Android Speed Woes

[Mark Waddingham]

On 2019-08-29 16:24, Dan Friedman via use-livecode wrote:
> Hello again!   I am have a tough time getting things to run snappy on
> an Android device.  It's blazing fast on my computer, and more than
> acceptable on my iPhone, but on any android device, it's slow...
> noticeably sluggish.   The issue is mainly hiding/showing groups.  For
> example:
> 
> put the milliseconds into m
> lock screen --for visual effect in rect (the rect of grc "ne_BG")
> //removed the animation for speed testing
> hide grp "ne_mainControls"
> show grp "ne_repeatG"
> unlock screen --with visual effect push left
> answer (the milliseconds - m)
> 
> The result of m is:
> iMac = 10
> iOS = 1   (iPhoneX)
> Android = 516  (Moto G5 Plus Android 7.0)
> 
> The groups contain no images or complex graphics.  Just some buttons 
> and fields.
> 
> I have tried it with and without acceleratedRendering.  Actually, with
> acceleratedRendering enabled it took longer, m=558.
> 
> I have it setup like this:
> Card "calendar"
>    Group "newEventG"  --> layerMode set to "Container"
>       Group "ne_mainControls"  --> layerMode set to "Dynamic"
>       Group " ne_repeatG"  --> layerMode set to "Dynamic"
> 
> Any thoughts or advice?  Most other functions are working within
> acceptable ranges/speeds.

So the first thing to do is (on Desktop) run with acceleratedRendering 
and ensure that:
    1) 'the effective layerMode of group "newEventG"' is container
    2) 'the effective layerMode of group "ne_mainControls" is dynamic
    3) 'the effective layerMode of group "ne_repeatG" is dynamic

If (1) does not turn out to be the case then acceleratedRendering will 
have a slightly negative effect (as the engine will be doing what it 
would do without acceleratedRendering on, but also paying the overhead 
of caching the result!). To fix this you'll need to tweak the properties 
of the newEventG group:

    - opaque must be false
    - showName must be false
    - hScrollbar must be false
    - vScrollbar must be false
    - showBorder must be false
    - all bitmap effects must be empty

Essentially the rule here is that for a group to be a container layer it 
must not have to render anything itself (as it is just meant to 
'contain' other layers).

If you get the groups effective layerModes as above I'd imagine you 
*might* see a slight increase in performance with acceleratedRendering 
on - the showing and hiding of the dynamic layers is essentially 'free' 
in this scenario - but their content does need to be cached first. 
Caching of dynamic layers happens incrementally as parts of them are 
visible.

However, given the difference in speed between the platforms with 
acceleratedRendering off I'm inclined to think something else is going 
on here... The CPU on a Moto G5 Plus is substantially less powerful than 
even an iPhone6S - but definitely not 50x!

You mentioned in another thread that you were using custom fonts... Do 
you get better performance if you remove the use of custom fonts and 
just go with the default?

Warmest Regards,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps