On 2019.04.19 17:33, Étienne Mollier wrote: ...
It has this look and feel typical from monochrome X graphical interfaces released in the 80's. Tasty ! :)
At least for diagnosing this problem, I would be interested in an alternative to xdvi.
another desktop environment. LXDE may, or may not, be to your taste. It is as light in weight as Xfce.
I think my machine is sufficiently fast that "lightweight" is not a concern. I simply cannot find my way around the gnome desktop -- I wish to see launchers for everything all the time, and not just when I run the cursor over the correct portion of the screen. The gnome approach must appeal to the video gamer; but I use the computer for serious work. With Debian releases 7 and 8, I have been running xfce.
The program may become heavy on CPU due to necessary redraws each time a window covers it.
In the workspace I have Emacs, two instances of xdvi, xfce-4-terminal, and xfce-dictionary. I am working on a ten-page text-only document with LaTeX markup. I did not experience this problem with Debian 8.
Are you running your Xfce desktop with or without the compositor ?
I found the menu; ENABLE DISPLAY COMPOSITING was checked. I was unaware of the "tweaks" menu.