One current problem involves the ScrollPane [ScrollPane+TwoWayScrollPane]: The entire contents of scrollpanes are drawn all the time, even when most of them are not visible. A heavy user of ScrollPanes can get burned bad on this. Lex Spoon has a patch that fixes this is the special case of PluggableLists, but it is still a problem for others. I made the suggestion that perhaps Layouts can be used to help determine visibility and avoid excessive drawing of invisible morphs; maybe there are other approaches to this too [cache the order, like a bsp maybe?].
So far, I can't say that there is anything slow about the Morphic framework itself; all the slowness I have seen so far is the fault of individual morphs that are especially bad about occluded drawing (like PluggableLists, above, and the multiple selection lists, which I posted a fix for earlier). Ironically, Morphic's speed has let things like this accumulate without anyone noticing much (for a while).
Eddie
----- Original Message ----- From: "Aaron J Reichow" reic0024@d.umn.edu To: "squeak list" squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 10:30 AM Subject: Bad Aspects of Morphic?
Hello!
Anyone with experience programming more average or normal GUI toolkits knows that Morphic is different. I think that most people, if they learn how to use it, find Morphic better in many ways. At least I do. I find myself wanting to change my environment, be it Mac OS X, Linux or Win98 (only at work, and not for long! :), but then I realize that Cocoa/GTK+/Win98 are a PIA compared to Morphic for a lot of things.
But surely, Morphic has to have issues. Speed is the biggest one I've heard and observed myself. What else is wrong with Morphic and how can we fix it? I'd say we have one of the coolest UI toolkits around, but it can
- Speed
- Solution: ?
- No a consistent and comprehensive 'regular' set of widgets for Morphic.
- Solution: Commuinity could decide on Prefab, BobsUI or something
new- but a partial consensus would be good, so newbies (or oldies) know where to put work when they want a new widget part of this consistent set 3. I'm told events in Morphic suck?
Regards, Aaron
Aaron Reichow :: UMD ACM Pres :: http://www.d.umn.edu/~reic0024/ "the profit system follows the path of least resistance and following the
path
of least resistance is what makes a river crooked." :: u. utah
phillips