[PD] Trouble with updating number boxes, sliders, arrays on RPi - looking for a replacement to display an array

[Ingo]

> I understand. So, are you saying the problem with not updating GUI
> widgets doesn't happen with smaller patches? It's specific to your large
patch?


Absolutely! It does not happen in small patches.

It seems like Pd takes a long time (sometimes over 5 seconds) for opening
the window.
TK/TCL seems to disable objects graphically to save resources if they are
not visable.
This is generally a good idea since - as we all know - lots of number boxes
slow down everything.
So you don't want to process number boxes that are not even visible.

If a patch takes too long to open - like my patch editor with about 5
seconds - TCL/TK probably thinks that the obects are invisible.
Then it disables them graphically.

Once this happens all number boxes, etc. in the entire Pd do not update
anymore. It needs restarting.
I found some people saying that there is a bug in TCL/TK that causes this
but the fixes that I found did not work.
I was originally looking for a reset function that would check whether
objects are visable or not atm but couldn't find anything.

So I ended up putting the number boxes behind canvases and I'm sending the
values for displaying now to the canvases on top of it.
This works fine but needs a bunch more objects and takes quite some time to
make for each parameter with all the sends and receives.
I had to redo over 300 parameters in my patch editor. I took me several
weeks full time (still not done all the way with the sliders) . . .
On the other hand it looks better and the graphics can be changed to my
liking while the number boxes still look as ugly as always.

I'm definitely NOT expecting Pd to be the cause anymore as the issue comes
only up with large patches that take several seconds to open.
I also found reports on the internet that other people had this issue with
TCL/TK with software other than Pd.

So looking for fixing the issue in Pd doesn't make any more sense to me.


One wy to reproduce this issue is by starting a patch invisible with vis 0
and making it visable later.
That does it sometimes but not always.
I just tried to see if I can make a small patch that would act like this for
an easy reproduction.
I tried on Windows, though. Even though the patch took about a minute to
open it was working fine.
Again, not sure what exactly causes it - whether it is the operating system
or the patch . . .

As I mentioned in my original post it still works fine on my Intel boards on
Debian but not on my Raspberry Pi on Raspbian.
This makes things even more complicated.

It could be caused by the fact that the Raspberry needs much more time for
the graphics than my faster Intel boards to open the patch.
But it could also be caused by differences in the operating system.

I don't have any clue about how TCL/TK works so I don't want to get into
this and waste a lot of time that I need for other things.
Especially now that I can replace the graphics with better looking graphics
to begin with.

It's just that displaying arrays doesn't work anymore. Making gifs of the
curves is the only solution that came to my mind so far.

Ingo




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roman Haefeli [mailto:reduzent at gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2022 9:19 PM
> To: Ingo
> Subject: Re: [PD] Trouble with updating number boxes, sliders, arrays on
RPi
> - looking for a replacement to display an array
>
> On Sat, 2022-01-15 at 18:57 +0100, Ingo wrote:
> > I don't expect this to be a Pd issue and I have brought it up a bunch
> > of times before. Noone had these problems!
>
> You sure?
>
> > But I have a huge patch for editing more than 500 parameters - each
> > with 10-50 objects - which is quite a graphical task within Pd.
> > Noone is going to mess with this to find out where it comes from.
> > Especially
> > since I expect it to be a TCL/TK issue.
>
> I understand. So, are you saying the problem with not updating GUI widgets
> doesn't happen with smaller patches? It's specific to your large patch?
>
> >
> > I'm really tired of trying to mess with it any longer so I changed my
> > graphics to work differently.
> >  I'm ok with it and it works as expected now .
>
> I'm experiencing similar issues sometimes in large(-ish) netpd sets.
> When opening a new instrument, it takes quite a while until GUI updates
> become visible again. I haven't tracked down the source of this yet.
> And I'm also not sure whether what I just described is related to your
> problem. But reporting it would be good anyway, I think. It would help, if
you
> could share a patch that shows the problem, but then I don't know if you
can
> share your patch at all.
>
> Roman