Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 10:36 pm Post subject: Please test startup improvements
As many of you have noticed, after the splash screen appears, NeoOffice forces Mac OS X to load every available font on your system. If you have more than 100 or so fonts, this font loading can cause two very undesirable things to happen:
1. NeoOffice will appear to hang for several seconds (or even several minutes) the first time that NeoOffice is launched after booting your machine.
2. Available memory will be unnecessary used by Mac OS X to hold the many fonts that were loaded but are never used.
I finally figured out a way to stop Java from forcing all fonts to load and I finished implementing my fix for this old problem today. With my fix, no hanging will occur when the splash screen is displayed even if you have 1000 or more fonts. Also, I have made the font selection combo box display the font names using only the current font (like other Mac applciations) so that perusing the font list will not force loading of fonts. Unloaded fonts will not be loaded until you actually use a font.
Since this is a huge change in font loading, I would like people to test out my code before I put out an official patch. I have posted the following test patches:
Please reboot after installing the patch as running NeoOffice after the patch won't really change anything since previous runs of NeoOffice will have forced all fonts to load.
On my 400MHz G4 tibook, there's no obvious startup speed improvement either after reboot or on subsequent launches, but then I don't have thousands of fonts active, because it's a slow machine (*edit* I re-enabled all of my fonts, and Neo starts up just a fast as before - cool).
The new fonts dropdown with the font names in the default font: the point size seems a bit huge - I couldn't find anything in the prefs that affected the size, apart from knocking the View size down to 80% (won't go any lower than that), and the dropdown still looked overlarge to me at that size.
One weird new behaviour - the leftmost item in my Formatting toolbar is Font Size, but after installing the patch, every time I close a doc window Neo draws a Font button (see below) before it closes the window. (*edit* it doesn't do this unless the Font Name dropdown has been 'dropped down'.)
- padmavyuha
Last edited by yoxi on Tue Jul 11, 2006 12:11 am; edited 3 times in total
Much quicker for me: about 50% I suspect. Even quicker before I rebooted: the first bootup after restarting my mac was faster than previous, but took about 20 secs to get going nevertheless: I am a font-lover. I actually used some of my celtic fonts today, on a CD project. Many fonts I've never used, but you know, maybe one day I'll need just that font...
Overall less than a minute, signif'y less than that if I've already booted. Put it this way: I can restart NeoOffice with confidence now, knowing I won't feel like going out for a coffee while I wait. Well done
Peter
Edit: 20 secs from clicking on the icon in the dock, to having a Writer screen open and ready for me. 20 secs is fine, in my view.
Some mixed results from me...initial startup was improved, though not massively (in fact, there was a long pause under the N in NeoOffice® where none was before), but overall first startup was ca. 15-20 seconds quicker. I probably have a couple hundred fonts active.
OTOH, subsequent starts have been 20 secs...the fastest Neo has ever launched, by a mile. Simply amazing!
I second yoxi's "issue" with the size of the fonts in the drop-down being unreasonably large...I wonder why they aren't obeying the same font size as everything else?
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Works for me . Splash screen moves quite nicely through the progress bar. Only after it disappears I get a menu bar and then a few seconds of nothing before the window appears. Maybe that was there before but I never realised it because I went for a cup of tea . The font dropdown list also seems faster.
The thing is: the preferences|display|show font preview (or whatever it is called in English) option doesn't work. If you could somehow fix it so that the user can choose either, that would be lovely. Sometimes the preview is really useful when you try to find a font with the right atmosphere, but usually I don't need it. Is it still possible to choose to load the fonts after such an option is selected?
It does seem to me that the font used in the UI is not the same as used by other applications.
Is there any way of fixing that? I used to have it in 1.x by substituting a font, but I recall that this stopped working. Still I haven't set the substitute now and don't remember which one it is :/.
If there isn't an easy workaround (if there is, this is even less urgent) could you look into making the UI elements use the same font as everything else?
Congratulations,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Joined: Nov 21, 2005 Posts: 1285 Location: Witless Protection Program
Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 2:31 am Post subject:
I got about a 50% improvement, of font delay, before a reboot.
After reboot, the Font delay is greatly reduced (less than 2 secs) and overall startup is about 50% faster. From about 15-20 secs before reboot, to about 10 secs after reboot to blank Writer page. Much better, but some might still complain.
