At 6:00 AM +0300 9/16/01, danielv at netvision.net.il wrote:
>What you're saying is imprecise - high priority tasks in Squeak do
>preempt lower priority tasks.

You're absolutely right. The cooperative aspect is limited to 
processes of the same priority. (Don't know *what* I was thinking 
last night when I replied to your original message...)

>
>Note that I reported slowness, not a freeze, and the testSuite never
>yields.
>
>The question is why they aren't preempting with more vigor in this
>case...
>
>Now the plot thickens - after turning on the higherPerformance
>preference, running a test in thee backgroup actually makes my framerate
>go *higher* - around 100 when I have nothing other than the UI, 300 with
>the test, 150 with the test and a ProcessBrowser showing me that the
>test is really running...
>
>Hmmm... Huh?

That is indeed non-intuitive. The only direct effect of the 
higherPerformance preference is to increase Morphic's maximum 
stepping rate from 50/sec to 1000/sec. I'd be interested in why the 
processes are interacting in this way. If I get a chance I'm going to 
try to reproduce this behavior.

-Martin