Commit | Line | Data |
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55d2b2c2 KL |
1 | Jexer Work Log |
2 | ============== | |
3 | ||
be72cb5c KL |
4 | August 16, 2017 |
5 | ||
6 | Holy balls this has gotten so much faster! It is FINALLY visibly | |
7 | identical in speed to the original d-tui: on xterm it is glass | |
8 | smooth. CPU load is about +/- 10%, idling around 5%. | |
9 | ||
10 | I had to dramatically rework the event processing order, but now it | |
11 | makes much more sense. TApplication.run()'s sole job is to listen for | |
12 | backend I/O, push it into drainEventQueue, and wake up the consumer | |
13 | thread. The consumer thread's run() has the job of dealing with the | |
14 | event, AND THEN calling doIdles and updating the screen. That was the | |
15 | big breakthrough: why bother having main thread do screen updates? It | |
16 | just leads to contention everywhere as it tries to tell the consumer | |
17 | thread to lay off its data structures, when in reality the consumer | |
18 | thread should have been the real owner of those structures in the | |
19 | first place! This was mainly an artifact of the d-tui fiber threading | |
20 | design. | |
21 | ||
22 | So now we have nice flow of events: | |
23 | ||
24 | * I/O enters the backend, backend wakes up main thread. | |
25 | ||
26 | * Main thread grabs events, wakes up consumer thread. | |
27 | ||
28 | * Consumer thread does work, updates screen. | |
29 | ||
30 | * Anyone can call doRepaint() to get a screen update shortly | |
31 | thereafter. | |
32 | ||
33 | * Same flow for TTerminalWindow: ECMA48 gets remote I/O, calls back | |
34 | into TTerminalWindow, which then calls doRepaint(). So in this case | |
35 | we have a completely external thread asking for a screen update, and | |
36 | it is working. | |
37 | ||
38 | Along the way I also eliminated the Screen.dirty flag and cut out | |
39 | calls to CellAttribute checks. Overall we now have about 80% less CPU | |
40 | being burned and way less latency. Both HPROF samples and times puts | |
41 | my code at roughly 5% of the total, all the rest is the | |
42 | sleeping/locking infrastructure. | |
43 | ||
f6d90207 KL |
44 | August 15, 2017 |
45 | ||
46 | I cut 0.0.5 just now, and also applied for a Sonatype repository. | |
47 | It was a reasonable spot: TEditor was working albeit buggy, and a bug | |
48 | had just come in on the main TApplication run loop. So we are about | |
49 | to embark upon some performance work again, it's been probably version | |
50 | 0.0.2 or so since the last cycle. | |
51 | ||
52 | Code size: 40446 lines. | |
53 | ||
54 | Now switching head to 0.0.6 and taking a small break. | |
55 | ||
df602ccf KL |
56 | August 14, 2017 |
57 | ||
58 | TEditor is basically done. Mouse movement, keyboard movement, | |
59 | backspace / delete / enter / etc. are all in. Things are starting to | |
60 | look pretty good. | |
61 | ||
62 | I'm going to prep for a final cut and release tag tomorrow or the next | |
63 | evening. I need to take a break and get some meatspace life dealt | |
64 | with. | |
65 | ||
e8a11f98 KL |
66 | August 12, 2017 |
67 | ||
68 | TEditor is stubbed in about 50% complete now. I have a Highlighter | |
69 | class that provides different colors based on Word text values, but it | |
70 | is a lot too simple to do true syntax highlighting. I am noodling on | |
71 | the right design that would let TEditor be both a programmer's editor | |
72 | (so Highlighter needs to have state and do a lexical scan) and a word | |
73 | processor (where Word needs to tokenize on whitespace). I estimate | |
74 | probably a good 2-4 weeks left to get the editor behavior where I want | |
75 | it, and then after that will be the 0.0.5 release. | |
76 | ||
77 | Finding more minor paper cuts and fixing them: the mouse cursor being | |
78 | ahead of a window drag event, SwingTerminal resetting blink on new | |
79 | input, prevent TWindow from resizing down into the status bar. | |
80 | ||
3e074355 KL |
81 | August 8, 2017 |
82 | ||
83 | Multiscreen is looking really cool! Demo6 now brings up three | |
84 | screens, including one that is inside a TWindow of a different | |
85 | application. | |
86 | ||
42873e30 KL |
87 | August 7, 2017 |
