Re: GUI workspace variable updating

[Daniel J Sebald]

On 06/26/2014 08:42 AM, Richard Crozier wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> I know this has been discussed already, but, in the development sources
> (default branch, not gui, so apologies if it's not like this in the
> gui-release branch) I notice the workspace variables update while a
> calculation is running. Personally I see no need for this, especially in
> light of the performance issues discussed recently.
>
> As a GUI user I would expect variables to be available/editable under
> the following circumstances:
>
> 1. In the workspace when not running a calculation
> 2. When debugging
>
> I don't see any reason to update or make accessible these at other
> times. They usually change too fast to look at them anyway.

I agree with this.  I might add a third case when the workspace should 
be updated:

3. When pause() or pause(#) is executed

When the worker is running, the visible workspace variables should be 
half-tone to signify "indeterminate".

However, I would put the priority of this below designing a 
straightforward and robust way of communicating results back to the GUI. 
 Otherwise it could be a lot of effort for short term gain.  Also, the 
GUI should really be designed efficiently to know only the workspace 
variables (or elements of some array/structure) that are visible on the 
screen so that it isn't doing all type of work to update GUI objects not 
even seen (which could be a lot).  At this point, it is probably better 
to live with the slot-machine visual effect as a reminder of things to 
be done still.

Dan