[sldev] Re: [VIEWER] SVG on a prim

Argent Stonecutter secret.argent at gmail.com
Mon Sep 10 11:58:01 PDT 2007


From: Lynne Wu
> Why is [HTML] too expensive to render?  Cycles?  Resources?  Is
> http://www.ubrowser.com not a realistic interpretation of this  
> idea?  Thanks

First, HTML is intrinsically difficult to render, because HTML  
documents are laid out dynamically. Rendering a page of HTML is  
comparable to typesetting a page for printing. It's only been about a  
decade that computers capable of doing that kind of layout in real  
time have been cheap enough for "everyone".

Second, the gecko engine is a relatively heavyweight one.

Third, HTML as a texture on a prim means that you have to be prepared  
for a situation where there are hundreds of HTML textures being  
updated concurrently within draw distance. Just about any mall will  
have an environment like that. That means hundreds of instances of  
the gecko rendering engine running *in addition to* everything else  
SL is doing.

What this means is that HTML on a prim will need to be limited to at  
most a few surfaces visible to any given avatar. As an extension of  
the media-texture model HTML is fine. As a way to render arbitrary  
text on an arbitrary prim, a method that does static fixed layout is  
far preferred.

PS: I even *less* want to see XUL in SL.



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