Re: "wxt on Mac": news

[Ethan M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Friday 30 March 2007 12:49, Timoth=E9e Lecomte wrote:
> > On Friday 30 March 2007 10:41, Timoth=E9e Lecomte wrote:
> >> So there is one remaining thing to try, but this will involve more
> >> work on my part: changing the way wxt works on Unix and Mac and
> >> arrange it so that the main thread runs the event loop while the
> >> usual gnuplot command-line loop runs in the separate thread.
> >
> > Sounds to me that Cocoa is broken by design.
> > Given this design limitation,
> > I suspect it would be easier/better to use the gnuplot+gnuplot_x11 mode=
l.
> > Instead of running wxt as a daughter thread, spawn a separate process
> > for which it is the main thread.
>=20
> That's an option, with its own issues=20
> (locating the executable,=20
  should not be an issue on OSX

> using an interprocess communication mechanism
  already works on OSX for x11 terminal; this should be no worse

> - pipes are not available on Windows=20
  not relevant to OSX, surely?

> -, bottlenecks in this mechanism, etc.).
  This one is a real issue, however.
  One my linux machines, the wxt terminal is somewhat slower than x11,
  and x11 is already limited partly by the pipe throughput between=20
  gnuplot and gnuplot_x11.
  The question is: would the slowdown due to limited pipe throughput
  be additive with the slowdown due to using wxt, or is it partially
  masked by it?  I.e. does the pipe transfer overlap with the execution
  of drawing commands?  If so, then the additional slowdown due to=20
  piping may be minimal in practice.


Other possible solution:

Some quick googling led me to some pages that seem to imply that
apps have a choice between using carbon or cocoa.  If this problem is
due to a mis-feature in cocoa, do we have the option of using carbon
instead?  (I've never done development on OSX, and have only a vague
idea what the difference between the two is, other than historically).



=2D-=20
Ethan A Merritt            Courier Deliveries: 1959 NE Pacific
Dept of Biochemistry
Health Sciences Building
University of Washington - Seattle WA 98195-7742