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Re: V.6.0.2 gripes...

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg86700] Re: V.6.0.2 gripes...
• From: David Bailey <dave at Remove_Thisdbailey.co.uk>
• Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:22:13 -0500 (EST)
• References: <200803121026.FAA17358@smc.vnet.net> <fras7l$1bn$1@smc.vnet.net> <frdfs4$avb$1@smc.vnet.net>

alexxx.magni at gmail.com wrote:
> Murray Eisenberg ha scritto:
> 
>> My experience with the Documentation Center in 6.0 and 6.0.1 is that the
>> first call to it is slow, but that after that things are faster at a
>> given session.
>>
>> so could the problem be the initial loading of the Java interpreter, or
>> some other Java-related initialization, and not just initializing the
>> window per se?
>>
>> Then of course there's the issue of how else to handle this.  One option
>> is to write everything in a platform-dependent way and avoid a
>> cross-platform tool such as Java entirely.  But that has its
>> down-side,too:  increased time to program it, higher cost,....
>>
> 
> 
> I see of course the need to keep things simple when a project is
> dealing with multiple platforms - although I imagine that a
> development firm as big as Wolfram should be capable of handling it.
> 
> Yet this argument doesnt convince me that Java was a good answer: what
> is more platform independent, for example, of a well written HTML
> documentation? Or, simply, the use of Mathematica notebooks without
> Java - as in the good old days?
> 
> No, the huge slowness that many people experience (not everybody, I
> admit) is a faux pas.
> Java can be better than in the old days, as David Bailey says, but it
> still contains too many unresolved speed issues if 2GHz machines are
> crawling when simply reading documentation.
> 
> What about an option to turn it off at least in the docs, losing some
> (unneeded) interactivity?
> 
> 
> Alessandro
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> alexxx.magni at gmail.com wrote:
>>> It is just me, or the handling by Java of the new Function Navigator /
>>> Virtual Book is terrible? It needs a huge time to init the window, and
>>> its reponse time is awful, even worse than the Doc Center.
>>>
>>> It's an old and tiring camplain, but could people stop writing stuff
>>> in Java, since all they obtain is to slow our PCs to a crawl???
>>>
>>> Alessandro
>>>
>> --
>> Murray Eisenberg                     murray at math.umass.edu
>> Mathematics & Statistics Dept.
>> Lederle Graduate Research Tower      phone 413 549-1020 (H)
>> University of Massachusetts                413 545-2859 (W)
>> 710 North Pleasant Street            fax   413 545-1801
>> Amherst, MA 01003-9305
> 
I think we all agree that there should be absolutely no noticeable delay 
when bringing up a page of documentation - I hope WRI are listening!

Note that Java is not used to actually display the documentation - it 
appears in a notebook. HTML documentation would be greatly inferior 
however, because you could not actually execute documentation cells 
(possibly with changes).

I suspect WRI have bought in some Java search component that is too 
inefficient - hopefully they will re-code it in a faster form, possibly 
inside Mathematica, in C.

David Bailey
http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk

• References:
  • V.6.0.2 gripes...
    • From: "alexxx.magni@gmail.com" <alexxx.magni@gmail.com>