Long page display problem in 0.9.6

[Ralph Cohen]

I just noticed that a problem with long pages overwriting themselves
instead of scrolling that was fixed in 0.9.5 is back in 0.9.6
including the latest nightlies. A page where I see this problem is
http://www.hcfa.gov/pubforms/06_cim/ci50.htm when I try to scroll down
the page. Is anyone else seeing this problem?

My system is running Warp4+FP12 using a Matrox G200 card with the
2.54.130 drivers

Ralph Cohen

[Michael Kaply]

This problem came back when some changes were made to the view manager
(cross-platform)

At this point we believe it is a limitation in legacy video drivers. We
are continuing to investigate.

Mike Kaply
IBM

[Ralph Cohen]

Thanks, Mike. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

Ralph

[Mikus Grinbergs]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2001 09:36:20 -0600 Michael Kaply <pspmike...@NOSPAM.yahoo.com> wrote:
> This problem came back when some changes were made to the view manager
> (cross-platform)
>
> At this point we believe it is a limitation in legacy video drivers. We
> are continuing to investigate.

I hear what you are saying, but I have DIFFICULTY understanding
how the video driver might be responsible. The overlay problem
occurs with long pages, but NOT with short pages. Yet the
__same__ video driver is being called in both instances.

To me, it seems far-fetched that the __driver__ would care how
many more characters there are in the page than are shown on the
screen. It is __Mozilla__ that has to "organize" the data for
the ENTIRE page (whether long or short). Therefore I suspect
that Mozilla is doing something DIFFERENT when its page is long.

For me, the overlay problem exhibits "banding" -- meaning that
in a very long page, there are offsets-from-the-beginning where
overlay *does* occur, and offsets-from-the-begginning where it
does *not* occur. [What the problem seems to be is that previous
text-color pixels are *not* "erased" from the screen before the
pixels from the new text position are "added" to the screen.]

Is Mozilla properly passing data addresses (segment+displacement),
for certain combinations of which the driver misbehaves? Maybe.
[But note that in late 0.9.5 the overlay problem *was* fixed,
without having to change the driver.]

Is Mozilla passing unexpected values (eg, segment+displacement),
or failing to pass certain directives (eg, "redraw background")
for certain offsets when the web page is long? Also, maybe.

mikus

[Michael Kaply]

Actually, the reason it has to do with legacy video drivers appears to be a limit in the size
or complexity of a region.

In previous Mozilla versions, invalidation was done using rectangles, but that view manager
change made invalidation use platform regions.

There appears to be a limit to either the size or complexity of regions on legacy video
drivers.

Mike Kaply

[Mikus Grinbergs]

My understanding was that the reason IBM was paying a (small) team
to work on Mozilla was so that there would exist a functionally
up-to-date browser usable on the OS/2 platform (and WSeB and eCS).

IMHO, the number of non-legacy video drivers still being written
for OS/2 seems to be _one_ (and even *that* company seems now to be
focusing on Windows). Hmmm - a platform whose browser "is best seen
with" a particular video driver - should that be pronounced "niche" ?

mikus (still using the Matrox video driver - BY CHOICE!)

[Michael Kaply]

If you would like this problem fixed, by all means, get a compiler and debug it. We could use all the
help we can get.

IBM recommends the Scitech and GRADD drivers and the browser works fine on them. Those are the main
drivers we test as it covers most platforms. When we have time, we will look at this DRIVER SPECIFIC
problem. There are certainly more pressing problems that take precedence over this DRIVER SPECIFIC
problem.

-- This next part is NOT aimed at you Mikus, just a general statement --

I'm not sure why the attitude on this newsgroup that our job is to fix every bug that everyone comes
across. Have you ever heard the expression "too many cooks spoil the broth". Welcome to "too many
tasters and not enough cooks"

The reason that other Mozillas are doing much better than the OS/2 version is because they actually
have people participating in finding, DEBUGGING, and FIXING problems. And they have people who
learned Bugzilla and use it.

On OS/2, we have a handful of people developing (mostly IBM) and most of the rest of the people
complaining on the newsgroup about the fact that the nightly builds aren't working. Welcome to
Mozilla - surprisingly there are a lot of problems with the nightly builds. They are development
drivers. Here's a quote from mozilla.org about the nightlies - "these will probably work, but maybe
not."

And by the way if anyone would take the time to look in Bugzilla, they could see that a lot of the
problems they report are cross-platform.

I AM paid by IBM to work on Mozilla, as is my team. Surprisingly, that does not include
participating in this newsgroup or fixing a single bug that is reported by anyone on this newsgroup
or even fixing bugs in Bugzilla. We do this part because we are trying to support the OS/2 community.

But it seems like I am discovering the same thing that I discovered when I tried to participate in
the newsgroups while working on Netscape 4.x.

The OS/2 user community is mostly about taking and very little about giving.

No wonder OS/2 is dead.

My next post will be a constructive post about how to help us find problems.

Mike Kaply

These are MY opinions. Not IBM