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Re: Was the initial graphics mode screen removed?

 

On 1/11/22 02:33 PM, pmx wrote:


Le 11/01/2022 à 19:25, Steven A. Falco a écrit :
I don't think the dialog would help any in the situation you are describing with the artifacts on the screen. It was only shown on first start, so it wouldn't give the choice in future runs (which would be after you notice all the artifacts). You can change the rendering backend in the preferences pane though, so you can switch back to the fallback graphics that way.

I'm describing two situations.  One is the artifacts on my desktop, and one is the segfault on VMs.  As long as the window opens and is somewhat usable, then one can select fallback graphics easily from preferences, as you said.  The bigger problem is on the VMs where it crashes before the window gets a chance to even open.  I'll look at the issue you linked and see if that helps.  I'll also try a test build from the tip of the 6.0 branch and see how that behaves.

I'm more concerned that fallback graphics might be removed entirely at some point.  Hopefully accelerated mode will be bullet-proof before that decision is made.

    Steve

Unless there is much work involved to keep both backends working in the future, I strongly feel that a fallback graphics engine is a must and should be kept alive, even if this requires some (moderate...) effort.

IMHO, we shouldn't remove anything that helps to deal gracefully with the diversity of situations (like a virtual machine), graphics hardware and video drivers... and their possible bugs ! (as stated about X11/Mesa).


@ Steven :
About the possibility to choose a graphics backend, in any situation, and indeed before a segfault  happens 😁 :

What about a command line option (when launching Kicad), to force a specific graphics backend, including a "safe" fallback ?
Should be quite straightforward.

The segfault is fixed in the latest 6.0 code, so I guess there is no longer a need for either the dialog or a command.

However, some of the visual artifacts are still happening even with the latest 6.0 code, therefore the fallback graphics mode is still essential.

I've added another video showing what it looks like when I resize the pcbnew screen.  Please see comment https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues/10375#note_807446302 and https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/uploads/0aed9475350c1665d0cc200187536121/simplescreenrecorder-2022-01-11_14.29.16.mkv for details.

I'm a little concerned that new users seeing these artifacts won't know what to do about them, and may give up.

	Steve






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