Re: [gef-dev] Looking for Next Release (3.1?) Requirements - Performance

["Brian Fernandes" <brian.fernandes@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I have been using a full fledged GEF editor (not just draw2d) to display
gantt charts derived from rather extensive profiling data.
An average chart contains about 80-100K edit parts (N colored
RectangleFigures ) over a canvas that is about 500K pixels wide.

Now my data is parsed in about 5 seconds  and converted into my model -
however, the diagram takes a further 30 seconds to show up - on a clean
system with RAM to spare.
I'm using a pre 3 GEF on eclipse 3m9 - Win2k. I have a 2.4GHz P4 with 512MB
ram.

Once the diagram is loaded though - GEF works like a well oiled machine. I
have no problems selecting EditParts - the selection shows up the properties
instantaneously in the Properties View, Draw2d tooltips work as expected.
Scrolling the diagram presents no speed issues. I also have controls where
by entire sections of the graph may be made invisible or I can change the
color or I can actually clip the diagram (I currently clip by changing the
width of the edit parts). Since the scrollbar is next to useless with such
large diagrams , I sort of have mouse gestures on my editparts that allow me
to navigate better. EVERYTHING works correctly and within reasonable time.

My only problem with the performance is delay during startup and the massive
amounts of RAM consumed (about 200Megs of virtual memory) I guess this is
due to all the Visuals getting created and registered initially ? I could
keep this in check by loading only the required models depending on the
locaion of the scrollbar. Another approach would be to load all the models -
but have GEF decide when to register / create the figures / visuals or
whatever ... Maybe not required in most applications of GEF, but I will soon
have to start looking at reducing the memory and the initial loading delays.

Thanks,
Brian.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian Bull" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <gef-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 11:38 PM
Subject: Re: [gef-dev] Looking for Next Release (3.1?) Requirements


I think this is a very interesting idea.  Has anyone looked at performance
of Gef & Draw2D?  I wrote a simple program that connected a bunch of boxes
with Polylines (using draw2d) and put a mouse listener on each box (to
handle drags).  After about 10K nodes this got very very slow.  I mentioned
this to a friend of mine who works at Nvidia and he said he could do the
same thing (in C obviously) and get about 10Mil boxes (tapping into the H/W
acceleration etc...).  I was wondering if we could hit something like this
(or even 100K nodes) using OpenGL or other H/W accelerated drawing surfaces.
(Or maybe Draw2D wasn't ever designed for this)
Just a thought.

cheers,
Ian