Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ark1!dsill
From: dsill@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Dave Sill)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: smooth scrolling
Message-ID: <56@ark1.nswc.navy.mil>
Date: 4 Aug 89 19:51:07 GMT
References: <8908041447.AA03238@romano.cs.wisc.edu>
Sender: news@ark1.nswc.navy.mil
Reply-To: dsill@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Dave Sill)
Organization: Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren VA
Lines: 37
In-reply-to: dave@CS.WISC.EDU (Dave Cohrs)

In article <8908041447.AA03238@romano.cs.wisc.edu>, dave@CS (Dave Cohrs) writes:
> :
>I USE emacs under X11 (and I apologize for not making that obvious in my
>original posting)!  Emacs doesn't use TERMCAP when running under X11.
>It opens a raw window.  Because there's not TERMCAP, there's no way I
>can fix the padding.  When running under X11, emacs doesn't calculate
>costs for anything, so it thinks that scrolling is infinitely fast, or
>some such stupid thing, while it should think that scrolling, even one
>single line, is the slowest possible operation it could perform, given
>the rule that it should send "the smallest number of characters to the
>screen".  Perhaps in my ample free time :-) I will attempt to correct
>this the right way, by fixing the code.

Good luck.  How do you expect to allow for differences between the
speeds of different display servers?  I've been using emacs under X
for a couple months now on a diskless Sun 2 (ssslloooowwww) and, more
recently, on and NCD-16 (zippy).  I don't recall the Sun ever being
especially slow scrolling.  And the NCD seems to scroll faster than
the eye can see.  Whatever you're using is apparently especially poor
at it.

>As Dale Worley pointed out, there needs to be a TERMCAP equivalent for
>window systems, because different systems have different performance
>characteristics.  A window system, even a version of X11, with backing
>store and a graphics accelerator would probably scroll quickly.
>Unforunately, the version I use has no backing store, and no graphics
>accelerator.

My NCD only has 1.5 MB.  I have backing store disabled.

>Doesn't anyone else out there use emacs under X?

Perhaps the lack of general complaints about emacs under X implies
that your situation is atypical.

(I'm running 18.54 emacs under X11R2 on a 4.3 '780 and a couple of
Pyramids.)