Significant drawing speed improvements

[pluby]

FYI. While NeoOffice 2.1 plus Patch 3 has pretty good overall drawing performance, the following two OpenOffice.org performance issues have annoyed me for a long time:

1. Slide show drawing is slow and using some transitions almost grinds NeoOffice to a halt

2. To reduce flicker caused by OOo's excessive redrawing, extra CPU was needed to keep turning native window flushing on an off.

The good news is that I had some breakthroughs this week and I have figured out how to solve these two performance problems. As a result of my fixes for these two problems, image drawing is definitely snappier and slide shows run not much slower than OOo X11 2.1.

Since my fixes contain some modifications to the OOo core code, I suspect that there will be a few new bugs (I've noticed a little flicker from OOo reappear) so I have posted the following test patch. Please help me find any bugs by using this test patch:

PowerPC:
http://www.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.1-Patch-3-Test-2-PowerPC.dmg

Intel:
http://www.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.1-Patch-3-Test-2-Intel.dmg

Patrick

[OPENSTEP]

I'm working on a G4 right now. The animations in the stock example presos we use for performance tracking are a lot better. I'm noticing some additional flickering on the G4, but when I get back to my main machine I'll start getting the build going so I can help work on the flushing and other work.

Thanks for the hard work! I make offerings at your feet.

ed

[Lorinda]

WOW!!! This is wonderful, Patrick, thanks so much!

I ran sections of the ppt I used as a test document the last time you were working on some of this. The effects that were so slow as to be unusable then work wonderfully now. There's maybe a little stuttering with the dissolve effect, but it is an incredible improvement.

I also pulled up a form I created recently in Base. Selecting and moving elements was a painfully slow process before, with long pauses before another element could be selected. There are noticeable improvements there, too.

Finally, I pulled up a Writer document with a Calc OLE frame. My impression is that the shift that happens when double clicking in side the OLE object also happens faster, although this is more subjective.

I know you're looking more for bugs than for evaluation of the improvements, but I couldn't resist making some comparisons and I'm really excited.

Great work!

[sardisson]

[aussie149]

Hi Patrick

I have a subjective impression that some files load quicker with the test patch. However, there is a very defintie flicker with some docs. I have only checked in Writer at the mo. Where there are no graphics in files, seems no prbs. But when I tried it on some of the odt docs in the User Guide, I got bad flicker. i think it settles down, depending on the complexity of the document, but eg with the master odm file for the User Guide , it goes on and makes it pretty well unusable for several minutes.

Regards
Peter

[aussie149]

[mickeyinlalaland]

http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=4375

Per posted Url I'm adding this NeoOffice_2.1_patch-3_test-2 result:

In Writer:

Select Tools -> Options -> NeoOffice (expand window) -> Print
- when here move mouse over first box with NeoOffice::Load/Save::Langauge Settings... etc. and do you see how the first column text gets jumpy? - feature selections still work

Now in same view window look at second column (grayed column) and under "Reduce print data" the buttons in "settings for" -> "Printer" and "Print to file" are misaligned - they still function however.

But poke around program and all buttons to selections are misaligned.

Close Tools window and go to "View" -> "Zoom" and the buttons are misaligned and to select you have to put mouse next to text, not on button, to activate (You'll see bottom half-moon of button that is visible and elevated from text it should be aligned to, button will turn blue when activated - or rather the bottom-half-moon shown will turn blue) - again the function does work.

This occurs on both machines:
Intel MBP and PPC G4

Reverted to NeoOffice_2.1_patch-3 and all is correct; No jumpy reaction seen and selection buttons are completely visible and aligned to coresponding item you wish to activate.

[rays]

[Lorinda]

I can confirm Mickey's report, specifically:

All radio buttons in the Preferences panes are offset, and sometimes only partially visible. (NeoOffice>Preferences or Tools>Options; NeoOffice>Print and NeoOffice>Java are two examples of panes with radio buttons)

Any time the mouse passes over the vertical bar separating the list on the left from the settings on the right, the list in the left flickers/jumps. This is particularly noticeable when moving from the right to the left.

I also noticed some flickering on opening a spreadsheet document with c. 2000 rows of data: each row flickered once, from top to bottom of the screen (like a "wave"). If I scrolled down, this flickering happened again in the visible rows once I let go of the scroll slider (the blue "oval" on the right). Within a few minutes, this stopped happening on scrolling.

I was doing a lot of filling of cells by:
selecting a cell containing data
Dragging the little black square in the lower right corner of the cell down through several cells and releasing.
I think there was more flickering with the redraws after the fill than I've seen before, but I can't be certain of that; it has been several days since I've worked with this particular spreadsheet and filled cells by dragging.

Lorinda

[pluby]

OK. Here is another test patch. This test patch eliminates the flickering (I had to add back some of my old flickering prevention code), the radio buttons problem is fixed, and the problem in slide shows with transitions where the entire next slide appears for a moment and then does the transition is fixed. Please help me find any bugs by using this test patch:

PowerPC:
http://www.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.1-Patch-3-Test-3-PowerPC.dmg

Intel:
http://www.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.1-Patch-3-Test-3-Intel.dmg

Patrick

[mickeyinlalaland]

yes this works! - posted detailed notes on bug 1473

Basically -
jumpy window in Tools-Options no longer occurs
Selection buttons aligned to text
slideshow background image no longer pops-in and then applies animated entry; background image draws in as per animation request.
Slides load nicely and transition nicely
Animations even play more detailed than before.

[SteveRead]

I just installed this and noticed that when I go to any of the menu commands, such as format paragraph or format characters that give me a dialog box, where an option is represented as a drop down menu, when I select the menu all the options are blank. That is the menu is totally white. Interestingly, however, if I move down the menu it does make a selection, even though the selection is not visible in the menu.
I am running this on a dual processor 2 GHZ powermac, using 10.4.8.

[jgd]

It happens when you open the context menu (Ctrl-click). The Font, Size, Alignment, Line Spacing menus are empty, the Style menu is normal.

Jacqueline

[aussie149]

Yes, I can confirm that the flicker is gone, but the context menus are blank. And it seems that the loading up is still faster than it used to be. Can we have our cake and eat it, please?
Peter

[mickeyinlalaland]

I can confirm that using (Control-click) on a selected word brings up a dialogue box with options listed and if any options have an arrow for more data - that window is blank

If you have the cursor at the end of the sentence and (Control-click) font and character and style etc. options appear in a pop-up window and items with an arrow for more content bring up a blank pop-up window.

Most features in the main toolbars seem to be all present and active - even with one arrow for more options. ie: font color, highlight font bring up color palette

However I did notice in View: ToolBar: Fontwork - if you select down arrow in menu bar a blank box appears but if you move your arrow to where the first item would be a seond window pops up.

Comparing this behavior in NeoO_2ABP15 I found that the first item in the blank pop-up window is "visible buttons" with an "arrow" to more selections. There are 5 more words in that first blank pop-up window and if you click where a word might be you can activate that function:
In this case the listing in the blank box is:
Visisble Buttoms ->
Customize Toolbar
————————
Dock Toolbar
Dock All Toolbars
—————————
Lock Toolbar position
Close Toolbar

So if I click where "Dock Toolbar" would be the toolbar docks itself.