IDE Interference (not just a another rant)

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Wed May 26 05:35:01 EDT 2004


xbury.cs at clearstream.com wrote:

> Dear fellow RR developpers...
> 
> I just noticed 4 days ago that a minute stack was really slow.
> 
> Tracking it down wasn't much help because the message 
> watcher threw me off thinking the problem was the TableManager 
> (sorry Jan)... Besides the fact that the message watcher is nearly 
> useless, it throws in all the RR's messages to confuse you and 
> doesn't tell you where the message came from... The more stacks
> or windows (scritp editors for ex.) you open, the more messages you
> get to confuse you...

The Rev Message Watcher "throws in all the RR's messages" not to confuse 
you, but to allow you to watch them.  That's where its name comes from. 
  The tool has no way to determine which subset of messages you're 
interested in.

If you want to see only native system messages try UmbrellaMan (in 
RevNet).  It also shows the target and provides a means of selecting 
only the messages you want to watch.  It's free:  if it doesn't work as 
you'd like please don't flame me.

> Anyway, my stack was really slow all the time and the problem was
> untraceable... Then I noticed that a message suspendstack was
> saving the stack at each suspendstack... Nothing wrong there
> except that whenever I went to the revprops or revtools or revmenu 
> palette, my stack would get a suspendstack event!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> Since RR is ultra slow, ultra-cpu-hog, I couldn't be get more and
> more irritated... On a 2.8 MHz P4 512MBs, this is a shame, and 
> a real bummer for productivity...
> 
> Why would a 10 K stack take 5 seconds to save and hog your CPU
> at 55 % (or 99% hog on a 1.8MHz P4...)?
> 
> IS THAT NORMAL?
> 
> This is NOT normal behavior and I believe we are all affected!

It seems you answered your own question.

Agreed, there is no auto-save option in prefs, so if the IDE is 
auto-saving it's an issue to post to Bugzilla.

But I haven't seen this behavior, so'm not sure it is.  Sure you don't 
have an auto-saving plugin doing that for you?


> Any solutions or suggestions to avoid this kind of IDE interference?

Check your plugins.

> The message watcher is also showing lots of events that dont
> seem pertinent to the environment/moment - lots of reveditscript
> messages (a script window is opened) but im not editing the script 
> currently. 

I believe that's a pending message sent at a regular interval to poll 
for command-option in order to allow script access with the browse tool.

There were two predominant standards in circulation at the time the IDE 
was crafted:  SuperCard's, in which you hold down the Command and Option 
keys while hovering over and object, and Command-Option-click to emulate 
HyperCard's method.

The SuperCard method was chosen, but because of the nature of the 
available system messages choosing that method requires a polling system 
the HyperCard method would not.

I believe this has been submitted to Bugzilla as a feature request for 
an option to choose between those two methods.


 > Incidentally this is the @%)*@&#)%*( message I cannot
> use in the plug-ins to use my own script editor which despite all my
> bug reporting is still light years ahead of RR's (not to mention an
> improved message and variable watcher that really work in MC
> for years now)
> 
> Obviously RR's plug-ins are  irrelevant and futile since they haven't 
> been fixed for years...

You've mentioned this before, but you've either entered the bug report 
in Bugzilla or you haven't.  If you have you can track its progress 
through Bugzilla's interface.  If you haven't there's little point in 
bringing it up in any other venue.  In either case I'm unclear what you 
expect the readers of this list to do for you on that one.

The only plugin I've seen issues with is the example plugin, but since 
it's only an example it's never been a show-stopper for me, nor has it 
affected any of the other plugins I use.

> What is really frustrating is that all these messages interfere with 
> normal stack operations - suspendstack in the occurence... 
> 
> My question is whether there is a way to STOP them and have a 
> minimum environment like MC

Er, use MC?

It has a plugin system now, and it uses only native system messages so 
the other issues you've had should not be evident there.

> - No offense meant - sorry for the lack of professional wording....

> PS: when will this subscription list adhere to standards and strip the
> CC's and other non-subscription list emails? Do you like SPAM, and
> mis-forwards to the wrong persons? I suppose it's normal... ;)

Dude, please.  If you have a question about the list format contact the 
listmom, Heather.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com


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