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Slow graphics and no libSM.a


I downloaded and burned three CDs with cygwin on it. Then I installed Cygwin onto my computer (the November release). After installation I found (as before) that I could not compile my programs from Linux. These programs are really fairly simple but they make two types of calls: 1) X-Window Graphics, and 2)Calls to the "system" function. The errors received were all about "_Smsxxxx" functions. After some research, I learned that libXt.a was attempting to call libSM.a. After looking for libSM.a I found that the size of the library was zero (0). Obviously the library had not been installed for some reason. I thought that I needed to download and re-install the library but upon going through the zip files I found libSM.a and it was complete!

So the question is - why did it install as a zero length file?

Onwards: After correcting the above problem I then found that my programs also needed the libICE.a library. After adding these two libraries to the call line everything compiled. That was when I ran into the second problem. But let me digress for a moment. I was running everything on a 200mhz Macintosh at first (SUSE Linux) but in 2001 I purchased an 850mhz IBM PC clone. I ran standard RedHat Linux on that machine and everything was great. I even downloaded and installed Cygwin on it and that is where I first ran into the above problem with libSM.a (but could not figure out the problem at the time). I recently purchased a 3.0GHz IBM PC clone and, because it is almost four times the speed of the 850mhz system - I thought things would go a bit faster. (Now back to the second problem.) However, once the programs were compiled and I began running them I was amazed to see that I could actually watch each dot being drawn on the screen.

So the second question is - any ideas why it is going so slow?

I know that Cygwin (last time I read the FAQ and bug reports) does not use hardware acceleration but this stuff is rather trivial. I'm talking about drawing a grid on a black background here - not Quake. The only thing I can think of is that I am using XmUpdateDisplay every time I draw one of the rectangles on the screen. Granted I could draw everything and then just display the screen once but that would defeat the purpose of the game. (Which is to simply attempt to click on the rectangles as they appear.) It could also be that I am filling up the graphics pipeline or something along those lines. But I didn't think drawing simple rectangles could do that to X Windows (and it doesn't under Linux). Am I doomed not to be able to do this under Cygwin? I was hoping otherwise (as then I could do Windows and Linux development at the same time). Please write and let me know. Thanks!

Mark Manning



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