/sY310vsYRRF5BzcYtpBm1s= sha1:zEYiWEwZNzEcCY47ZPokRMvXTa0= Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:181447 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:76640 Archived-At: >> This is not useful, if you only work with text. The X protocol is not >> significantly worse than any other terminal protocol to send over text. > Font rendering/antialiasing/composition nowadays happens mostly at the > client side if I am not mistaken. That makes the X protocol much worse > even with text. Apparently it doesn't have to be that way: client-side rendering requires sending pixmaps to the server, whereas server-side rendering requires sending font-metadata to the client. Depending on the particular situation either one can be faster than the other. Apparently, if the pixmaps get appropriately cached, the amount of data in either case, for some mythical "typical" situation, has been measured to be comparable, while the client-side rendering benefits from the fact the sending pixmaps to the server is much more latency-tolerant than querying font metadata, which requires a lot round-tripping. It sounded very counter-intuitive to me, but it came from some USENIX article by one of the head X guys, IIRC. Stefan