vlr@litwin.com (Vic Rice) (10/25/90)
My group has been developing a reasonably large Motif application for about 18 months. Over the course of this development a significant problem has been slowly getting worse. The problem is the ever increasing time it takes for various popups to come up. Our development system: SCO ODT 1.0.0y ALR FlexCache 33/386 (Intel 80387 & Weitek) Paradise VGA Plus Multisyncing monitor (used in 800x600) Currently, the size of the load module is over 2 meg, unstripped. Popups that used to take 1 or 2 sec to appear completely now take as long as 15 sec. These popups contain various children (RowColumn, DrawingArea, etc). My perception is this degradation has been gradual, as we have added to the application. Are we causing this ?? Is there some memory/buffer management techniques we are overlooking ? I realize this is a somewhat vague question, but I don't really know where to start. We are new to X and Motif, so I suspect we are overlooking something obvious, I hope. I would appreciate any comments. -- Dr. Victor L. Rice Litwin Process Automation
klee@wsl.dec.com (Ken Lee) (10/26/90)
In article <1990Oct25.142436.9581@litwin.com>, vlr@litwin.com (Vic Rice) writes: |> My group has been developing a reasonably large Motif application for about |> 18 months. Over the course of this development a significant problem |> has been slowly getting worse. The problem is the ever increasing time |> it takes for various popups to come up. I don't know how much memory you have, but it sounds like a paging problem. Motif popups are created when they are realized, so popping them up means just mapping their windows. Your problem is probably that paging in the code that requests the map is very slow. I suspect that popping them up the second time will be quite a bit faster, since the code is already paged in. In the long run, there's probably not much you can do about this, aside from getting a faster CPU, faster disk, or more RAM. -- Ken Lee DEC Western Software Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif. Internet: klee@wsl.dec.com uucp: uunet!decwrl!klee
mikep@sco.COM (Mike Patnode) (10/26/90)
In article <1990Oct25.142436.9581@litwin.com> vlr@litwin.com (Vic Rice) writes: >My group has been developing a reasonably large Motif application for about >18 months. Over the course of this development a significant problem >has been slowly getting worse. The problem is the ever increasing time >it takes for various popups to come up. > >Our development system: >SCO ODT 1.0.0y >ALR FlexCache 33/386 (Intel 80387 & Weitek) >Paradise VGA Plus >Multisyncing monitor (used in 800x600) > >Currently, the size of the load module is over 2 meg, unstripped. Popups >that used to take 1 or 2 sec to appear completely now take as long as >15 sec. These popups contain various children (RowColumn, DrawingArea, etc). >My perception is this degradation has been gradual, as we have added to the >application. > >Are we causing this ?? Is there some memory/buffer management techniques >we are overlooking ? For starters, be sure you are linking with -lmalloc. This is a big win for memory performance. Note that libmalloc is a much more stringent about misuse of memory than libc. Also, whenever possible try to hide Popup menus via XtPopdown(), rather than creating and destroying them each time they are used. This may be obvious. Hope that helps. -- Mike Patnode The Santa Cruz Operation SCO Software Engineer 400 Encinal Street {ucscc,uunet}!sco!mikep mikep@sco.COM P.O. Box 1900 (408) 458-1422 Santa Cruz, CA 95061
vlr@litwin.com (Vic Rice) (10/26/90)
mikep@sco.COM (Mike Patnode) writes: >In article <1990Oct25.142436.9581@litwin.com> vlr@litwin.com (Vic Rice) writes: >>My group has been developing a reasonably large Motif application for about >>18 months. Over the course of this development a significant problem >>has been slowly getting worse. The problem is the ever increasing time >>it takes for various popups to come up. >> >For starters, be sure you are linking with -lmalloc. This is a big win >for memory performance. Note that libmalloc is a much more stringent >about misuse of memory than libc. >Also, whenever possible try to hide Popup menus via XtPopdown(), >rather than creating and destroying them each time they are used. >This may be obvious. >Hope that helps. Many many thanks, Mike. The -lmalloc was right on the money. Adding -lmalloc made a drastic improvement in the performance of several aspects of our application, not just popups. We were doing XtPopdown() via a Motif call. I hope anyone developing Motif apps under SCO ODT pays attention to this. It makes a SIGNIFICANT difference. God, I love USENET. -- Dr. Victor L. Rice Litwin Process Automation