gc 2.6.4 Accounts Tab Performance/Lag/Slowness

[Pete]

Happy Friday night (or whatever day and time you read this) all

On 30 October 2014 04:07, Ian K <ik522000 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Interesting your spec includes a decent video card - my i7 machine uses
> onboard graphics and I was wondering whether a video card might help...
> In answer to your question I assume people are suffering with it - or am I
> wrong? Are there Windows users out there using 2.6.x without these issues?

I wonder the same thing. But the fact there's little discussion about
it would imply people are either ok with it, which.... I would find
somewhat surprising, or that this problem does not exist for most of
the devs and users? Different platforms and os-interactions resulting
in different performance behaviour? Ok on one platform/os combo,
problematic on others? Not sure.


On 30 October 2014 05:04, Dave H <hellvee at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm running Gnucash 2.6.4 built from git rev 79bdcf1+ on 2014-10-11 on both
> Win 7 and Win 8 on 3 different laptops and can't say I've noticed any real
> issues on the accounts tab as opposed to any of the other tabs.

Ok, thanks for the feedback.


On 30 October 2014 09:14, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I find it interesting that you are focused on the performance of GnuCash
> at scrolling and window switching.  In my case, these functions are far
> overshadowed by many other issues that one might think consume fewer CPU
> cycles such as starting the program in the first place, generating
> reports, writing transaction edits back into the data file, and
> generating intermediate backup files every so often.  Those functions
> cause lags measurable in seconds or even minutes for me.

I experience those same waits when I do those things too, but actually
don't find them very annoying. When I hit Save, or Open, I can always
just click the button and go refill my coffee, or whatever. No biggie
as far as I'm concerned. During a typical GC session, I just open the
file once, do my changes, and save once when I'm done. When I click
save I don't even need to wait because I can immediately switch
windows and do something else.

Would I prefer my edits to be immediately written to disk to better
safeguard my changes? Sure (as long as I had an undo button!). But I
understand it's a big architectural change to make that happen. It's
on the devs radar so they'll get there.

In contrast, the Accounts tab performance does drive me crazy because
I can't do anything else while it's happening. During a typical
session, I may return to the Accounts list numerous times, and every
time have to wait a few seconds. Repeatedly drilling into subaccounts,
sometimes nexted 2, 3, or 4 levels deep, waiting a few seconds each
time. Very tedious. At least in the main Accounts tab the expanded
subaccounts stay expanded when you next return to the tab.

The Accounts list then is accessed while doing, say, an OFX import is
the most annoying of all!!! This is because every time the window is
presented all the account trees are again collapsed, so you have to
drill back down click by click, waiting a couple of seconds each time.
Very tedious!!

> That said, I do notice the 'tearing' that you mention while scrolling in
> the Accounts window, as opposed to the relatively smooth scrolling in
> account register windows.  These two types of windows have very
> different underlying code generating them, which I imagine is the cause
> of that.  It has never bothered me.

Interesting. Actually I could probably live with the tearing itself,
but it's accompanied by the slow/reluctant scrolling and laggy
subaccount expanding/collapsing, which is the main killer in my case.

> I am bothered by the similar
> 'tearing' that occurs in the register windows when transaction edits are
> accepted with the 'Enter' key, as that sometimes takes several seconds
> to resolve.  I think that both of those effects are not really graphic
> issues, but rather underlying code issues.

Also interesting. I notice no tearing at all scrolling registers. I do
have a slight pause when saving each transaction edit, but it is much
less than the pause waiting for subaccounts to open. I usually have
the registers set to auto-save when you click or cursor away so when I
use the cursor keys to move I definitely notice the delay while the
cursor moves to the next txn. But that one doesn't bother me. Hey,
it's faster than it would be if it had to write to disk with every
edit.


-pete