Description of Problem: When viewing email in Evolution XFS uses 100% CPU utilization and there is as much as a twenty second delay before the email is displayed. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Evolution 1.0.8 Stock RH 8.0 XFS, couldn't find a version, maybe it's Xft 2.0-1 calling itself xfs? How Reproducible: At will and on demand. Seems to depend on the email. A simple text email doesn't seem to have a problem, but a complex email with fonts and colors takes a long time Steps to Reproduce: 1. open any font/color rich email in Evolution 2. 3. Actual Results: Expected Results: Additional Information: I can send an example email if needed, but almost any will do.
xfs is the X font server. Xft is a library for doing fonts without having to talk to the X server or X font server. Most likely this is an evolution issue of it asking xfs to do a lot of work.
I installed the MS Web fonts package trutype fonts in ~/.fonts/ and the "lag" went to less than a second and CPU utilzation stayed low. A huge difference from 20 seconds and 100% utilization. Looks like Evolution was making XFS look for fonts that didn't exist then timing out or something. Anyway, the web truetype fonts in ~/.fonts/ seems to make the problem go away.
It's actually probably just picking fonts which X renders slowly. This is not an evolution bug at least. If you'd like to follow up further on it, please file a bug against XFree86.