Show Globals

[J. Landman Gay]

Fred moyer wrote:
> Hi everyone. Am I the only one for whom the script editor on 3.0 is 
> glacially slow? It is almost impossible at times to code, especially 
> when I have lots of huge globals loaded.

I don't see any slowdown particularly. Do you have enough RAM? I'm just 
guessing, but maybe Rev is having to swap memory out to disk a lot if 
there are a lot of big globals. You could test this by opening a stack 
that uses no globals and try debugging it. If it's snappy, then there 
may be a memory issue with the other stacks.

Huge globals will deplete available RAM pretty quickly. If there is any 
other way to store those values, do it. It is easy to use up nearly all 
available memory if you open a few stacks and each one loads a big 
global variable and never removes it. If there is no other way to store 
these values, then put empty into the globals when they aren't needed 
any more, or delete them entirely.

> 
> For that matter, in Preferences, it seems that checking or unchecking 
> "Show Globals" in the Script Editor area makes no difference. I still 
> see all of my globals (as well as $User and other $ variables) listed. 
> Simply comparing 2 variables if they start with say A and Z can take 20 
> seconds or more.

Unchecking "show globals" works okay here. You could also try unchecking 
"Revolution UI elements appear in lists". That should remove the 
gRev-whatevers at least.

> 
> Stepping through scripts is also unbelievably slow.

I see a very brief pause, but that's built into the debugger on purpose 
so you can see what's happening. It feels fine to me. A major slowdown 
might be related to the same RAM issue though, I'd try testing with a 
simple, no-globals stack and see if the speed picks up.

> 
> All of this wouldn't be so bad if the variables were not locked 
> underneath the script so that the variable list by definition must be 
> short requiring lots of scrolling up and down.
> 
> Are there any workarounds? For example:
> 
> - Is it possible for example to truly not see globals that are not 
> referred to in a particular script?
> - Is it possible to have Revolution use the old style script editor? (I 
> notice that the present script editor is called "revNewScriptEditor" 
> which implies an element of experimentation.)
> - Is it possible to drag the Variable list away from the window?

None of this is possible yet. I want the same things. The variable 
watcher is too small for me to see comfortably. There is a request in 
the QCC with all these suggestions and more.

> 
> Incidentally, I noticed when starting to report a bug today, I saw that 
> one of the choices was Revolution 3.5.0 Is there a new version available??

Not yet. I think they're probably just numbering ahead.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com