From jfox at mcmaster.ca  Wed Oct 31 16:12:57 2007
From: jfox at mcmaster.ca (John Fox)
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:12:57 -0400
Subject: [Rd] slow tcl/tk
In-Reply-To: <472888E0.1000003@biostat.ku.dk>
Message-ID: <6bpki0$7cf23r@toip3.srvr.bell.ca>

Dear Peter,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Peter Dalgaard
> Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 9:54 AM
> To: Adrian Dusa
> Cc: r-devel at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Rd] slow tcl/tk
> 
> Adrian Dusa wrote:
> > Dear list,
> >
> > Building my QCAGUI package using Rcmdr 1.3.0, under R 2.6.0 (using 
> > Kubuntu
> > Gutsy) I noticed the library starts visibly slower than... 
> somewhere 
> > in the past.
> >
> > I used the same version of Rcmdr under previous versions of 
> R and the 
> > tcl/tk window used to open instantly. Under the current version 
> > though, the window take seconds to open: first it builds the base 
> > window, then the menus and finally the complete window.
> >
> > The whole process takes about five seconds.
> > I don't think it has anything to do with the Linux version, 
> because I 
> > noticed the same behavior under the previous one as well.
> >
> > Is there something changed about tcl/tk in R 2.6.0?
> >
> >   
> Hmm, there's an event loop messup which was fixed in 
> R-patched. The main effect of that one was that scrollbars 
> could go crazy. Not sure whether it might cause your kind of 
> symptoms, but you might check out the fixed version.
> 
> It doesn't seem to make much of a difference here. Rather, I 
> suspect that Rcmdr itself got changed and a number of things 
> that used to be fixed are now generated programmatically. 

It's possible that I'm missing something, but I don't think that there have
been recent changes to the Rcmdr that would account for this difference (and
note that I don't see it under Windows). In particular, I think that the
change coincided with R-2.6.0 (which seems to be Adrian's experience too).

> There's certainly a lot of
> eval(parse(...)) stuff going on. (This sort of code always 
> makes me a little suspicious, but I haven't by far studied it 
> well enough to say whether there might be a more efficient way.)

The awkward eval-parses have always been there. There's probably a better
way to do at least some of this, but I haven't been able to think of it.

Regards,
 John

> 
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Adrian
> >
> >   
> 
> 
> -- 
>    O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             ?ster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
>   c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
>  (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark          Ph:  
> (+45) 35327918
> ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)                  FAX: 
> (+45) 35327907
> 
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[Rd] slow tcl/tk
John Fox