Re: workstation speed

["Robert W. Kerns" <RWK@scrc-yukon.arpa>]

    Date: Thu, 6 Aug 87 21:59:51 CDT
    From: forbus@p.cs.uiuc.edu (Kenneth Forbus)

	    Gee, isn't it nice that you're comparing their latest stuff with
	    our ancient history.  7.1 has a lot of speedups.  (But thanks for
	    the other nice things you said).
	
    I've heard that, and am looking forward to that part of it.  However, I'm
    told on 3650's it may give something like 30%, which is a far cry from 2.8x.
    I haven't heard any solid bits on how much faster it is on 3670's and 3640's,
    which is what we mostly have.  Is it signficantly faster on them as well?

To carry a metaphor too meta-far:  "Your mileage may vary".  But yes,
there are speedups that affect the entire system.  Your application
may benefit more or less on one system or another, depending on its
characteristics.

    >give you mud tires and a powerful user-interface engine.  There's lots
    >of leverage in the gearbox to get your applications up the hill quickly,
    >without getting bogged down in the swamps of writing mouse-sensitivity
    >code, layouts, etc.
	
    Yes, everything I've seen indicates that 7.1 makes it easier to hack
    graphics.  But to me that is secondary.  In fact, if these powerful
    features make every interaction with the machine slower, to me they are
    not features.  
My experience is that they make every interaction faster.  For example,
entering the debugger, and wanting to describe an object which is the
CADR of the third argument, and then include an object from that description
in a call used to look like this:

c-m-3 c-m-A
(cadr *)
(describe *)
(setq obj (sys:eval-in-instance * '<instance-variable>))
(frobulate obj)

but now is just:

Mouse-Middle on the object
(frobulate <mouse-left-on-the-object>)

And applications designed and written using the new substrate get similar
benefits.

		   As I understand it, and your message later confirms,
    these things can be turned off.  I applaud providing this flexibility.
It's seldom that an interface is improved by turning this stuff
off.  But one example is "rubber-banding" lines or dragging objects
around with the mouse.  Putting the lines or the object being dragged
into the history, and then removing it just to redraw it over a pixel,
serves no purpose.

	    And don't forget, it comes with an 8-times larger cargo area.
	
    Address space? Now if Symbolics RAM were reasonably priced, one could get
    128MB of RAM and use a whole Eagle for swap space...
Just >one< Eagle?