On May 3, 2006, at 4:13 PM, John M McIntosh wrote:

> I'd be quite curious if this problem shows on the mac os-x platform  
> (powerpc or macintel) with the carbon VM, versus say the unix VM.
> There were changes to how Sockets are serviced when a pending  
> interrupt  happens, also in how the sleep logic works. The unix VM
> uses nano-sleep, the carbon vm uses select(), which seems to make  
> difference in cpu usage. But the question is does that affect the  UI.
>
> Readers may recall lately I changed the carbon VM and moved the  
> interpreter processing to the main UI thread which means events are  
> technically polled for, versus being serviced immediately on  
> another pthread. You can see that behaviour by accessing the mac  
> squeak menu and holding the menu open and watching squeak stop  
> running the VM as we block servicing the os-x menu.  Screams and $$  
> might fix that problem, but who uses the mac menu bar anyway.    
> Noting there is code and vm support to enable a mac  squeak image  
> to alter the mac menu bar how one sees fit and to trigger actions  
> in smalltalk as a result of picking said menu item.  That said no- 
> one reported any weird issues with UI interactions on the mac  
> carbon vm so far as I know.

Funny, I just noticed UI issues in 3.8.11. Sometimes the Mac menu bar  
doesn't respond for quite some time (10s of seconds), during which,  
Morphic *is* responsive.

I'll see if I can reproduce reliably and get you a better error report.

Colin