88 | ||
89 | Had trouble sleeping, what with a bunch of imaginative thoughts for | |
90 | this release. jexer.backend will be the ultimate destination for | |
91 | jexer.session and most of jexer.io. TerminalReader will be the | |
92 | interface for keyboard and mouse events. cmScreenConnected and | |
93 | cmScreenDisconnected will be new events to represent a screen | |
94 | appearing/disappearing, and MultiBackend will be a new backend | |
95 | multiplexer that goes full XRandR. Several new demos demonstrating | |
96 | multi-screen support will be coming along. | |
97 | ||
98 | August 6, 2017 | |
99 | ||
100 | Time to clean up more API, particularly between Backend and Screen. | |
101 | Both of these will be interfaces soon, so that one could easily | |
102 | subclass JComponent and implement both Screen and Backend. The | |
103 | original code evolved out of Qodem, where screen.c and input.c were | |
104 | two different things leading to ECMA48Screen and ECMA48Terminal, but | |
105 | now there is really no need to keep them separate. It also | |
106 | complicates the constructors, as these are basically friend classes | |
107 | that have used package private access to get around their artificial | |
108 | separation. | |
109 | ||
110 | When I get this done it should be a lot easier to do any of: | |
111 | ||
112 | * Pass a JFrame or JComponent to SwingBackend and have it add itself, | |
113 | like any other Swing widget. | |
114 | ||
115 | * Construct a SwingBackend and add it to any regular JComponent. | |
116 | ||
117 | * Have multiple TApplications running inside the same Swing | |
118 | application, including having actions affect each other. (Will also | |
119 | need to ensure that TWidgets/TWindows are not in different | |
120 | TApplication collections.) | |
121 | ||
122 | * Build a Backend/Screen multiplexer, so that one could have a ECMA48 | |
123 | TApplication listening on a port and a local Swing monitor for it. | |
124 | ||
125 | * Build a Backend/Screen manager, so that one could have multiple | |
126 | ECMA48 screens acting as a single large screen (e.g. XRandR). | |
127 | ||
128 | Now I need to decide which package will collect Backend, SessionInfo, | |
129 | and Screen. jexer.io has some java.io stuff, so it stays anyway. | |
130 | ||
2fef9c6e KL |
131 | July 28, 2017 |
132 | ||
133 | Got very busy with my meatspace life, now getting a chance to come | |
134 | back around. | |
135 | ||
136 | I gave up on TEditor knowing about graphemes, instead pulling back to | |
137 | simple Cells. This will be better anyway in the long run, as getting | |
138 | grapheme support in Screen someday will also get it for me in TEditor | |
139 | for free. But it does mean that TEditor will chew through much more | |
140 | RAM than it needs to for a text file. Performance optimization will | |
141 | come someday. But this means I can also go back to gcj, because I | |
142 | really like its warnings about unused imports. | |
143 | ||
144 | I've got a POM stubbed in, and created an account over at sonatype. | |
145 | If it isn't too hard, I will try to get 0.0.5 released into the maven | |
146 | universe. But that is still a bit away, I need TEditor running with | |
147 | syntax highlighting first. | |
148 | ||
149 | July 17, 2017 | |
150 | ||
151 | Focus-follows-mouse is in, as is NOCLOSEBOX. | |
152 | ||
8c236a98 KL |
153 | July 15, 2017 |
154 | ||
155 | I think I have cleaned up most of the window show/hide/activate mess | |
156 | in TApplication. Demo4 has some cool interactions between a | |
157 | background TDesktop and several foreground TWindows, which helped | |
158 | expose bugs. | |
159 | ||
160 | July 9, 2017 | |
161 | ||
162 | While working on TWindow.hide/show I decided that I am sick of | |
163 | TApplication's active window handling. TApplication makes lots of | |
164 | assumptions, things are too fragile between modal and not, and one | |
165 | cannot easily say window.activate(). So I will also be changing that | |
166 | too. ... Code is still a bit of a mess, but hooks are in place at | |
167 | least for show/hide/activate. | |
168 | ||
169 | July 8, 2017 | |
170 | ||
171 | Qodem 1.0.0 released last month, I had a vacation, and a Jexer user | |
