[R] WinXP exhibits sluggish graphics window movement & mouse tracking (repainting?) over windows graphics devices

[Richard Yeh]

Thanks for your message!  Yes, the fault was with my configuration ---
I changed the video card refresh rate setting from 75 Hz to 60 Hz and
the behavior is no longer sluggish.

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 4:03 AM, Prof Brian Ripley
<ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> I don't see this on a much older and slower machine, so suspect a problem
>  with your Windows.  It looks like something is set up to ask R to repaint
>  after the mouse pointer, whereas Windows ought to be doing that.  Even
>  then, R uses double buffering, so the repaint should be fast (provided
>  graphics acceleration is turned on).
>
>  If you want to try updated versions of R, we suggest you use 2.7.0 alpha
>  and not R-patched.  But R updates will not solve Windows problems.
>
>
>
>  On Mon, 31 Mar 2008, Richard Yeh wrote:
>
>  > I just noticed when using 2.6.1, 2.6.2 (2008-02-08), 2.6.2pat
>  > (2008-02-21 r44582), and 2.6.2pat (2008-03-24 r44975) on my poor old
>  > Celeron D330 (2.6 GHz; 3.5 years old) running Windows XP, that the
>  > mouse cursor appears to be redrawn more sluggishly when the pointer is
>  > over R windows graphics devices than over the R console window or
>  > other applications' windows. The slowdown seems to start only after I
>  > plotting something in the window (running "windows()" to open the
>  > device does not cause any slowdown), but the behavior starts after a
>  > "plot(rnorm(100))". The slowdown seems to depend on the area of the R
>  > graphics window that is visible. The slowdown also occurs when moving
>  > the plot window.  For example, if the graphics window is frontmost,
>  > and I want to move it until it is mostly offscreen, then the movement
>  > is jerky.  However, once the window is mostly offscreen, dragging it
>  > back onto the screen is smooth and fast.  (When I drag windows, I only
>  > see the frame, not the contents.) This seems to affect SDI and MDI
>  > modes.  The Windows task manager confirms that when the plot window is
>  > frontmost, Rgui.exe takes most of the CPU time.
>  >
>  > My graphics card is based on an ATI Radeon 7000, with 32 MB of RAM.
>  >
>  > I am surprised that I never noticed this before. Nobody else seems to
>  > have reported it to the r-help list. Is this problem restricted to my
>  > system? (My work machine is much newer, and I do not notice the
>  > problem there.)
>  >
>  > --
>  > 607-351-4838 / Richard.C.Yeh at gmail.com
>  >
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>  >
>
>  --
>  Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
>  Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
>  University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
>  1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
>  Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>



-- 
607-351-4838 / Richard.C.Yeh at gmail.com