[kde-linux] Re: KDE on high resolution monitor

[Duncan]

Alex Schuster posted on Sun, 12 Dec 2010 22:04:43 +0100 as excerpted:

> yahoo-pier_andreit writes:
> 
>> I tryed zoom effect, it is quite buggy, zoom in, zoom out and real size
>>  doesn't work fine, sometime doesn't work at all, now I'm working with
>> zoom in and cannot disable it:-)
> 
> I had similar trouble, I suspected my German keyboard layout. I changed
> the hotkeys, and since then it's working fine.

That just might be it!

I changed the hotkeys to something I could better remember anyway, and 
I've not had a problem at all (except when I switch effects off and try to 
zoom! =:^( ), but keyboard layouts could indeed have something to do with 
whether the default accels work well or not.

The lessen being, if the hotkeys aren't working, try assigning something 
different.

>> sharpen is better, increase total usability and with the small fonts I
>> can etter read :-)
> 
> Hmm, I did not notice a difference, but maybe I did not look close
> enough.

One of the gripes I had about the early kde effects interface (sort of 
fixed now, /sort/ /of/) is that there was no indication at all whether an 
effect was even possible on the hardware one was running.  If an effect 
didn't work, it simply seemed to do nothing, but unless the user had 
actually seen what the effect did before (presumably on other hardware), 
he had no way of knowing whether he was simply not observant enough, or 
whether the keyboard triggers weren't working correctly, or whether it 
simply didn't work on that hardware.

I believe it was with 4.4 (perhaps 4.3?, I think I remember it from 4.4 at 
least, and know it's in 4.5) that they did put a warning in, when one 
toggled effects (or between opengl and xrender/composite), for effects 
kwin couldn't actually enable due to the hardware.  That definitely helps 
as at least there's /some/ way to know, now, but there's still absolutely 
no indication on the effects tab of what is simply a waste of time to try 
to enable vs what should actually work.[1]  Enabling an effect and trying 
it yields no indication at all that the hardware/driver flat doesn't have 
the necessary feature available to enable that effect (if that's the 
case).  One has to toggle effects or toggle xrender/opengl mode first, and 
notice the notifier listing which effects it couldn't enable, before it's 
apparent which ones simply won't work.

Sharpen is just such an effect.  Apparently, not only does it require 
opengl, but it requires a specific opengl feature not available on all 
hardware/drivers.  If you're not noticing a difference, it's very likely 
because your hardware/driver simply doesn't support that feature at all.  
It'd be very nice if it told you so up front, but it doesn't.

There's also a few features that the driver may /claim/ support for, that 
don't actually work as intended (very slow or otherwise buggy, either 
simply not working as intended or crashy/freeze-prone).  The Intel driver 
in particular (but also the freedomware Radeon driver, to a lessor extent) 
apparently implements some opengl features in software, where they're not 
hardware accelerated, or even flat-out lies about support, at times.  
This /does/ allow them to support various games that would otherwise be 
broken, because many games apparently test for effects they don't actually 
use, or use extremely sparingly, but software rendering is 
/slow/, and trying to use features that were claimed supported but aren't 
is a ticket to crashes and freezes, and there have been complaints about 
kde/kwin as a result of trusting the driver.  But those problems are 
gradually being worked out, both thru blacklists implemented in kwin, and 
with updates in the kernel and drivers to actually support properly what 
they claim to support.  (The color-invert effect initially gave me an all-
white screen, here, instead of color-inverting, for instance, but with 
late 2.6.37 kernel release candidates it's actually working as intended.  
Again, freedomware radeon driver, hd4650/rv730 card/chip.)

---
[1] The ideal would be that hardware-disabled effects were actually dimmed 
out, so they couldn't be toggled, especially for xrender vs opengl mode 
which is easily known.  If it requires opengl as many effects do and 
xrender mode is enabled, dim out the effect so the user doesn't waste time 
trying it at all!

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman