[mythtv-users] Myth menu navigation slow after using XMame in MythGame

[Andrew Dodd]

Quoting Isaac Richards <ijr at po.cwru.edu>:

>
> It's not hitting the DB there, either.  The menu code's pretty self-contained
> 
> in libs/libmyth/themedmenu.cpp, if you want to take a closer look.
Thanks for the pointer.

Still trying to work my way through the code to figure out how it works.  I do
have the following observations:

It is not tied to the specific function a menu item is tied to.
It is theme-specific (Happens in the TV Menu of G.A.N.T. when entering the watch
or delete recordings buttons on my laptop with 100% certainty, so far I can't
reproduce it with the "blue" theme)
When it occurs, in the case of a theme that has icons other than the menu
buttons that change depending on menu selection (e.g. the icons on the right
side of the screen in G.A.N.T.), the icon will change immediately, but
highlighting of the menuitem will be delayed.

I'm going to try copying Visor over to my laptop to see if it's affected by the
problem, since it is similar in structure to G.A.N.T. (column buttons,
icon-on-the-right)

Just tried Visor.  So far no problems with Visor, although I've noticed that ALL
of the menus have a touch of lag to them (not too much though.)

G.A.N.T. is much faster for most buttons, except for loading the TV menu and
entering the two aforementioned problem buttons.  In those cases it's *dead slow*.

Blue is wicked fast.

I've noticed that my desktop machine is also slightly prone to the same problem
with G.A.N.T., although not nearly as prominent (i.e. only noticeable if you're
looking for it, the two buttons in question are definately slower than the rest,
but not by much)

Both machines are running relatively similar configurations - Qt 3.1.2 on evil
bastard hybrid RedHat 7.3 systems.  (i.e. RH7.3 with a LOT of packages
upgraded...)  The only major difference I can think of is that the laptop is
1600x1200 and the desktop is 1280x1024.  Laptop and desktop have roughly
equivalent CPUs (1.7 GHz P4-M on laptop, 1.1 GHz Athlon Tbird on the desktop). 
Laptop is a GeForce 4 Go (GF4MX), desktop is a GF4 Ti4600.

Hmm.  I just realized the laptop was SpeedStepped down to 1.1.  Bumping it up to
1.7 fixed the slowness in Visor, but not the original G.A.N.T. problem. 
(Interestingly, once G.A.N.T. ran fine, but I can't get it to run at acceptable
speed again.)

Observations when running top in an SSH session from my desktop to the laptop:
CPU when rapidly hitting up/down between TV and Setup in main menu - 40% CPU for
X, 15-19% CPU for mythfrontend.

CPU spikes to 84-100% when entering the TV menu.  Switching to the Watch
Recordings or Delete Recordings menuitems pegs X CPU usage at 91%.  Rapidly
toggling between "Watch TV" and "Schedule" results in (at worst) 60% CPU,
heavily dependent on how fast I can hit the keys.  10% CPU for mythbackend.

Now if I switch to "blue":
I can't exceed 50-60% no matter how fast I hit keys to move between menu buttons.

Visor on average uses more CPU than Blue, but nowhere near the insane amounts
the "watch recordings" and "delete recordings" menus in G.A.N.T. use.

I'm guessing it is something to do with how X handles font rendering, since
G.A.N.T. rerenders fonts for menu items to change the outline/color, and those
particular menu items are the longest, although the problem does not seem to be
a linear function of the number of characters.  I'm not sure why my desktop
machine is not affected, until yesterday it was running the same X release as
the laptop.  Machines are running identical Xft and freetype versions.

OK, ignore all that.

On my system, when running the G.A.N.T. theme, the font size was so large that
letters that went too far below the line of text would be cut off.  (for
example, the letter g).  Removing the "g" from the menuitem would make entry
into that item nice and fast.

I dropped the fontsize in G.A.N.T. from 28 to 24, and there is no longer any
letter cutoff occurring, and the theme is MUCH more responsive.  I had already
done this for aesthetic reasons on my desktop machine.