DCOOPER%ESDSDF.DECnet@GE-CRD.ARPA (06/15/88)
I just started using TWM and like it, though I have two problems with it. First, the pulldown menus are not as quick as desirable (on my sun 3). I tried compiling with the GNU C Compiler (1.22) to pick up some speed. The compile was successful but none of the graphics (title bars borders, menus) would draw. (Sounds like the same problem with GNU C which causes the server to die when highlighting a buttonbox.) My colleagues who use Sun 4s have no problems with the speed. Second, TWM adds titlebars to the pulldown menus and dialog boxes which my toolkit applications pop up. The pulldown menus I use are from the menu widgets supplied in the contrib tape of X11R2 with bug fixes added. These appear in TWM with titlebars and buttons. The dialog boxes I use are in a transientShellWidgetClass. The transient shell appears under TWM as an xterm does (outlined and blinking, while waiting to be placed). Does anyone know how to get rid of these problems? Dwight Cooper GE Electronic Systems Dept.
rusty@velveeta.berkeley.edu (rusty wright) (06/15/88)
In article <8806141942.AA29931@ATHENA> DCOOPER%ESDSDF.DECnet@GE-CRD.ARPA writes: > >I just started using TWM and like it, though I have two problems with it. > >First, the pulldown menus are not as quick as desirable (on my sun 3). What's the difference in speed like when you first click on a button (in the background say) to get a pulldown menu, and then release the button and then immediately press the button again? I often find that the first time I bring up a twm menu after having not done so for a while that there is quite a delay, but if I immediately click on that button again the menu comes up as fast as I could want. I'm pretty sure that the reason it's so slow to bring up the menu the first time when I haven't used it for a while is because I'm using a sun 3/50 (only 4 megs of memory) and twm has simply either been swapped out or most of its pages have been paged out and the delay is because unix is paging or swapping it in. (I modified xperfmon so that that it also displays page out's; the line is flat only when I first come in in the morning; the rest of the day it always has spikes, or spikes with flat tops.) -------------------------------------- rusty c. wright rusty@cartan.berkeley.edu ucbvax!cartan!rusty
guido@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum) (06/15/88)
In article <10952@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> rusty@velveeta.UUCP (rusty wright) writes: >>First, the pulldown menus are not as quick as desirable (on my sun 3). >[...] >I'm pretty sure that the reason it's so slow to bring up the menu the >first time when I haven't used it for a while is because I'm using a >sun 3/50 (only 4 megs of memory) and twm has simply either been swapped >out or most of its pages have been paged out and the delay is because >unix is paging or swapping it in. It may also be that the server is taking some time to map in umpteen windows and send them all exposure events. I believe one window takes 0.5K or 1K bytes in the server; a TWM menu with ten items would thus take 6 or 12K. Multiply this with the number of menus you have (assuming TWM just maps/unmaps the window) and you get quite a bit of memory devoted to menus in the server, which may also be paged out. I suppose the 12 exposure events (and possibly also 12 map events?) also take their toll. I have written a toolkit with pull-down menus which takes a different approach: the menu is a single window and I track button motion events to detect when the pointer enters/leaves an item. Highlighting feedback is not slower than with other strategies, and the menus pop up much faster, even though I never keep any unmapped windows; I just create and destroy the menu's window as needed. Anyone care to comment? -- Guido van Rossum, Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI), Amsterdam guido@piring.cwi.nl or mcvax!piring!guido or guido%piring.cwi.nl@uunet.uu.net