[geeks] nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 10:22:14PM -0400, der Mouse wrote:

> There is an event type, Expose, which is sent by the X server to tell a
> client "this portion of this window needs drawing"; this is about as
> close to "please redraw your window now" as X has.  This can happen
> because the window has never been drawn before, because that window
> portion (which may be the whole window) was formerly not on the screen
> but now is, because that window portion formerly had something in front
> of it but now doesn't, etc.  Servers usually will not maintain the
> contents of unviewable windows or window portions (though it's
> permitted to, and there's a hint clients can provide to say it's likely
> to be a good idea).

> Strictly, the window manager has nothing to do with this.  It's usually
> what's responsible for shifting windows between on- and off-screen, but
> it doesn't handle telling clients they need to redraw per se.

The obvious exception here is Xgl paired with Compiz, where they do
save the unviewable windows and windows portions, and compiz seems to
stick its nose in a lot of untraditional places.

You obviously mention usually a few times, but I suspect it won't be
that long until Xgl and compiz are the usual,  most to the distress of
people wanting to keep updates coming for older graphics systems.