[Geany-Devel] Making Geany faster (reducing latency to typed text)

[Evandro Borracini]

Hi,

I started using Geany a couple of weeks ago and I noticed a slower response
to typed text than my previous editor Scite. Running both editors at the
same time, it was noticeable to me that Geany had a slightly longer latency
time for printing the characters on the screen (and/or for moving the
cursor to the next line after hitting the Enter key).

Well, I think that might not be noticeable to most of users (since they run
Geany on fast machines) but It is annoying me because I'm working on a
shared server (which most of time is very loaded), making the latency even
bigger. So, I've been trying to identify the cause of the latency.

After some experiments and I think I could find the cause and an
workaround. I just need some help from you guys for getting a final
solution.

I see that the latency is caused the following sequence of function calls:

editor.c: on_editor_notify()  inside "switch (nt->nmhdr.code) ... case
SCN_MODIFIED" :
        document_undo_add(doc, UNDO_SCINTILLA, NULL);  (file: document.c)
            document_set_text_changed(doc, TRUE); (file: document.c)
                ui_update_tab_status(doc) (file: ui_utils.c)
                   sidebar_openfiles_update(doc); (file: ui_utils.c)


It seems that the latency is because sidebar_openfiles_update() is called
too frequently (apparently at each typed key). I've made an experiment by
commenting out the call to ui_update_tab_status(doc) (insided
document_set_text_changed() ) and I got Geany as sharp as Scite!!!    :-)

I'd like to propose the fix below (please find the patch in the end of this
message). It worked fine for me but since I'm not much familiar with Geany
source code, I need you guys to review it.

Could you guys please review my fix? Does any of you see any better
solution?

Please notice that I'm changing two functions:
document_undo_add() - reduced the latency while typing text
document_redo_add() - reduced the latency for the undo operation (CTRL+Z)

Thanks in advance and regards,

Evandro



diff -Naurp geany-0.20/src/document.c geany-0.20_fast/src/document.c
--- geany-0.20/src/document.c    2012-11-23 20:22:22.564735000 -0800
+++ geany-0.20_fast/src/document.c    2012-11-23 20:28:17.535008000 -0800
@@ -2676,7 +2676,9 @@ void document_undo_add(GeanyDocument *do

     g_trash_stack_push(&doc->priv->undo_actions, action);

-    document_set_text_changed(doc, TRUE);
+    /* document_set_text_changed(doc, TRUE); */
+    doc->changed = TRUE;
+
     ui_update_popup_reundo_items(doc);
 }

@@ -2840,7 +2842,9 @@ static void document_redo_add(GeanyDocum

     g_trash_stack_push(&doc->priv->redo_actions, action);

-    document_set_text_changed(doc, TRUE);
+    /* document_set_text_changed(doc, TRUE); */
+    doc->changed = TRUE;
+
     ui_update_popup_reundo_items(doc);
 }
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