[antlr-interest] Serious doubts on usage of incremental parsinginides

Loring Craymer Loring.G.Craymer at jpl.nasa.gov
Tue Apr 26 13:55:28 PDT 2005


At 02:31 PM 4/25/2005, Jean Bovet wrote:
>4) As Prashant wrote, the only time I notice a slowdown is when Swing 
>updates the syntax diagram view. Because it is doing that in the events 
>thread, if the display is taking too much time, the text zone will be 
>"frozen" for a few ms and the user will notice that. I didn't find a nice 
>way to solve that (is Swing able to update a view in another thread than 
>the event thread?): I am currently caching the syntax diagram in a image 
>(in thread C) so when Swing updates the view, only the image has to be 
>drawn (and this is done only when the user pauses long enough).
>
>In short, everything is fast and doesn't alter the edit experience of the 
>user except when Swing is updating part of the window. How are other IDEs 
>doing to update graphic elements without delaying the user input ? Are 
>they updating them in another thread than the event thread or is it simply 
>a matter of speed when rendering these elements ?

Jean--

The syntax diagram is an "analysis" pane rather than an editing pane, so it 
need not be updated as the user types--when I'm typing, I'm not concerned 
with analysis.  I'd suggest update on events which change the editing 
screen significantly--navigating to another part of the text, for example, 
or mouse events in general (one hand off of the keyboard).  John Mitchell's 
comment on separators is a good one--I like having the editor flash 
matching parentheses and braces if you pause after hitting a close 
parenthesis or brace.  Pause after semicolon is another good update 
point--when I do that, I have usually paused to think.

I also find it unsettling when an application decides to update the screen 
with a very slow update operation just because I've paused for a few 
seconds--all too often I have just gotten my hands back in a typing 
position when that happens.

--Loring


>Best regards,
>
>Jean




More information about the antlr-interest mailing list