On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 11:11:42PM +0200, nuno alexandre wrote:

The problem is that whenever I start TheGimp it takes so much time to load
that it eventually crashes my machine every time. The disks start to trash and everything comes to a halt. My setup is a amd64 3500+ with 1GB ram and the disks are in raid0, running Gnu/Linux - so the problem isn't in lacking "horse power".

TheGimp doesn't look to be prepared to handle large amount of resources, and although It seems to work OK with the fairly thin defaults provided by the package, it isn't flexible enough in this area like similar competitors.
Looks like there is room to improvement.

Is there anything, from a users point of view, that I can do to improve responsiveness in the application loading time ?

i explained to someone recently with an extremely similar problem that your resources can be sorted either by how you use them or by subject or even alphabetically (if that would make sense with your workflow) put into separate directories and then use the Preferences dialog to manage which of the resources are available for the gimp to use for each session.

it might even be possible to use different ~/.gimp directories to help you manage them, but this is lacking graphical user interface and would require a little creativity at your commandline or perhaps some reading of the gimp man page.

first, look at Preferences -->Folders and expand this dialog. put a few of the resources into different directories and see how gimp responds to this.

the only drawback is that the gimp will not work well this way without a little work on your part. meaning that the directories are not available until gimp is restarted.

all of the tools are there to manage your resources however.

carol

On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 01:48:02AM +0200, nuno alexandre wrote:

On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 15:35 -0700, Carol Spears wrote:

the only drawback is that the gimp will not work well this way without a little work on your part. meaning that the directories are not available until gimp is restarted.

all of the tools are there to manage your resources however.

carol

Ok, that sounds a lot like Windows and you are scaring me. If you had to restart your car every time you had to make a turn, would that be ok?

hmm, using new directories of brushes in which you have sorted in a way that would meet your needs sounds like restarting your car every time you make a turn ....

how to respond to this ....

i think a better analogy would be to fill your car with camping equipment, go camping and then return home and then empty the car.

then, use your car to go grocery shopping, get the groceries and return home and empty the groceries (putting them away in a logical place upon return).

then, use your car to transport your kids and their friends to the soccer game. attend the game and then return with the car empty awaiting a new task.

using the minimal tools for the task -- which operating system would this be like? i have no idea myself, i have only used gimp on linux for years and for some reason or other, i have no problem with the idea of sorting gimp resources into task oriented directories.

and even with other current software that is available to me, i am still asking the question "what is the reason you need to get a whole freaking office suite and install it so that you can simply read a file that ends in .doc?" oh, the origins for this application can be found on a different operating system that needs every single freaking tool to be loaded to do a simple task and the users cannot see any reason to work differently or manage their own resources better.

don't ask me about windows -- i really dont understand it.

i do however appreciate your enthusiasm.

carol

On 6/30/05, Carol Spears wrote:

and even with other current software that is available to me, i am still asking the question "what is the reason you need to get a whole freaking office suite and install it so that you can simply read a file that ends in .doc?" oh, the origins for this application can be found on a

Assuming that you're only READING the file, and not editing it, on Windows, the Microsoft Word Viewer (created by Microsoft, available for free from microsoft.com) serves this purpose nicely and answers the question. Problem is, no one knows about it (it hasn't been oft-used since 1997ish, IIRC, even though they keep it up to date). On Linux, antiword and/or Abiword (the former converting all the words out of a .doc file and putting it in a .txt file, the latter being a Word Processor, not a Office Suite) will do fine.

in .doc?" oh, the origins for this application can be found on a different operating system that needs every single freaking tool to be loaded to do a simple task and the users cannot see any reason to work differently or manage their own resources better.

This just promotes consumerism society, and makes us want to buy bigger, faster, more expensive things, just to do the same thing. That's why it takes as long to start a Microsoft Word 2005 on a new computer in 2005 (or longer) as it did to start Microsoft Word '97 on a new computer in 1997. Because they added so many new features, that the "faster" CPU (which isn't really faster, but that aside), and "faster" memory are consumed and everything starts swapping out to disk.

That said, The GIMP technically *shouldn't* load *all* of it's brushes on startup, should it? (At least not when a user has this many brushes and patterns.) Like there should be a threshold, e.g. The GIMP will only load 32-128 brushes/patterns (this is a combined number, and should be configurable, and based on memory requirements) concurrently in memory on startup, and the rest will be left stored on disk and read as necessary.