172 | (nikiroo) started opening up pull requests. :-) So back unto the | |
173 | breach we go! | |
174 | ||
175 | TButton is now animated so that there is some feedback when selected | |
176 | via keyboard. StringJustifier was written which permits TText's to | |
177 | have left/centered/right and full justification. TDesktop is now in | |
178 | too which can act as a permanent max-sized window without borders. | |
179 | ||
180 | Next up is Viewport, an interface to collect scrollbar API, and then a | |
181 | cleaner API for scrollable widgets and windows. After that is more | |
182 | window API: hide/show/maximize/restore, and unclosable windows. I am | |
183 | cherry-picking bits from @nikiroo's PRs, which will likely break them | |
184 | before it fixes things, but I will find some way to get Niki credited | |
185 | with those pieces. | |
186 | ||
e685a47d KL |
187 | March 21, 2017 |
188 | ||
189 | I am starting to gear up for making Jexer a serious project now. I've | |
190 | created its SourceForge project, linked it back to GitHub, have most | |
191 | of its web page set up (looks like Qodem's), and released 0.0.4. And | |
192 | then this morning saw an out-of-bounds exception if you kill the main | |
193 | demo window. Glad I marked it Alpha on SourceForge... | |
194 | ||
195 | Yesterday I was digging around the other Turbo Vision derived projects | |
196 | while populating the about page, and made a sad/happy-ish realization: | |
197 | Embarcadero could probably get all of them shut down if it really | |
198 | wanted to, including Free Vision. I uncovered some hidden history in | |
199 | Free Vision, such that it appears that Graphics Vision had some | |
200 | licensed Borland code in it, so there might be enough mud in the air | |
201 | that Free Vision could be shut down the same way RHTVision was. But | |
202 | even worse is the SCOTUS ruling on Oracle vs Google: if APIs are | |
203 | copyrighted (regardless of their thoughts on fair use), then any | |
204 | software that matches the API of a proprietary project might find | |
205 | itself subject to an infringement case. So that too could shut down | |
206 | the other API-compatible TV clones. | |
207 | ||
208 | Fortunately, Jexer (and D-TUI) is completely new, and has no API | |
209 | compatibility with Turbo Vision. Jexer could be a new root to a whole | |
210 | generation of TUI applications. | |
211 | ||
a7986f7b KL |
212 | March 18, 2017 |
213 | ||
214 | TStatusBar is working, as is "smart" window placement. Overall this | |
215 | is looking quite nice. Found a lot of other small paper cut items and | |
216 | fixed them. It looks absolutely gorgeous on Mac now. | |
217 | ||
218 | Tomorrow I will get to the public wifi and get this uploaded. | |
219 | ||
220 | Time to call this 0.0.4 now though. We are up to 32,123 lines of | |
221 | code. | |
222 | ||
55d2b2c2 KL |
223 | March 17, 2017 |
224 | ||
225 | Jexer is coming back to active development status. I had a lot of | |
226 | other projects ahead of it in the queue, mostly Qodem but also Jermit | |
227 | and of course lots of actual day job work keeping me too tired for | |
228 | afterhours stuff. But here we are now, and I want to get Jexer to its | |
229 | 1.0.0 release before the end of 2018. After that it will be a | |
230 | critical bit of function for IWP and NIB, if I ever get those going. | |
231 | I need to re-organize the demo app a bit so that it fits within 80x25, | |
232 | and then get to TStatusBar. | |
233 | ||
234 | A status bar will be an optional part of TWindow. If it exists, then | |
235 | it will be drawn last by TApplication and get events routed to it from | |
236 | TWindow's event handlers. This will have the nice effect that the | |
237 | status bar can change depending on which window is active, without any | |
238 | real extra work on TApplication's part. | |
239 | ||
240 | Putting together a proper TODO now, with release and regression | |
241 | checklists. I think I will see if jexer is available at SourceForge, | |
242 | and if so grab it. Perhaps I can put together some good Turbo Vision | |
243 | resources too. At the very least direct people to the Borland-derived | |
244 | C++ releases and Free Vision. |