The Menu is slow, how to find out why?

The Menu is slow, how to find out why?

[Peter]

Hi folks,

  I have a strange problem: the menu takes 1-2 seconds to open.

I have read that one shouldn't use the menu, and I might agree,
but: my personal keybindungs have come a long way, and they are
very different to the default ones. So, whenever I do something
with my configuration files, and loading fails at first, I am lost,
and then the menu should come to help.
And then it goes like this: ups, save&exit doesnt work, wait,
use <f10> |wait 2 seconds|, find "Save", ups that doesn't exit yet,
use <f10> |wait 2 seconds|, find "Quit". And so on...

In such situations the 2 seconds get very annoying. And I think
they shouldn't be there, because
 - they happen only with GTK3, not with MOTIF, not with GTK2.
 - they happen only on one of my machines (desktop), not on the
   other (laptop). The machines should be configured identical,
   they run the same version of FreeBSD 13.2, and (for testing
   currently) the same build of emacs, local configurations are
   removed.
And anyway, if there is such a difference between the two
machines, I certainly want to know why.

Re: The Menu is slow, how to find out why?

[tpeplt]

Peter <pmc@citylink.dinoex.sub.org> writes:

> Hi folks,
>
>   I have a strange problem: the menu takes 1-2 seconds to open.
>
> I have read that one shouldn't use the menu, and I might agree,
> but: my personal keybindungs have come a long way, and they are

1. One source of slow-down with Emacs is the toolbar and tool-tips.
If you have these turned on, then turning them off might resolve
your problem.  (These are likely caused by slowness of the windowing
system.)

2. A better rule than "Don’t use the menu" is "Use the menu when you
are using a mode that you don’t use often or don’t use for long".
In those cases, you won’t have learned the mode-specific keybindings
and commands.

3. If you do not use the toolbar or tool-tips, then to troubleshoot
your problem, try to reproduce is by starting Emacs without any
configuration customization (start with "emacs -Q") and see if the
problem persists.  If it does not persist, then start adding
pieces of your customizations to the initialization file to see
if you can isolate the source of the problem, which you can then
ask about here on this mailing list.

--

Re: The Menu is slow, how to find out why?

[Peter]

On Wed, Oct 18, 2023 at 04:54:57PM -0400, tpeplt wrote:
! Peter <pmc@citylink.dinoex.sub.org> writes:
! 
! > Hi folks,
! >
! >   I have a strange problem: the menu takes 1-2 seconds to open.
! >
! > I have read that one shouldn't use the menu, and I might agree,
! > but: my personal keybindungs have come a long way, and they are
! 
! 1. One source of slow-down with Emacs is the toolbar and tool-tips.
! If you have these turned on, then turning them off might resolve
! your problem.  (These are likely caused by slowness of the windowing
! system.)

Thank You, these are good advice. But in this case the slowdown
happens BEFORE the communication with X11 even starts.

And in the end the solution was simple: I just needed to remove
a line from keyboard.c that on my machine causes a pathologic loop.

! 2. A better rule than "Don’t use the menu" is "Use the menu when you
! are using a mode that you don’t use often or don’t use for long".
! In those cases, you won’t have learned the mode-specific keybindings
! and commands.

That makes sense. When doing some continuous work during the last
days, I found myself using only the Buffers menu. But that one
is indeed useful: why should I bother myself with remembering the
names of files I work on? Or why should I bother with an extra
window for the buffer list when one is already present in the menu?

Now I finally achieved something I probably should have tackled
30 years ago, and switched all systems-management to emacs. Lets
see how it works. Currently it looks good, it can even display
proper Devanagari when run via X11 (which firefox can't).
Obviousely I can't read that, but it looks nice. ;)

! 3. If you do not use the toolbar or tool-tips, then to troubleshoot
! your problem, try to reproduce is by starting Emacs without any
! configuration customization (start with "emacs -Q") and see if the

That was the first I did - I simply deleted the files to make sure.
"emacs -Q" would also have worked? Cool, that will make things
easier in the future. :)

! problem persists.  If it does not persist, then start adding
! pieces of your customizations to the initialization file to see
! if you can isolate the source of the problem, which you can then
! ask about here on this mailing list.

Yepp.

The Menu is slow, how to find out why?

[Peter]

Hi folks,                                                                       
                                                                                
  I have a strange problem: the menu takes 1-2 seconds to open.                 
                                                                                
I have read that one shouldn't use the menu, and I might agree,                 
but: my personal keybindungs have come a long way and they are                 
very different to the default ones. So, whenever I do something                 
with my configuration files, and loading fails at first, I am lost,             
and then the menu should come to help.                                          
And then it goes like this: ups, save&exit doesnt work, wait,                   
use <f10> |wait 2 seconds|, find "Save", ups that doesn't exit yet,             
use <f10> |wait 2 seconds|, find "Quit". And so on...                           
                                                                                
In such situations the 2 seconds get very annoying. And I think                 
they shouldn't be there, because                                                
 - they happen only with GTK3, not with MOTIF, not with GTK2.                   
 - they happen only on one of my machines (desktop), not on the                 
   other (portable). The machines should be configured identical,              
   they run the same version of FreeBSD 13.2, and (for testing                  
   currently) the same build of emacs. Local configurations are                 
   removed for testing.
   
And anyway, if there is such a difference between the two                       
machines, I certainly want to know why.                                         

Re: The Menu is slow, how to find out why?

[Nikolay Kudryavtsev]

Not exactly the solution you were looking for, but if you're extensively 
using the menu like this, maybe you'd be interested in using a library 
called LaCarte, available here:

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/lacarte.el

This is arguably a more convenient way of accessing those menus, that 
uses the normal emacs minibuffer instead of the popups, thus it would 
circumvent your main issue.