[PD-dev] seeking advice on Pd gui overhaul

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Feb 23, 2010, at 11:52 PM, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:

>> The problem is that Tcl/Tk is not the bottleneck when it comes to  
>> array
>> redrawing.  Its how pd sends draw commands.  Redrawing a big array
>> once
>> could result in literally 500KB of Tcl code generated by Pd and  
>> sent to
>> the GUI.
>>
>> So whether you use Tcl/Tk, Qt, JUCE, or whatever, you'll have to  
>> address
>> that issue to get any real gain. I'd say the best place to start is  
>> try
>> updating the array drawing code so that it just sends a simple  
>> command
>> to Tcl and let's Tcl do the drawing work.  You could easily make  
>> that an
>> external and use it with any version of Pd.
>>
>> .hc
>
> Interesting. Still, this does not resolve the issue of a large  
> number box on the screen being updated rapidly taking up a lot of  
> CPU (it scales exponentially with growing font size and in this case  
> I suspect Pd's output is minimal, amounting to change in the  
> displayed set of characters).


run pd with gui messages dumped to stderr and you can see what I mean,  
should be helpful in seeing the amount of code that gets sent for a  
given operation:

./pd -stderr -d 3

.hc


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Access to computers should be unlimited and total.  - the hacker ethic