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Re: disable "disable dynamic updating?"?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg84421] Re: disable "disable dynamic updating?"?
  • From: "dabrowsa at indiana.edu" <dabrowsa at indiana.edu>
  • Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 04:35:02 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <fjqjbj$6mt$1@smc.vnet.net> <fjtbnh$5p7$1@smc.vnet.net>

On Dec 21, 8:40 pm, ragfield <ragfi... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 21, 2:26=A0am, "dabro... at indiana.edu" <dabro... at indiana.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > OK, that's the confusion. =A0The dialog box I keep getting says:
>
> > =A0"One or more dynamic elements are taking excessively long to finish
> > evaluating."
>
> > Then it asks if I want to disable =A0dynamic updating or continue
> > waiting. =A0I always hit "continue waiting", but sometimes it will just
> > pop up again 10 seconds later. =A0Moreover this seems to interrupt the
> > operation of the rest of the FrontEnd, and sometimes results in
> > glitches in the formatting when it finally does complete. =A0I would
> > really like to be able to turn this dialog off.
>
> Ah, that's an entirely different issue altogether.  There is no way to
> turn this dialog off, but you also don't need to do anything with it.
> The dialog will automatically disappear if and when the dynamic
> content finishes evaluating.

Actually, no, that doesn't seem to be the case.  No matter how long I
wait the dialog remains up until I click a button.

> Just to clarify, this dialog is not interfering with the operation of
> the rest of the Front End.

No, I think it *is* interfering, see below.

> Some extremely slow Dynamic evaluation is
> interfering with the operation of the rest of the Front End and this
> dialog is informing you of this fact and giving you the option to
> cancel it before things get even more out of control.  Dynamic content
> is meant to be interactive, so it should evaluate quickly.  When this
> dialog appears it probably means that some slow evaluation was wrapped
> in Dynamic[] that shouldn't have been.
>
> Check out the section titled "Slow Evaluations inside Dynamic" in
> "tutorial/IntroductionToDynamic" in the  Mathematica 6 documentation:
>
> To avoid locking up the front end for good, dynamic evaluations are
> internally wrapped in TimeConstrained, with a timeout value of, by
> default, 5 seconds. (This can be changed with the
> DynamicEvaluationTimeout option.) In certain extreme cases,
> TimeConstrained can fail to abort the calculation, in which case the
> front end will, a few seconds later, put up a dialog box allowing you
> to terminate dynamic updating until the offending output has been
> deleted.

That's it!!  Thank you!  Apparently Mathematica was trying to kill my
calculation because it lasted more than 5 seconds, but for some reason
was unable to do so, and thus it put up the dialog proposing an
alternative resolution.  The fact that it was trying to kill the
calculation might explain the rendering glitches I mentioned.

I have used the SynchronousUpdating->False option, and that has more
or less fixed the problem.  This is embarassing because I actually
knew about that option, had used it in another program, and then
forgot about it and didn't recognize my current problem as the same as
one I had previously dealt with (because in the other case Mathematica
succeeded in killing the calculation, so the symptoms were different).

In any case, thanks for your help!



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