[GRASS5] What's holding 5.3.0 release?

[Glynn Clements]

Paul Kelly wrote:

> > I suggest omitting some of the more problematic changes. The "flash"
> > feature in d.what.* springs immediately to mind.
> 
> It is quite useful sometimes though. I added a flag to disable it if
> necessary; is this not sufficient?

Having a flag to enable it would be OK. Or an environment variable, so
that users with a slow link don't have to remember to type the flag
every time.

For a 640x480 window on a 24-bpp display, R_panel_save() and
R_panel_restore() will transfer around a megabyte of data each. If
you're on a 56Kb link (that's an extreme case, but it does happen),
the flash operation will take around 5 minutes. IOW, you're probably
just going to kill XDRIVER and start again.

Isn't there a better way to implement it? E.g. just overdraw the line
rather than using a full-screen panel. Changing the panel code to use
a Pixmap rather than a temporary file would solve that problem,
although I'm concerned about the possibility of exhausting video RAM.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>