Character lag in Transfer column

[Michael Hendry]

On 2 Sep 2014, at 17:18, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

> 
> On Sep 2, 2014, at 7:55 AM, Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On 2 Sep 2014, at 15:03, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> On Sep 2, 2014, at 6:29 AM, John Morris <johnjeff at editide.us> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi Michael,
>>>> I'm afraid I can't help you much because I'm very new to GnuCash. However, I can say that I do not experience this problem running GnuCash 2.6.3 on Snow Leopard in a 2.6 GHz MacBook Pro. Good luck finding the solution.
>>>> 
>>>> Best,
>>>> John
>>>> 
>>>> On Sep 2, 2014, at 9:13 AM, Michael Hendry wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> This is a problem I’ve had since I started using GnuCash (now 2.6.3) on my iMac (now OS 10.9.4) last year, and it hasn’t been enough of a nuisance for me to comment on it.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I was helping my daughter-in-law with a similar sort of problem when entering text in a form being displayed on a website by the Chromium browser, which was resolved by switching off hardware acceleration in Chromium, and which made me think the GnuCash problem might be resolved in a similar way.
>>>>> 
>>>>> As I add successive type characters in a previously blank transfer entry, I get:
>>>>> 
>>>>> E			[blank]
>>>>> Ex			Equity:Opening Balances
>>>>> Exp			Expenses:Accountant
>>>>> Exp:			Expenses:Accountant
>>>>> Exp:A		Expenses:Accountant
>>>>> Exp:Al		Expenses:Accountant
>>>>> Exp:All		Expenses:Allowances
>>>>> Exp:All		Expenses:Allowances
>>>>> Exp:All:		Expenses:Allowances
>>>>> Exp:All:B		Expenses:Allowances:Becky
>>>>> 
>>>>> As I do this, the blue highlight on the latter part of the transfer field usually lags behind the character I’ve just typed, making me think I’ve failed to push the key down far enough for it to be registered.
>>>>> 
>>>>> This didn’t happen previously when I was using GnuCash with Ubuntu.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I know there are some quirks in the Mac version of GnuCash - e.g. you can’t double-click on an accounts file in the Finder and have GnuCash open that file; instead it opens the most-recently-used file. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> If this is just the way it is, I can cope!
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I'm not seeing this either, and there's no acceleration setting to turn off except maybe when building Cairo. 
>> 
>> Now I think about this, it’s not like the Chromium example - in that case the letters on the screen do eventually catch up with the keyboard.
>> 
>> As I’ve experimented further, I find that the highlighted section in the latter part of the suggested account-name is sometimes blue and sometimes grey. (Whatever that may mean!).
>> 
>> Odd that it doesn’t happen to you - I think you’re using the same OS, John?
> 
> Yes, of course. I'm the Mac maintainer.

I meant 10.9.4 as opposed to an earlier version.

> 
> I retested with a larger file and now I do see the lag, though not the color effects. The profiler led me to a likely cause: Drawing the listbox over the front of register entries. When the register has so few entries that only a few lines are drawn, the listbox is displayed over a grey background and there's no lag. If there are enough lines displayed in the register to fill it the lag appears.

Interesting - even if I restrict the register to one previous entry (using a filter) I still get the lag - although the listbox is displayed without overlapping the register as you said, over a grey background.

> 
> In the profiler the issue seems to be related to a couple of gdk-quartz issues, one related to memory management and the other to the run-loop. It doesn't appear to be a problem in GnuCash; it might be the obsolescent way gdk-quartz handles a variety of things in order to maintain compatibility with older versions of OSX.

In other words, “Thole it!”.

Michael