for what I know it's the way it's integrated with the underlain OS. On windows things are much, much better.
*VW emulates GUIs well, but I would not expect it to beat native*. I would restate it as : I would not expect native to be slower that emulated.... :) seems the same, but not exactly... ciao giorgio I hope to have time to look again at Pharo one of these days. But time is always a scarce resource :) On Wed, Oct 9, 2019 at 4:17 AM Shaping <shap...@uurda.org> wrote: > Regarding native widget, on the VW side the usage on them brought > slowness on the OSX platform. Windows platform is speedy, but OSX platform > is slower using native widget than with emulated ones. > > So native widget alone are not always a solution. > > > > That’s interesting and unexpected (I don’t use OSX). I would think that > something is wrong with the VW native implementation or interface to it. > VW emulates GUIs well, but I would not expect it to beat native. > > > > Shaping > > > > On Mon, Oct 7, 2019 at 2:08 PM Esteban Lorenzano <esteba...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > > > On 7 Oct 2019, at 12:39, Shaping <shap...@uurda.org> wrote: > > > > I haven't seen is the instability of the VM you mention, it has worked > pretty well for my average use, although the UX is not straightforward. > > > > Yes, lots of redirection and extra steps. Many degrees of freedom. > Seemingly no good default “happy” path to simplify things a little before > you start to investigate the variations/choices. > > > > > The other thing that keeps me planted firmly in VW is the sheer speed of > it. > > > > I don't know if there are recent benchmarks, but I've felt Pharo to be > really fast compared to VW when it comes to computing. > > > > I’ve don’t plenty of informal comparative testing mostly with the GUI. > I’ve used VW continuously for 29 years and Pharo on and off since 2006. > (I’m really trying to port, but I keep failing to do it; getting closer). > VW is still noticeably quicker in GUI responsiveness, in most cases. One > big difference is the Pharo HTTP client, with all those wonderful > primitives. It’s about *twice as fast* as VW’s. Bravo. I meant to tell > that to Sven recently, and forgot. > > > > > Pharo looks generally much better, but it’s mushy, and that’s a > problem. VW is not. > > > > Working regularly with VW or VAST when I go back to Pharo the "mushiness" > is significantly noticeable, but if you open a Pharo 3 image (or even Pharo > 4) you'll feel it really "snappy", but of course you'll lose all the > improvements since then; and that's the current tradeoff.’ > > > > Yeah, I guess all the new slick GUIs are a bit heavier. This machine is > just okay for speed –2.7 GHz Xeon, but VW feels okay. Pharo tends to put > me slowly to sleep with the tiny but noticeable lags here and there. I’m > very fond of GT. Beautiful. Not sure what to do go get the GUI quickness > back. Maybe you guys are waiting for the new GUI framework(s) to firm > up? I tried Cuis, and was not impressed. It’s too lean/Spartan and still > not very fast (slower in some ways than Pharo). I like the Pharo > creature-comforts (who wouldn’t?). > > > > I never understood the reason for the incremental slowdown, it is even > present in "modern" tools such as GTToolkit. > > > > Yes, it’s like a creeping disease. Lol > > > > Another thing I miss enough to want to implement (or fake-out somehow) is > Alt-tabbing as a way to get around thru your browsers. Usually I have 4 to > 6 up at once, if I’m behaving, and as many as 20 if I’m not. Looking > about for the tabs at the bottom to click is not nearly as fun as > Alt-Tabbing. Maybe I could emulate Alt-Tab with Alt-Shift-Tab—a bit of a > finger twister, but it might work. > > > > > Gestural dynamics are very quick, well under 100 ms latency, often less > than 20 ms. > > > I’m seeing 100, 150, and 200 ms regularly in Pharo. It’s too mushy, and > that slows the mind. > > > Any developer understands this, whether he talks about it or not. > > > > This is true, below 20ms is ideal, and top-notch CLI terminals are > benchmarking this as a selling point (using stuff like > https://github.com/pavelfatin/typometer), Sublime, TextEdit, Notepad++ > measure sub 10ms latency. > > > > Indeed. > > > > My whole nervous system definitely feels this speed effect and starts to > thought-glide better below these tiny latencies. I’m sure many reading > this have had similar experiences. Something similar happens when you are > fortunate enough to use a machine with extremely fast striped SSD drives, > where *you literally don’t wait for anything*, except the bloody > internet. This doesn’t just change the speed at which you do the work. It > reorganizes your mind and skills in ways you had not anticipated because > you can flow so much more quickly, making connections further forward and > backward in your thought stream. My point is that if the speed and > low-latencies are made a priority, we can attract users just on this basis > alone. Even I would be working harder at improving Pharo (and complaining > less) if everything were snappy. I would probably just get on with doing > the needed tasks. Interesting how that works. Speed: it changes you. It > changes the whole game. > > > > > So I’m wondering when the Pharo GUI will snap as well as VW. > > > > Maybe with native widgets there will be a significant speedup, although I > don't know whether the lag comes from rendering time or from something else. > > > > I would like to know more about the native widgets in Pharo. Does anyone > know when this is likely to happen? > > > > I know, since I’m doing it :) > > Native widgets (more like “gtk widgets”. This is technically just native > under linux, but Gtk3 works very well both in Windows and Mac (you just has > to ship it) will be available for development in Pharo 8. > > Now, moving the whole Pharo into it will take a bit longer, and we hope to > be able to have a “Pharo Gtk experience” for Pharo 9 (lots of tools to > migrate to Spec2). > > > > Esteban > > > > > > But VW event model is not better than Pharo's, so it might be something > else. > > > > I’ve not looked into the details, but I will sometimes just repeatedly > click on a method name and watch how long the code pane takes to render in > VW and Pharo, and I don’t get what Pharo could be doing to make that time > so long. Both are indexing into the sources file or the changes file to > get some text, and then there is the TT-font rendering, which is probably > where the CPU cycles are going. I should look into if further, but I’m > sure someone reading this knows enough about the rendering path to say > where the bottleneck is. > > > > > > Cheers, > > > > Shaping > > > >
