Re: Really slow xterm
Vincent Lefevre <vincent@vinc17.org> wrote:
> On 2007-05-16 15:59:10 -0500, cothrige wrote:
>> I have installed xterm via apt, running etch, and have noticed that it
>> scrolls really slowly. I compared it to rxvt by running `time ls` in
>> /usr/bin with rxvt taking 0.572s and xterm running at 4.633s. Earlier
given those times, it sounds like the XCopyArea issue.
>> it was even worse taking over 10 seconds. It is a very big difference
>> in usage, and if I am compiling something it can have very significant
>> impact.
>>
>> Has anybody else had this experience?
> xterm has always been very fast here.
It depends. There are several issues.
For normal/small scrollback sizes, the dominant one is that the XCopyArea
function performs far worse on a local connection than on a remote connection.
That's a defect in the X libraries (there's no excuse for a _local_ connection
to run 15 times slower than the same code running remotely).
rxvt happens to not use this defective function (actually it's ifdef'd
in the code with a misleading comment regarding the issue).
For "large" scrollbacks, e.g., more than 10,000 lines,
xterm has its own problems.
--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net
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