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Colors don't draw correctly when compositor is enabled
Status:
RESOLVED: DUPLICATE
Product:
Xfce4-terminal
Component:
General

Comments

Description Stephen Havelka 2007-11-11 06:50:19 CET
User-Agent:       Opera/9.24 (X11; Linux i686; U; en)
Build Identifier: 

If the compositor is enabled via Window Manager Tweaks, programs that use various colors (such as the Jed editor) show the colors wrong, sporatically.  When scrolling through a file, the colors flip from regular to bright.  If another Terminal window is placed behind this window, the contents of that window affect the brightness on the colors of this window.

Using Xorg intel driver.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Enable compositor
2.  Open Terminal and display something with colors
3.  Try placing an empty (black) terminal window behind the window from #2 and re-display something with colors

Actual Results:  
Colors are not displayed properly at step #2.
They are displayed properly at step #3.

Expected Results:  
All colors should be displayed with proper intensity.
Comment 1 Benedikt Meurer editbugs 2007-11-12 08:07:25 CET
Hm, either a bug in VTE or the compositor or something in Xorg. Dunno. Ideas?
Comment 2 Stephen Havelka 2007-11-12 17:24:21 CET
(In reply to comment #1)
> Hm, either a bug in VTE or the compositor or something in Xorg. Dunno. Ideas?
> 


Hi, I suspected a compositor bug for two reasons:  the bug is only active when the compositor is enabled, and the specific way in which the colors of the letters are drawn incorrectly often resembles the background image.

Dragging a window full of text across the background will cause the scrambled colors to change according to the light and dark areas of the background image.

Thanks,
Steve
Comment 3 Olivier Fourdan editbugs 2007-11-12 22:20:43 CET
I believe this is a known problem, however I tend to believe this is a bug with the Xserver and ARGB windows because 1) it shows with other compositors, 2) it doesn't show with proprietary drivers such as NVidia and 3) switching to 16bpp fixes the issue.

BTW, the use of ARGB window with terminal a big problem and cause a lot of issues  for people w/out hardware accelerated render (ppl just say Xfce is dead slow just because Terminal is using ARBG and that makes moving/resizing unusable)
Comment 4 Benedikt Meurer editbugs 2007-11-13 07:58:06 CET
Hm, never noticed a slowdown in terminal performance.
Comment 5 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2007-11-13 09:19:43 CET
(In reply to comment #4)
> Hm, never noticed a slowdown in terminal performance.

I see it here using 'nv' (nvidia on ppc linux = no accel).  I have a wrapper script for Terminal that sets XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS; without it, dragging terminals across the screen is jerky and eats CPU.  Ditto for fast-scrolling text.
Comment 6 Benedikt Meurer editbugs 2007-11-15 21:06:22 CET
Stupid question maybe, but why does the Xserver provide ARGB visuals if Composite is disabled?
Comment 7 Olivier Fourdan editbugs 2007-11-15 21:10:47 CET
Benny, if you have not noticed a slow down, then you are using a using a driver that implements xrender in hardware (NVidia closed source driver maybe?).

Anyway, back on topic, the problem is not with xfwm4 compositor and this is easy to verify:

1) kill xfwm4
2) run xcompmgr

The same problem shows even when xfwm4 is not running.
Comment 8 Olivier Fourdan editbugs 2007-11-15 21:42:23 CET
(In reply to comment #6)
> Stupid question maybe, but why does the Xserver provide ARGB visuals if
> Composite is disabled?

Composite != Compositor

The Xserver does not advertise ARGB visual if Composite is disabled. However, the problem arises when Composite is Enabled (by default in Xorg 7.x) because the Xserver cannot tell whther or not a _Compositor_ is or will be running at some point.
Comment 9 Benedikt Meurer editbugs 2007-11-15 22:04:45 CET
Right, but if Composite is enabled, I have to request ARGB windows, otherwise Terminal would have to be restarted completely after turning on the compositor. So, the question is basicly, why is composite is enabled for not-hardware accelerated setups?

BTW: I use nvidia/ati binary drivers. And I always disable Composite, so that's probably the reason why I do not notice any slow downs.
Comment 10 Olivier Fourdan editbugs 2007-11-16 18:06:54 CET
(In reply to comment #9)
> So, the question is basicly, why is composite is enabled for not-hardware
> accelerated setups?

Because this is the default setup...
Comment 11 Ori Bernstein 2007-11-16 19:01:20 CET
> So, the question is basicly, why is composite is enabled for not-hardware
> accelerated setups?

Because it has the potential to be very useful even when it's not being used for compositing your desktop. For example, it's almost essential for doing a good screen magnifier implementation, or for making out-of-process browser plugins able to merge into the browser window with transparency and/or shaping.

The question is why painting ARGB is so slow when you're not compositing, I think.
Comment 12 Stephen Havelka 2007-11-16 20:21:58 CET
So is this a VTE bug?  If so, then I'll go file a bug report with them.

Is there a workaround that XFCE can use to fix it?

This is surely one I'd like to see fixed...

thanks!
Steve
Comment 13 Benedikt Meurer editbugs 2007-11-28 17:35:12 CET
Dunno, as said, may also be a bug in Xorg.
Comment 14 Olivier Fourdan editbugs 2007-11-28 21:04:07 CET
(In reply to comment #13)
> Dunno, as said, may also be a bug in Xorg.

Yes, I know, but using ARGB by default in Terminal causes a lot of problems, including people claiming that "xfce" is slow because ARBG move/resize is sloooow *even* when the compositor is not activated.
Comment 15 Nick Schermer editbugs 2009-07-06 10:59:35 CEST

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 5529 ***

Bug #3663

Reported by:
Stephen Havelka
Reported on: 2007-11-11
Last modified on: 2009-12-17

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Assignee:
Nick Schermer
CC List:
1 user

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