Rendering / Refresh Slows Down Significantly when Plugin is Active

Scripting
1

3.0.3 (3086)
Edit: Originally I was testing only my plugin but I realised if I have even the original ShowCrosshair on, my rendering and refresh in the edit view gets extremely choppy. Is there some setting I can change? I’m using a 2017 MBP and do not experience these issues in G2.

Original Post: My plugin ShowCrosshairOnSelect which is based on ShowCrosshair by @mekkablue significantly slows down rendering when it’s active. Is there something I’m doing that’s inefficient? I’ve tested it with no other plugins active and only my plugin active – it’s most noticeable when I’m panning with the hand tool, the refresh gets quite choppy.

2

That is a problem with the python runtime. There is a significant overhead just calling a python method from ObjectiveC. I’m in contact with the pyobjc def. but it might take a while.

(Ronald is working on this right now: Optimise calling machinery · Issue #359 · ronaldoussoren/pyobjc · GitHub)

3

I just tried and for me, the ShowCrosshair plugin from Rainer doesn’t seem to have an impact on the performance. I get nice 60 fps with the tool active.

What version of python do you use?

4

Hmm I see… I’m on 3.9.1. Glyphs version. How can I check my FPS – this is much worse when I have a monitor plugged in – it’s not too bad on my laptop.

5

Do you have an apple developer account. Then you could download the Quartz Debug tool from developer.apple.com
Or use the Frames per second plugin.

1 Like
6

I installed Quartz Debug, my frame rate drops from 60fps to 30fps actually.

7

Can you try installing only that single plugin?
And what version of MacOS do you use?

8

Catalina 10.15.7 (19H1217)
[Correction]
I tried only having the one plugin which was causing the frame rate drop installed, I still experienced the very obvious drop in framerate.

If I only have one glyph in the text tab I don’t have this issue. If I have a text tab with ~250 characters, then I have the issue to an extreme degree. At that point I can’t work in the text tab if I have any plugins enabled.

9

I found some issues that I could fix. It still slows down a bit but it is still useable.

1 Like
10

Thank you Georg, I’ve noticed it’s improved