Starting Emacs on Linux "frame-buffer" tty feels a bit scrappy

Starting Emacs on Linux "frame-buffer" tty feels a bit scrappy

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Emacs!

My Setup:
  Athlon 1.2 GHz, 256 Mb RAM
  Linux 2.6.8
  Current CVS Emacs 22 running in a Linux "frame buffer" tty.

When I start Emacs with a moderate number of files (28 files totalling
about 2.5 Mb) in my desktop, I see this:

(i) The current screen contents scroll slowly (about 1s) off the top of
the screen.  A mode line gets displayed momentarily.

(ii) The mode line is erased, and a number of messages get displayed
rapidly in the echo area.

(iii) One of my buffers appears in the main window, and remains there
steadily for about 2s, together with a message in the echo area.

(iv) Several more messages are blitzed across the echo area for about 1s.

(iv) The entire display is again scrolled slowly (about 1s) off the top
of the screen.  The Emacs "Welcome" screen is displayed, and I can now
start hacking.

I think I have sometimes seen several of these whole-screen scrollings,
with a different buffer displayed after each one.

This seems to me somewhat unpolished and scrappy - indecent, even.  The
whole-screen scrollings seem to me most inappropriate - they are slow and
computationally expensive.

Wouldn't it be better, on a tty at least, to _blank_ the screen at the
very start, and then just to display the mode line and echo area messages
until Emacs is ready to display its "Welcome" screen?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Ittersbach, Germany)

Re: Starting Emacs on Linux "frame-buffer" tty feels a bit scrappy

[Richard Stallman]

    I think I have sometimes seen several of these whole-screen scrollings,
    with a different buffer displayed after each one.

    This seems to me somewhat unpolished and scrappy - indecent, even.  The
    whole-screen scrollings seem to me most inappropriate - they are slow and
    computationally expensive.

I wonder if some terminal command that Emacs thinks is very fast
is actually executing very slowly.  I suggest you make a dribble file
to investigate what commands Emacs is sending.

Re: Starting Emacs on Linux "frame-buffer" tty feels a bit scrappy

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Richard!

On Sun, Jan 07, 2007 at 03:14:16PM -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     I think I have sometimes seen several of these whole-screen scrollings,
>     with a different buffer displayed after each one.
> 
>     This seems to me somewhat unpolished and scrappy - indecent, even.  The
>     whole-screen scrollings seem to me most inappropriate - they are slow and
>     computationally expensive.

> I wonder if some terminal command that Emacs thinks is very fast
> is actually executing very slowly.  I suggest you make a dribble file
> to investigate what commands Emacs is sending.

Sorry, I don't understand your suggestion.  I don't think you're talking
about `open-dribble-file', which records key sequences, since the
problem happens at start-up before I get to press a key.

Could you (or somebody else really good) please give me a more detailed
clue about how to look at this.  Thanks!

-- 
Alan.

Re: Starting Emacs on Linux "frame-buffer" tty feels a bit scrappy

[Stuart D. Herring]

>> I wonder if some terminal command that Emacs thinks is very fast
>> is actually executing very slowly.  I suggest you make a dribble file
>> to investigate what commands Emacs is sending.
>
> Sorry, I don't understand your suggestion.  I don't think you're talking
> about `open-dribble-file', which records key sequences, since the
> problem happens at start-up before I get to press a key.
>
> Could you (or somebody else really good) please give me a more detailed
> clue about how to look at this.  Thanks!

I don't know that I'm really good, but I'm sure that Richard meant for you
to make a terminal script (`open-termscript').

Davis

-- 
This product is sold by volume, not by mass.  If it appears too dense or
too sparse, it is because mass-energy conversion has occurred during
shipping.

Re: Starting Emacs on Linux "frame-buffer" tty feels a bit scrappy

[Chris Moore]

"Stuart D. Herring" <herring@lanl.gov> writes:

> I don't know that I'm really good, but I'm sure that Richard meant
> for you to make a terminal script (`open-termscript').

I know that I'm not really good, but another possibility is that he
meant you should run "script" in the shell before running "emacs
-nw".  Then quit Emacs and type "exit" in the shell.  That will leave
you with a file called "typescript" in the current directory
containing exactly what was sent to the terminal.

Re: Starting Emacs on Linux "frame-buffer" tty feels a bit scrappy

[Richard Stallman]

    Sorry, I don't understand your suggestion.  I don't think you're talking
    about `open-dribble-file', which records key sequences, since the
    problem happens at start-up before I get to press a key.

Yes, I should have said a termscript file.
Sorry for my flawed memory.