[PD-dev] Fwd: [MACTCL] Improving Application GUI Speed

Sun Apr 13 18:55:25 CEST 2008

Hey,

I am also quite interested in your code and the stuff you've written  
about, could provide links to both?

About the array code, a good place to start is in pd/src/g_array.c.   
Take a look there, and feel free to post any questions on this list  
so we can answer them.

.hc

On Apr 13, 2008, at 11:54 AM, Jakob Leben wrote:

> Hello to all the PD developers!
>
> As the word goes about improving pd's GUI speed, I thought this is  
> the perfect opportunity for me to share some ideas, that I've  
> already written about on the puredata.info homepage.
>
> Let me introduce myself first. My name is Jakob Leben, I'm from  
> Slovenia and I'm actively using pure data. I can say I have quite  
> some experience with writing pd externals, but I don't have an  
> integral insight into pd's source code.
>
> Lately I made an external that visualizes pd's graphic arrays but  
> much faster than pd natively does. (If I load 20 seconds of audio  
> into a pd's array the drawing of the array causes clicks in audio.  
> Another big problem is dragging a graphic array around the patch,  
> that works extra slow.
>
> There are two things one could do:
> 1. change the algorithm for visualisation of array's data.
> 2. draw the data onto a specially loaded Tk canvas, so that when  
> dragging the array around only the canvas' window is translated  
> instead of all the coordinates for the line that represents data.
>
> Detailed explanation:
> 1. When the width of array's visualisation in pixels is smaller  
> than the number of samples written into array it's useless to draw  
> a segment of the line for each sample of data. Instead you can only  
> draw one vertical segment of line for each column of pixels drawn:  
> this segment's endpoints are defined by the minimum and the maximum  
> value of the range of data that is "covered" by this pixel.
> The result of this is exactly the same as the way arrays are drawn  
> now, though it involves much less line segments being drawn.
> 2. There is one problem that I came across with using a special  
> canvas to visualise an array: a click on that canvas doesn't select  
> the pd object that lies "under" this canvas. This canvas will  
> always be "above" the object as all the objects are only items of  
> one single Tk canvas, while this new canvas is the general canvas'  
> child displayed as a general canvas' item of type window. Tk rule  
> is that items of type window are always "above" all other items on  
> a canvas.
> Thus it would be necessary to make a new binding for mouse events  
> to this new canvas and somehow pass that click to pd's object.
>
> Now, I realized these ideas in the form of a pd extern that  
> visualises an array, but i think it would be great to integrate  
> those ideas into pd's arrays itself. I could do that if only I  
> understood better how PD's arrays are drawn and how the selection  
> of pd's object works... I tried but it seems to my like too big a  
> project to dig out myself where in the code and how those things  
> happen so I would appreciate very much if someone guided me through  
> this.
>
> I'm willing to put all my effort into making those arrays draw faster.
>
> Sincerely,
> Jakob Leben
>
> On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 9:01 PM, Hans-Christoph Steiner  
> <hans at eds.org> wrote:
>
> It seems there is a profiler for Tcl.  Has anyone ever tried it on Pd?
>
> Begin forwarded message:
> > From: Revar Desmera <revarbat at gmail.com>
> > Date: April 9, 2008 10:58:55 PM EDT
> > To: TCL-Mac List <tcl-mac at lists.sourceforge.net>
> > Subject: Re: [MACTCL] Improving Application GUI Speed
> > Delivered-To: hans at eds.org
> > X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.919.2)
> > X-Filter-Rule: ALL_LISTS
> >
> > If you download http://www.belfry.com/code/profile.tcl, and add a
> > 'source profile.tcl' to the beginning of your program, when the
> > program finishes, it'll dump a very detailed timing profile of your
> > code to tclprof.txt, which you can use to determine what to  
> optimize.
> > The report format is very close to that of gprof.
> >
> >       - Revar
> >
> >
> >
> > On Apr 8, 2008, at 1:10 AM, Randolf Schultz wrote:
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> please help me getting my application up to speed on MacOSX/Aqua.
> >> It runs fine on Linux/X11, Win32, and even MacOSX/X11. Only on
> >> MacOSX/Aqua it crawls.
> >>
> >> Want to have a look first?
> >> Go to
> >>
> >> http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?
> >> group_id=28460&sel_platform=4542
> >>
> >> (or http://www.ayam3d.org/download.html)
> >>
> >> get both variants (MacOSX/X11 and MacOSX/Aqua).
> >>
> >> Already the application startup is 2-3s (Linux/X11) vs. 10-15s
> >> (MacOSX/Aqua); from then on the MacOSX version is unusably
> >> slow, especially when drawing the scrollable GUIs for the object
> >> properties (those are implemented as window in a canvas).
> >> Another problem area are the pane widgets, that may be dragged
> >> quite fine on X11, but on Aqua they do one hop every 1-2s (and
> >> this is _without_ continuous re-packing the GUI, only dragging
> >> the pane handle, which is a simple packed frame IIRC!).
> >>
> >> The Linux/X11 and MacOSX/Aqua variants were test-run on the
> >> very same machine (MacMini-PPC)!
> >>
> >> So how would you proceed to tackle this problem?
> >> Is there an easy way to profile such complex scenarios with Tcl/Tk?
> >>
> >> best regards,
> >> Randolf
> >>
> >>  
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> ----
> >> This SF.net email is sponsored by the 2008 JavaOne(SM) Conference
> >> Register now and save $200. Hurry, offer ends at 11:59 p.m.,
> >> Monday, April 7! Use priority code J8TLD2.
> >> http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;198757673;13503038;p?http://
> >> java.sun.com/javaone
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Tcl-mac mailing list
> >> tcl-mac at lists.sourceforge.net
> >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tcl-mac
> >
> >
> >  
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ---
> > This SF.net email is sponsored by the 2008 JavaOne(SM) Conference
> > Don't miss this year's exciting event. There's still time to save
> > $100.
> > Use priority code J8TL2D2.
> > http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;198757673;13503038;p?http://
> > java.sun.com/javaone
> > _______________________________________________
> > Tcl-mac mailing list
> > tcl-mac at lists.sourceforge.net
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tcl-mac
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> --
> ----
>
> Using ReBirth is like trying to play an 808 with a long stick.    -
> David Zicarelli
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> PD-dev mailing list
> PD-dev at iem.at
> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-dev
>

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

Using ReBirth is like trying to play an 808 with a long stick.    - 
David Zicarelli

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-dev/attachments/20080413/05a2f61b/attachment.htm>