Re: Emacs 23, sluggish performance

[Eric Lilja]

Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > Hello, I'm using a checkout from the trunk built yesterday on my WinXP with
> > the new font backend enabled. Emacs feels very sluggish even with just my
> > .emacs settings file opened which is not a big file. Scrolling in the file
> > is slow, selecting is slow. Maybe not the same response I'm used to when
> > typing either. I normally select and scroll with the mouse, which I know is
> > probably under-using emacs but it wasn't slow before. When I look at the
> > task manager I see emacs is consuming practically no cpu time and memory
> > usage is modest (around 25 MB). Also, the binaries are built with
> > debugging information.
> > I'm wondering what I can do to speed things up, maybe rebuild without
> > debugging information and not enabling the new font backend but it shouldn't
> > be necessary I feel.
>
> Whatever happened to providing information such as Windows/Mac/X11?
> My crystal ball tells me you're running under Windows with the new font
> backend enabled.

I did say it was WinXP, didn't I? I also wrote that the new font backend 
was enabled. You didn't have to use a crystal ball only to read what I 
wrote more carefully. ;) I meant to say "WinXP machine", however. It's 
XP Pro SP2 with all the updates from Windows Update.

> Please keep compiling *with* the new font backend, and if you want the
> good old speed just run emacs with --disable-font-backend (yes, it can
> be chosen at runtime).

OK, I will keep compiling with the font back enabled and will try to see 
how the performance is when it's disabled at runtime. Hopefully, the 
performance of the new font backend (if this is indeed the culprit of 
the lack-luster performance I'm seeing) will increase because it's 
rather painful to work with it now. Thanks for your reply.

>         Stefan