[Newbies] Binary file I/O performance problems

[David Finlayson]

For the most part, these numbers represent instrument measurements
(swath bathymetry from sonar systems). Precision ranges from 5 to 10
significant figures depending on the specific instrument being
recorded. So it wouldn't really be practical to form a look-up table
in most cases.

What attracted me to Squeak was that I was on the boat a few months
ago and got a functional navigation system built (sort-of like a
Garmin console on a pleasure boat) in about 2 days (used morphic and
the UDPSocket stuff)! That was awesome.

Then I modified the sonogram class to display sonar backscatter data
(like a black-and-white image of the sea floor) in about 2 hours. Very
cools stuff. The only problem was that the sonar data is time
consuming to parse in Squeak and so the sonogram scrolled about 1 row
per second (our system is collecting data at 8 pings per second) So it
would take me 8 hours to display 1 hour of sonar data.

The distant dream is to paint the sonar data into a Croquet world in
real time where scientists from other stations on the boat (or maybe
over the internet) can see the data rolling in as we collect it. It
would be really cool. Add in our boat as an icon, an ROV (remotely
operated vehicle) and maybe some in-water targets like fish or
whatever and I bet this would be Slashdot stuff! BUT, I need to be
able to get a handle on the speed of Squeak or this won't be
practical.

Maybe I need to write some kind of filter (pre-amplifier) in a
high-performance language as the data comes in over the network and
then re-broadcasts a decimated data set to Squeak?

David