Animated Gifs - Keep them Running

[Richard Gaskin]

Tom Glod wrote:

 > RG....i rotate an svg using send it time and it seems to work really
 > well.
 > i can rotate many svgs simultaneously....so maybe svg is the answer
 > here....as far as a progress indicator.

It's surprising that the vector rendering of SVG is noticeably faster 
for multi-frame animation than a straight blit-to-screen from GIF, but 
rendering time isn't the main problem with progress indicators.

Without a separate thread for a progress indicator, it's bound to the 
same thread doing the task whose progress is being displayed.

When the task happens to have steps whose increments are equivalent, it 
can work well enough.  But many tasks have steps where it's difficult or 
impossible to know in advance just how long a given task will take, 
resulting in jerky motion of the indicator animation.

See the LC Standalone Building dialog as an example.  For some of the 
time it rotates smoothly, other times it freezes for a bit while a step 
finishes, not at all like the smooth motion of OS-supplied progress 
indicators, which run in their own thread.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com