Lowering high CPU rates?

[Kee Nethery]

On Mar 16, 2008, at 10:14 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Kee Nethery wrote:
>> I found that the throbbing default buttons in Mac OS X would  
>> really  hog the CPU. The screen just sitting there in idle with a  
>> throbbing  button was all it took to use up an amazing amount of  
>> CPU. Seems like  a lame "feature".
>
> While it's true that Apple's compositing wastes a great many clock  
> cycles for minor incremental aesthetic enhancements, and it's  
> painfully true that the limitations of their APIs requires  
> developers of tools like Rev and SC to jump through some pretty big  
> hoops to allow their developers to have default buttons rendered  
> reliable against even non-Apple-sanctioned-stripes backgrounds, the  
> actual CPU time Rev takes up to deal with all of Apple's nonsense  
> was tremendously reduced several versions ago.
>
> Which version are you using?  In v2.9 and the last few prior, I  
> don't recall seeing any idle state exceed 15% of total CPU time  
> (more than ideal, perhaps, but down several times from what it once  
> was and may be able to be brought down even lower if Apple changes  
> their compositing API).

I agree, in times past it was a HUGE CPU hog and now it is down to a  
more manageable CPU usage, but still kind of high for my preferences.

Running 2.8.1 on PowerPC G4, a throbbing button takes the CPU from  
0.6% to 15.8% (dialog box no background stack window) to 19.5 (stack  
visible with a throbbing button on it).

Mail.app goes from 2.5% CPU (foreground no throbbing button) to 12.5%  
(dialog with throbbing button).

Really all I want is some way to denote that there is a default choice  
and I'd be happy to just have the blue aqua color without the CPU  
eating throbbing. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to turn off the  
throbbing animation for default buttons but to retain the indication  
that it is the default.

Thanks Kee


On Mar 16, 2008, at 11:23 PM, Chipp Walters wrote:

> Stay away from using Idle,Idle rates, etc..They're there for legacy  
> purposes.

You are correct. Actually am not using idle, used it as a figure of  
speech meaning that the stack / app is just sitting there doing  
nothing. My hypercard history is showing. I agree, "idle" as a command  
is not the thing to use these days. Thanks for the reminder.