Reminders

[Derek Atkins]

Robert Uhl <ruhl at 4dv.net> writes:

> I'd rather not have a splash screen, and have the app usable
> immediately...  It's a pity that it couldn't delay loading more things,
> so that at least the register popped up quickly.

First you complain that it sits there and does nothing, and then you
complain about a splash screen coming up and telling you it's doing
something...  Geez!  Make up your mind!  ;-)

Also, the register itself never comes up on its own -- it always
starts at the chart of accounts.  And unfortunately it cannot delay
loading stuff.

> > The last wave of gnucash developers did us a disservice in their
> > modularization efforts, because now everything is run through the
> > guile interpreter.  IMHO this slows it down considerably.
> 
> Well, you know that there are two schools of thought on that: one argues
> for more maintainable if slower code; the other for faster but less
> maintainable code.  The first points out that computers always get
> faster; the second points out that they're never quite fast enough.

Except in this case it is both slower AND harder to maintain/debug.
It's harder for developers because there is no 'app' -- running
gnucash under gdb is a pain (especially if you need to debug something
that happens during the startup sequence).  It's also harder for
developers because IMHO fewer developers know scheme than C, and
wrapping their brains around the data-flow is just too hard.

It's worse for users because it's slower to startup (as you've seen)
and IMHO users don't seem to benefit much from the ability to extend
gnucash through scheme -- partly because the hooks are confusing, and
I suspect partly because they are not well documented.

> > But nobody has performed a profiling analysis to work on performance.
> > Care to volunteer?
> 
> Actually, I'd love to.  I'm not certain that I'd be of much use,
> though.  My own talents are pretty meagre, as anyone who's been
> following my own project (travlib/travtrack) knows...

I await your profiling data....

> The last time I upgraded, it was when one was encouraged to wait on
> one's distribution to package it for one.  I didn't mind downloading
> umpteen libraries then, but I've gotten lazier now.

This was probably the upgrade from 1.4 to 1.6.  It's EXACTLY that
particular issue that drove us to keep the dependencies between 1.6
and 1.8.  As I said, the only dependency change is a required upgrade
to g-wrap....  This was done on purpose to make upgrading to 1.8 as
easy as possible.

> Well, you've inspired me to set forth and do it.  We'll see what
> happens...

Good.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available