use-revolution Digest, Vol 43, Issue 3

[Fred moyer]

>>  For no apparent reason, the fan on my
>> Powerbook will turn on. I open Activity Monitor and see that
>> Revolution is hogging the CPU with 40 - 70% of the CPU. I have no
>> pendingmessages, no throbbing default buttons, no players.
>>
>> Whenever this happens I start closing stacks. Inevitably, it is when
>> I shut a palette that the Activity Monitor goes down to normal. Just
>> now it was after I closed the "Message Box" that the racing stopped.
>> Does anyone know about this? Is it a bug? Is there some handler
>> desperately trying to keep a palette frontmost that is causing the
>> problem? I don't have a recipe -- it is intermittent.
>
> Seems like you found the cause:  global variables can be updated at  
> any
> time by any script, so the Variable Watcher posts messages to  
> itself to
> update periodically so it can show current values.

Sorry, but did you possibly misread what I wrote? Closing the Message  
Box (not the Variable Watcher) brought the cpu back down to normal.  
But I don't know much about the inner workings of Revolution, so  
maybe there's some connection between the Message Box and Variable  
Watcher that I don't know about.

Again, this issue is intermittent. But I've only noticed it with 2.8.  
Sometimes, closeing a palette that I created will slow it down.  
Twice, I think (not sure about this) closing the Application Browser  
slowed things down.

Anyway, has anyone else seen similar issues? I often run Activity  
Monitor while running Revolution and that's why I see these changes.  
Incidentally, the throbbing default button will consistently boost  
cpu use around 15 percentage points, a lot more than other apps with  
throbbing default buttons. (With other apps, I don't see any change  
when a throbbing default button shows up.)

Fred