4 ms·

In some ways though, this reminds me of the arguments about the speed difference between static languages and dynamic languages being an "interpreter optimizati

In some ways though, this reminds me of the arguments about the speed difference between static languages and dynamic languages being an "interpreter optimization issue". Well, yeah, but, the reason these things are slow is because optimizing them is kind of hard. I think the SVG spec was more designed for correctness than it was for speed. I'm saying this from experience because I've actually been working on a library for supporting a subset of SVG in OpenGL because I wanted to use vector graphics for games, and it's not impossible or anything, but I will say I have a great deal of respect for projects that manage to get this fast. The SVG spec is not hardware friendly in the least bit. Almost every filter operation assumes a new clean render target, which is conceptually clean and fine, but it's murderous on fill rate and texture memory, and that's just the tip of the iceberg of things that translate poorly to modern hardware.

corresation 13y ago
>Well, yeah, but, the reason these things are slow is because optimizing them is kind of hard. Optimizing all cases is most certainly hard. Optimizing the most common cases -- the lowest hanging fruit -- is attainable (which is exactly what has happened and continues to happen with dynamic typing languages, since you point that out, and has happened substantially to the DOM, which itself is as complex or more complex than SVG but its layout optimization was obviously prioritized). In this case we're talking about static SVGs that -- with no change in zoom, context, or content (ergo nothing that would change their actual rendering at all) -- are completely rebuilt on every translation. This is true generally in the browser rendering engines of SVG, where compositional elements that could see caching are instead from scratch on each and every render.

corresation 13y ago

>Well, yeah, but, the reason these things are slow is because optimizing them is kind of hard. Optimizing all cases is most certainly hard. Optimizing the most common cases -- the lowest hanging fruit -- is attainable (which is exactly what has happened and continues to happen with dynamic typing languages, since you point that out, and has happened substantially to the DOM, which itself is as complex or more complex than SVG but its layout optimization was obviously prioritized). In this case we're talking about static SVGs that -- with no change in zoom, context, or content (ergo nothing that would change their actual rendering at all) -- are completely rebuilt on every translation. This is true generally in the browser rendering engines of SVG, where compositional elements that could see caching are instead from scratch on each and every render.