scroll speed - emacs vs. xterm vs. rxvt

scroll speed - emacs vs. xterm vs. rxvt

[Alexander Sirotkin]

I've noticed that compilation time greatly depends
on a terminal you run it in, at least for one particular
project which prints lots of information during build
process. When I redirect it to a file it speeds the
compilation time by 30% and when it's run in a terminal
(konsole or gnome-terminal) top shows that X+terminal
consumes about 20% CPU load.

I decided to compare different terminals in terms of
scroll speed, and here is what I found :

rxvt : 1
xterm : 2.4
konsole : 6
gnome-terminal : 11
emacs : 42

Meaning that for instance rxvt is 42 times faster than emacs.

Well... actually I don't know what to add, these results look
pretty bad to me. It means that I will never compile in emacs
window and should abandon all terminals except for rxvt.

Re: scroll speed - emacs vs. xterm vs. rxvt

[Thomas Glanzmann]

* Alexander Sirotkin <demiurg@ti.com>:
> I've noticed that compilation time greatly depends
> on a terminal you run it in, at least for one particular
> project which prints lots of information during build
> process. When I redirect it to a file it speeds the
> compilation time by 30% and when it's run in a terminal
> (konsole or gnome-terminal) top shows that X+terminal
> consumes about 20% CPU load.

Run your projects in screen and simply change the active terminal. Or
redirect the output to a file.

Re: scroll speed - emacs vs. xterm vs. rxvt

[Wayne Throop]

: Alexander Sirotkin <demiurg@ti.com>
: I've noticed that compilation time greatly depends on a terminal you
: run it in, at least for one particular project which prints lots of
: information during build process.  When I redirect it to a file it
: speeds the compilation time by 30% and when it's run in a terminal
: (konsole or gnome-terminal) top shows that X+terminal consumes about
: 20% CPU load. 
: 
: I decided to compare different terminals in terms of scroll speed, and
: here is what I found :
: 
: rxvt : 1 xterm : 2.4 konsole : 6 gnome-terminal : 11 emacs : 42
: 
: Meaning that for instance rxvt is 42 times faster than emacs. 
: 
: Well...  actually I don't know what to add, these results look pretty
: bad to me.  It means that I will never compile in emacs window and
: should abandon all terminals except for rxvt. 

Is that with the tested app iconized, or does that count the constant
X screen updates?  What you want for such displays is something that
does really exagerated jumpscrolling; you could write a tcl/tk script
that'd do the trick, ie, be a VERY dumb terminal, but with a more
efficient display of high speed spewed text.  Hrm... the scripts I
have on my shelf just handle output and display, though; not things
like typing inputs, interupts, etc.  Ah well.

I guess the point is that the above example apps are all oriented to
doing characer-by-character updates with low latency, instead of to
monitoring the growing tip of a spewed stream of data with relatively
little interaction.   Well... emacs shows more poorly than I'd expect
for that reason alone, but still...


Wayne Throop   throopw@sheol.org   http://sheol.org/throopw

Re: scroll speed - emacs vs. xterm vs. rxvt

[Kai Großjohann]

Alexander Sirotkin <demiurg@ti.com> writes:

> Meaning that for instance rxvt is 42 times faster than emacs.
>
> Well... actually I don't know what to add, these results look
> pretty bad to me. It means that I will never compile in emacs
> window and should abandon all terminals except for rxvt.

Does it help to hide the *Compilation* window (using C-x 1, say)
while the compilation is proceeding?

Another possibility would be to redirect the output to a file, then
open that file, then invoke compilation-mode or
compilation-minor-mode on that file.  (If you choose a unique
filename suffix, then you can put stuff in auto-mode-alist to invoke
compilation-(minor-)mode for you, when you visit that file.)
-- 
A preposition is not a good thing to end a sentence with.

Re: scroll speed - emacs vs. xterm vs. rxvt

[David Kastrup]

kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Alexander Sirotkin <demiurg@ti.com> writes:
> 
> > Meaning that for instance rxvt is 42 times faster than emacs.
> >
> > Well... actually I don't know what to add, these results look
> > pretty bad to me. It means that I will never compile in emacs
> > window and should abandon all terminals except for rxvt.
> 
> Does it help to hide the *Compilation* window (using C-x 1, say)
> while the compilation is proceeding?

I doubt it.  The process interaction performance of Emacs (just
receiving data from a pipe via an output filter and inserting into a
buffer) is awful even when the buffer is not on-screen.  XEmacs is
easily twice as fast, and that is still slow.  preview-latex's
operation was sped up considerably by making its error messages have a
shorter format.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

Re: scroll speed - emacs vs. xterm vs. rxvt

[Måns Rullgård]

Alexander Sirotkin <demiurg@ti.com> writes:

> I decided to compare different terminals in terms of
> scroll speed, and here is what I found :
> 
> rxvt : 1
> xterm : 2.4
> konsole : 6
> gnome-terminal : 11
> emacs : 42
> 
> Meaning that for instance rxvt is 42 times faster than emacs.

Those numbers puzzle me.  I once did some trivial tests sending huge
amounts of text to various terminals.  In my tests gnome-termnal
outperformed xterm by about five times.  I didn't test emacs.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@users.sf.net

Re: scroll speed - emacs vs. xterm vs. rxvt

[Kevin Rodgers]

Alexander Sirotkin wrote:

> I've noticed that compilation time greatly depends
> on a terminal you run it in, at least for one particular
> project which prints lots of information during build
> process. When I redirect it to a file it speeds the
> compilation time by 30% and when it's run in a terminal
> (konsole or gnome-terminal) top shows that X+terminal
> consumes about 20% CPU load.
> 
> I decided to compare different terminals in terms of
> scroll speed, and here is what I found :
> 
> rxvt : 1
> xterm : 2.4
> konsole : 6
> gnome-terminal : 11
> emacs : 42
> 
> Meaning that for instance rxvt is 42 times faster than emacs.


Is Emacs fontifying the *Compilation* buffer?


> Well... actually I don't know what to add, these results look
> pretty bad to me. It means that I will never compile in emacs
> window and should abandon all terminals except for rxvt.

I would look for a solution to the performance problem, rather than give up
all of Emacs' compilation features.

-- 
<a href="mailto:&lt;kevin.rodgers&#64;ihs.com&gt;">Kevin Rodgers</a>

Re: scroll speed - emacs vs. xterm vs. rxvt

[Alexander Sirotkin]

Alexander Sirotkin wrote:
> I've noticed that compilation time greatly depends
> on a terminal you run it in, at least for one particular
> project which prints lots of information during build
> process. When I redirect it to a file it speeds the
> compilation time by 30% and when it's run in a terminal
> (konsole or gnome-terminal) top shows that X+terminal
> consumes about 20% CPU load.
> 
> I decided to compare different terminals in terms of
> scroll speed, and here is what I found :
> 
> rxvt : 1
> xterm : 2.4
> konsole : 6
> gnome-terminal : 11
> emacs : 42
> 
> Meaning that for instance rxvt is 42 times faster than emacs.
> 
> Well... actually I don't know what to add, these results look
> pretty bad to me. It means that I will never compile in emacs
> window and should abandon all terminals except for rxvt.
> 

Out of curiosity I checked xemacs and... wow, it was unbelievably fast.
Even faster than rxvt... I guess I will switch back to xemacs, I
considered it since I saw the buffers tab :)