#14 gUPDATE doesn't work on Series 60

[Martin Dehler]

Seems like gUPDATE OFF/ON doesn't work on Series 60.
Running the following code on a Nokia 3650 with OPL
runtime 0.25 the lines are drawn one after the other,
instead of being displayed all together after a few
seconds.

PROC gUPDATE_test:
LOCAL x%

x%=50
gSETPENWIDTH 5

gUPDATE OFF

DO
x%=x%+20
gAT 10,x%
gLINEBY 150,20
PAUSE 20
UNTIL x%>150

gUPDATE ON

GET
ENDP

Martin

[Rick Andrews]

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Some OPL keywords force an update.
I see the same behaviour with Crystal/9210 and Series 60.

[Martin Dehler]

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I reported this because I'm used to a different behaviour with
EPOC Release 5 OPL. With gUPDATE OFF the lines of the code
example are drawn 'in the background' and then displayed all
together.

I encountered the different behaviour while drawing 'menus'
and simple 'dialogs' with graphic commands on a Serie 60
device. While they are drawn, it seems like the graphics are
'flickering'. If they could be drawn 'in the background'
(gUPDATE OFF) and then only the result could be shown
(gUPDATE ON) it would look a little bit nicer.

Here a reference from the EPOC32 OPL User Guide regarding
gUPDATE:
"The Psion?s screen is usually updated whenever you display
anything on it. gUPDATE OFF switches off this feature. The
screen will then be updated as few times as possible (though
note that some keywords will always cause an update). This
can result in a considerable speed improvement in some cases.
You might, for example, use gUPDATE OFF, then a sequence of
graphics commands, followed by gUPDATE."

[Rick Andrews]

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OK, thanks for that Martin.
I'll look into it, but I don't think the gUPDATE code in the runtime
has changed between Crystal(9210) and Series 60.
But let me have a dig around...

[Martin Dehler]

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I don't own a 'real' 9210, but tested the code with the Crystal
Emulator and indeed there's no difference. It seem's that the
'old' behaviour of gUPDATE was altered when OPL was ported
from Release 5 to Release 6.
The different behaviour of gUPDATE is not a major problem for
me. I used it espacially when drawing coordinate systems,
because drawing the axis, ticks, numbers and graphs was a
matter of several seconds when gUPDATE was switched on
and 'lightning fast' when done in the background.