Re: Slow graphics

[cartier@mipsmath.math.uqam.ca (Guillaume Cartier)]

>
> Hello again,
>
> We're running a big program with a graphic interface. On startup,
> things run smoothly (the bulk of the program was ported from
> a Xerox machine running interlisp, and everyone is amazed at the
> speedup under MACL). However after a while things begin to slow
> down. Soon they get r-e-a-l-l-y slow, though all that's happening
> is that graphic routines are getting called. It can happen that
> the program gets stuck in the GC, with no chance of getting out.
>
> First of all, I'd like to know whether it is reasonable to suppose
> that we're running out of heap space? Our program was generating
> volumes of bitmaps on the fly, but after taking care of this by either
> reusing the bitmaps or explicitly disposing of them, I still don't see
> much of a speedup.
>
> One frequent client is PAINT-RECT, which I call with 4 arguments.
> I have tried reserving a rectangle and stuffing that with the
> arguments, but again this doesn't seem to have much of an effect.
>
> I'd appreciate any stories of speedups that anyone might have, for
> possible pointers to the right direction. I'm really stumped as
> to what's going on.
>
> Thanks for your help,
>
> --eliot
>
A possible explanation of dramatic slow down that you experience is a bug
in the Apple Memory Manager that was introduced in the MacIIci and upwards.

I have a MacIIci and had problems similar to yours. An init that I found at
stanford solved the problem. You can get the init via anonymous ftp from
"sumex-aim.stanford.edu", it's the file "info-mac/init/memory-manager-fix.hqx".

Hope this helps.
-- 
Guillaume Cartier
cartier@math.uqam.ca
LACIM, Universite du Quebec a Montreal.