[DrJava] Speed Bottleneck Experiment

[Peter C. <cen...@ri...>]

I attempted the performance workaround that Brian suggested in 
class.  I commented out the entire body of the 
DefinitionsDocument._styleChanged() method and then rebuilt with 
ant.  It is hard to tell if there is any real change in 
performance.  Using the same test as before, Dr. Java was able 
to update "public static int" fast enough to start drawing "int" 
by the time I stopped typing, but it was still several 
characters behind what I was currently typing.  If I wrote a 
larger block of text, like would happen in a comment block, 
sometimes entire words of 6-8 characters would lag and seem to 
appear all at once.  It feels subjectively like there was an 
improvement, but I might also be typing slightly slower than I 
was earlier today.  The window still seems to flicker while I 
type, but I think most of that effect is caused by the selection 
on the list of open documents.  I don't think this "fix" is a 
panacea for Dr. Java's performance problems on OS X.

--
Peter Centgraf
Lovett College
Rice University
Houston, TX