[Cuis-dev] Desktop background, Morphic and SVG examples, and other tweaks

[Juan Vuletich]

Hi Nicola,

I found a bug in VectorEnginePlugin that could cause crashes on Cuis 
main window resize. I just pushed a fix, and haven't seen crashes since.

On 9/20/2021 5:33 AM, Nicola Mingotti via Cuis-dev wrote:
>
> Hi Juan,
>
> . For me the solid background is warmly welcomed if it improves 
> performance and stability.

Thanks. With the last batch of updates, it seems removing the background 
only improves performance when resizing the Cuis main window. Stability 
now looks great in any case.

> . I observed a few crashes on resizing Cuis window (test in my laptop, 
> no VNC as my usual).
> I never saw that before (it is also true I mostly work full screen so 
> I am not sure my
> report is really relevant).

With the latest updates, I hope these are gone for good.

> bye
> Nicola

Thanks,

-- 
Juan Vuletich
www.cuis-smalltalk.org
https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
https://github.com/jvuletich
https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3
@JuanVuletich


>
> On 9/17/21 7:32 PM, Juan Vuletich via Cuis-dev wrote:
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> In the recent days, I've been pushing to GitHub many updates, mostly 
>> related to Morphic.
>>
>> I've been working hard on improving stability and reducing VM 
>> crashes, especially when using VectorGraphics. This meant changing 
>> the sequence in which the Display and other very big aux arrays are 
>> created. Today I found that the Cuis Morphic background is likely a 
>> source of trouble. On a big Display (4k), each time the main Cuis 
>> window is resized, we needed to create instances of Bitmap for 56Mb, 
>> 48 of them to be released immediately. And this could happen several 
>> times in sequence, as the user resizes Cuis to suit their taste. I've 
>> seen VM crashes during Garbage Collection while doing this. Besides, 
>> on machines with limited memory (like BeagleBoard and RasPis), this 
>> could give out-of-memory errors.
>>
>> Today I published a change set that removes the background by default 
>> replacing with a solid color. After some testing, I couldn't make 
>> Cuis crash, at least not doing the same things that crashed Cuis 
>> almost certainly before these changes. Many of you won't care at all, 
>> but if you preferred the nice background image, I hope you agree that 
>> stability is more important. If you want to add the image back to 
>> your image, all that is needed is to transfer the bits in the 
>> 'backgroundImageData' in the World object to the new image. If you do 
>> so, please tell, so we don't completely remove the support for 
>> backgroundImage in the future.
>>
>> I also reorganized and rewrote the VectorGraphics examplles. See 
>> Sample01* to Sample09* morph classes. They are meant to show the kind 
>> of things Cuis can do, and how little code is needed. The code is 
>> intended to changed and tweaked at will, to learn and play.
>>
>> I also reorganized the SVG examples in the SVG repo and package. 
>> Amongst the things you can do is to evaluate the creation of a SVG 
>> example with 'printIt' in a workspace, and see how you can embed any 
>> morph in text.
>>
>> I hope you enjoy the improved stability in VectorGraphics, and the 
>> updated examples.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>