(maybe we need some silly animation to ... distract new users as Neo boots? JK )
1. I also have an overly large font in the drop down font menu.
2. All the same font - shouldn't each font be in it's ... font?
Great improvements! Every little bit helps.
Philip (still looking at the aqua icons - hmmmm lickable!
It does seem to me that the font used in the UI is not the same as used by other applications.
As far as I can tell, the font used in the dropdown is the default font in the Writer prefs, found in Tools-Options-Writer-Basic Fonts (I seems that's the default used in the other modules too, as Writer is the only module that has a default font setting available in prefs).
Patrick says above 'the current font', so perhaps it's using whatever font the cursor is on in the front document, but I haven't tried actually writing in the doc yet! I assumed that 'the current font' meant 'the current default font' because otherwise the UI would have to keep changing each time the cursor moved into a new font in the doc...
Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 4:58 am Post subject: Disappearing checkboxes
Oh dear!
I've just noticed a severe issue with this patch: about half the check-boxes in the prefs no longer appear (and when you click the blank spot where they should appear, they'll sometimes show up but will never indicate state)....
I've removed my modified images.zip just to make sure it wasn't that, and tried to make it start with fresh prefs, but no luck.
Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 9:25 am Post subject: Re: Disappearing checkboxes
sardisson wrote:
I've just noticed a severe issue with this patch: about half the check-boxes in the prefs no longer appear (and when you click the blank spot where they should appear, they'll sometimes show up but will never indicate state)....
Ah, then this is probably why I couldn't check the 'show font preview' option . I didn't bother to look beyond as I am on antibiotics these days and not always very sharp. Still, having the option actually working as well as checkable (I do not know if it is working at this time) would be nice <G>.
There's probably a font that is used for the checkboxes that should be loaded but isn't now that not all the fonts get loaded...
best wishes,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 9:42 am Post subject: Re: Disappearing checkboxes
Ah, then this is probably why I couldn't check the 'show font preview' option . I didn't bother to look beyond as I am on antibiotics these days and not always very sharp. Still, having the option actually working as well as checkable (I do not know if it is working at this time) would be nice <G>.
There's probably a font that is used for the checkboxes that should be loaded but isn't now that not all the fonts get loaded...[/quote]
The checkbox is a different bug. I'll have a fix soon.
As for the "show font preview", it is on by default but with this patch it will have no effect. Why? Because opening the font list with preview on will force all unloaded fonts to be loaded. There is a reason that Apple's font dialog does not preview fonts: to avoid this same unnecessary loading.
Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:14 am Post subject: Re: Disappearing checkboxes
pluby wrote:
The checkbox is a different bug. I'll have a fix soon.
Ah, okidoki.
pluby wrote:
As for the "show font preview", it is on by default but with this patch it will have no effect. Why? Because opening the font list with preview on will force all unloaded fonts to be loaded. There is a reason that Apple's font dialog does not preview fonts: to avoid this same unnecessary loading.
My point exactly. I was wondering about having the choice to load them anyway, if you like it and feel the long wait and extra memory are worth it..
I understood that in the current version it is simply disabled.
Best wishes,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:20 am Post subject: Re: Please test startup improvements
I have posted the following new test patch. In this test patch, the font size in the font list is now back to normal and the checkboxes now display correctly:
If you have not installed any of the previous test patches, pllease reboot after installing the patch as running NeoOffice after the patch won't really change anything since previous runs of NeoOffice will have forced all fonts to load.
Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:39 am Post subject: Re: Disappearing checkboxes
sardisson wrote:
I've just noticed a severe issue with this patch: about half the check-boxes in the prefs no longer appear (and when you click the blank spot where they should appear, they'll sometimes show up but will never indicate state)....
FWIW I didn't get this problem at all with patch #1 (in 10.4.7 PPC)
Test patch # 2:
The font size in the Font Name dropdown is normal now - the spacing between lines is pretty oversize, though, and the longest font name I have (the absurd 18pt Helvetica* 26 Ultra Light Italic 99472) only makes it around 70% across the dropdown width. How is Neo deciding what font to use to display the font names now?
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. The font dropdown list also seems faster.
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