[vtkusers] expose slowness under X windows

[Mathieu Malaterre]

John,

	Your python script works very fast on my linux box: Using ATI latest 
binary -closed source- driver. Are you sure you are not using software 
rendering (mesa) ?

Mathieu

John Hunter wrote:
> I am experiencing an irritating expose problem that has me stumped.
> The problem is occurring on a redhat linux 9 desktop with XFree86
> 4.3.0. I don't experience it on a windows XP platform though both
> machines are similarly equipped (processor, memory, video card).
> 
> I have a renderer with approx 200 sphere actors.  When the render
> window overlaps another (non vtk) window on the desktop and I click
> back and forth between the windows (generating expose events) the
> repaints are very slow.  It seems to become worse the more actors
> there are in the renderer.  If the windows do not overlap, clicking
> back and forth between them doesn't create any slow paints.
> 
> I don't think it's simply a matter of inadequate hardware, since I can
> interact with the objects (pan, zoom, rotate) with no perceptible lag
> caused by the Render calls.  It's only on the expose events that I
> encounter the problem.
> 
> I'll include a bit of platform specific information below.  If anyone
> has any suggestions about how I can fix this, I'd appreciate it.  My
> hardware should be more than adequate to handle the scenes I am
> rendering, but this expose problem is making my desktop virtually
> unusable as I try and go back and forth between dialog boxes and the
> render window - it can take several seconds to repaint the desktop.
> I'll include a toy example below, which replicates the expose problem.
> It's not as severe as in my actual code, perhaps because I have more
> actors in my actual code, but it's apparent.
> 
> Test script
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> Test data for script (some xyz coords)
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
> Platform info:
> 
> Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz with nvidia card
> 
> hunter:~/python/projects/eegtools/test> uname -a
> Linux hunter.paradise.lost 2.4.20-8smp #1 SMP Thu Mar 13 17:45:54 EST 2003 i686
> i686 i386 GNU/Linux
> 
> 
> XFree86 Version 4.3.0 - These are the modules XFree loaded - no errors
> reported:
> 
>   bitmap, pcidata, dbe, extmod, fbdevhw, glx, record, freetype, type1,
>   dri, drm, nvidia, mouse, vgahw, ddc, fb, ramdac