kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Maciej Sumiński <maciej.suminski@xxxxxxx>]

On 11/07/2013 07:11 PM, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
> On 11/07/2013 11:59 AM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> > On 11/7/2013 12:36 PM, Maciej Sumiński wrote:
> > > On 11/05/2013 07:40 PM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> > > > On 11/5/2013 4:33 AM, Maciej Sumiński wrote:
> > > > > Does anyone have anything against disabling switching (remove its hotkey
> > > > > and menu entry) to Cairo backend? I think it may only give a bad
> > > > > impression to users, as it is too slow for comfortable work. I am going
> > > > > to maintain it in case that there are changes in the GAL, but as it was
> > > > > said in the beginning - its main purpose is for PDF generation or
> > > > > printing.
> > > > >
> > > > > Regards,
> > > > > Orson
> > > >
> > > > I'm fine with disabling it.  It's not useful for display rendering even
> > > > on my home computer which is very fast.  I can't image how slow it must
> > > > be on an older system or laptop.  Is there any other reason to Cairo
> > > > rendering around?
> > >
> > > It could be used as a fallback renderer, but right now it is too slow
> > > for that, so - in fact, there is no sensible reason.
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Orson
> >
> > Doesn't it make more sense to fallback to the wxDC rendering?  It's
> > known to work well except under certain conditions on OSX.  You cannot
> > perform any editing other than using the P&S router so I'm not sure that
> > it's very useful as a fallback.
> >
> > Wayne
>
> What is a fallback renderer?
> i.e. when would it be used?

It could be used when OpenGL renderer does not work. I am not really 
sure if eg. Intel Atom integrated graphics is able to use it. I have 
seen a glewinfo report that states the GPU is compatible only up to 
OpenGL 1.4, which is 11 years old. I hope it was only an issue of having 
not appropriate drivers.

Regards,
Orson