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From: rich@RICE.EDU (Richard Murphey)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Better interactive performance
Message-ID: <8901172251.AA08563@kappa.rice.edu>
Date: 17 Jan 89 22:51:19 GMT
References: <GRUNWALD.89Jan17131053@flute.cs.uiuc.edu>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
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In article <GRUNWALD.89Jan17131053@flute.cs.uiuc.edu> Dirk Grunwald writes:
> When running X, emacs & latex on my sun-3/60, I notice a bit of a detail
> in setting the focus. In particular, I can move the cursor from my emacs
> window to an xterm window, type a few characters & have them appear
> in the emacs window.
> 
> Does anyone else have a solution, or perhaps a set of patches to TWM to
> run ``niced'' but to fork children as ``normal''?

You might look at the way GNU emacs handles reniceing itself.
From the emacs distribution 18.52 in src/config.h:

/* Define HIGHPRI as a negative number
   if you want Emacs to run at a higher than normal priority.
   For this to take effect, you must install Emacs with setuid root.
   Emacs will change back to the users's own uid after setting
   its priority.  */

#define HIGHPRI -10

and in src/emacs.c:

#ifdef HIGHPRI
  setpriority (PRIO_PROCESS, getpid (), HIGHPRI);
  setuid (getuid ());
#endif HIGHPRI

Perhaps using this in the server would help you.

On another note, I have noticed that running GNU emacs reniced -10 and either
twm or Xsun at normal priority (0) results in both of them soaking up 50% of
the CPU cycles. I don't know why, but running them on separate hosts cures it.

Rich Murphey
Electrical Engineering
Rice University