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Path: utzoo!utcs!oscvax!rico
From: rico@oscvax.UUCP (Rico Mariani)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Speed of output to RAW:
Message-ID: <393@oscvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Dec-85 02:12:16 EST
Article-I.D.: oscvax.393
Posted: Tue Dec 24 02:12:16 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Dec-85 04:23:00 EST
References: <241@cirl.UUCP>
Reply-To: rico@oscvax.UUCP (Rico Mariani)
Distribution: net
Organization: Ontario Science Centre, Toronto
Lines: 78
Keywords: raw buffered
Summary: Bundle your output to RAW:

In article <241@cirl.UUCP> gary@cirl.UUCP (Gary Girzon) writes:
>The RAW: output device, the built-in general purpose ANSI-terminal
>type window, seems to be a little slow. I have not formally benchmarked
>the device speed, but it falls somewhere near 100 chars/sec. If you have
>MicroEmacs running, the output is much slower that ED. I assume ED draws
>to the screen directly. MicroEmacs opens a RAW: window for output. 
>Also, the Amigaterm program posted recently writes characters
>directly to the window using graphics library calls. The output is
>definitely faster and keeps up with 1200 baud. I have a similar
>terminal program which redirects the output to a RAW: window, and it 
>runs much slower. The advantage of the RAW: is that it offers built
>in ANSI sequences, like cursor motion, character styles, etc.
>
>So does anyone have a handle on how to speedup the RAW: device?
>Or will one have to rewrite it (so much for built in goodies) to
>achieve faster output?
>

Good day everyone! 

I am a brand new Amiga owner (i.e.  I own a brand new Amiga :-) ) and I
have a few comments re: raw: above... 

I downloaded uEmacs to my Amiga over the phone (same one I'm using now...
thank God for 1200 baud modems...) and got it compiled and running with
no trouble at all, thanks to decent code and an errata posting.  I too
found uEmacs *very* slow at redrawing the screen or any other major text
operations (like inserting a character near the beginning of a line
(reminds me of that 1200 baud modem I'm so fond of)).  Well I refused to
believe that I was going to have to write of 'raw:' as a peice of junk
(you haven't let me down yet Amiga), so I tried this little experiment:

	type >raw:1/1/600/180/Foo BIGFILE

lo and behold the output flew by my eyes at amazing speeds

In an effort to see what type is doing differently we try:

	type <raw:1/1/100/100/Foo

and as you type characters into the Foo window you will see exactly no
output until all of a sudden like, type outputs a line.  So that tells
me that type buffers its output... 

Conclusion: There is a large overhead to pay with each call that is made
to the raw: output driver.  To avoid this overhead you should package
the output into nice big chunks, as big as you can get them. 

uEmacs eventually outputs its characters with:
	Write( terminal, &c , 1 )

this is *slow*, with a little hacking here and there I changed it so
that it would emit it's lines with only one call to Write.  Emacs now
reminds me of a 19200 baud terminal.  Quite useable. 

I won't post the source unless I'm nagged but if you want to make the
changes yourself they're not to hard, the pertinant files are display.c
and termio.c.  I added a function called ttputnchar which emits n chars
to the terminal ( Write(terminal, string, n) ; terminal is a static in
termio.c ) once this is done, snoop around display.c for likely
single character outputs in loops to fix, there's lots. 

This fix should be a part of the next posting of microEmacs (are you
listening O Great Source Keeper?  )

	Merry Christmas
		-Rico

DISCLAIMERS: I don't know what I'm talking about. 
	     The Science Centre doesn't know what I'm talking about.  
	     You probably don't know what I'm talking about.
	     So nobody can possibly be expected to be responsible.


		...{allegra,linus,decvax,ihnp4,watmath}!utzoo!oscvax!rico

P.S.  Does anybody know how to send an EOF from the keyboard?? 
	Somebody?  Anybody?  Whimper...   :-(