Then again, this sounds like Windows XP's prefetching method of "speeding up the launch of applications" -- which is nice if you start the same thing every day, but if you have 200 applications and you maybe use each one 3 times a month, the computer might end up trying to prefech (e.g. 5 files per application) 1000 files on startup, causing it to "freeze" on startup for a minute before you can use it.

There's no way to win.

Has someone mentioned this "bug" to GIMP-devel? Maybe we can put it on a TODO list [consider changing pattern/brush management system(s) in The GIMP]. Or someone can submit a patch? *shrugs*

On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 07:30:45AM -0400, michael chang wrote:

On 6/30/05, Carol Spears wrote:

That said, The GIMP technically *shouldn't* load *all* of it's brushes on startup, should it? (At least not when a user has this many brushes and patterns.) Like there should be a threshold, e.g. The GIMP will only load 32-128 brushes/patterns (this is a combined number, and should be configurable, and based on memory requirements) concurrently in memory on startup, and the rest will be left stored on disk and read as necessary.

Then again, this sounds like Windows XP's prefetching method of "speeding up the launch of applications" -- which is nice if you start the same thing every day, but if you have 200 applications and you maybe use each one 3 times a month, the computer might end up trying to prefech (e.g. 5 files per application) 1000 files on startup, causing it to "freeze" on startup for a minute before you can use it.

There's no way to win.

Has someone mentioned this "bug" to GIMP-devel? Maybe we can put it on a TODO list [consider changing pattern/brush management system(s) in The GIMP]. Or someone can submit a patch? *shrugs*

they have been discussing this and there is probably already a bug about it.

demanding it and/or complaining about it on the user list is probably the worst approach to affecting a change in how volunteer software gets fixed or making an enhancement request.

the analogy was funny tho'

recently i would go to see one friend and watch as the phones were used and soon others would show up. it was always fun. other times, i knew that people were scheduled to be there, allowing me to attend or avoid.

then at restaurants you have your all-you-can-eat buffet or your menu style dining.

it all goes into "whatever".

as far as gimp is concerned, my suggestion will work. more than likely bug reports (enhancement requests) have been made and i have seen it discussed on the irc.

nuno was looking for an argument though.

carol

On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 01:53:56PM +0200, nuno alexandre wrote:

On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 19:42 -0700, Carol Spears wrote:

On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 01:48:02AM +0200, nuno alexandre wrote:

On Thu, 2005-06-30 at 15:35 -0700, Carol Spears wrote:

the only drawback is that the gimp will not work well this way without a little work on your part. meaning that the directories are not available until gimp is restarted.

all of the tools are there to manage your resources however.

Ok, that sounds a lot like Windows and you are scaring me. If you had to restart your car every time you had to make a turn, would that be ok?

hmm, using new directories of brushes in which you have sorted in a way that would meet your needs sounds like restarting your car every time you make a turn ....

No, having to restart the program when I need to use other patterns. Say I have 200 patterns with brick walls, 200 with woods, 200 with sand, 200 with grass,trees, 200 with metals and so on.

all together, and you can draw some nice things, having so many different materials to apply to surfaces, but take away half of them and you can only do so much.
when you want to apply other surfaces, you need to restart the application - and that's what I think its not acceptable.

well, what were you using and is this still an option to you?

carol

Von: Carol Spears

On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 01:53:56PM +0200, nuno alexandre wrote:

when you want to apply other surfaces, you need to restart the application - and that's what I think its not acceptable.

well, what were you using and is this still an option to you?

I didn't try it yet, but could adding and removing symlinks to the patterns directory be used as a workaround?

HTH, Michael

On 7/1/05, Michael Schumacher wrote:

Von: Carol Spears

On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 01:53:56PM +0200, nuno alexandre wrote:

when you want to apply other surfaces, you need to restart the application - and that's what I think its not acceptable.

well, what were you using and is this still an option to you?

I didn't try it yet, but could adding and removing symlinks to the patterns directory be used as a workaround?

Sound logical, except if I recall correctly The GIMP loads brushes, patterns etc. on startup. Maybe if you refresh the palettes or something [I know if you have a Script-Fu you can reload the Script-Fus without restarting the app, but you have to go through a menu so it's eaiser to click on the little line at the top and make that particular menu permimantly float when editing Script-Fus], but I'd doubt it'd apply for this considering we're talking about restarting the application.

If you're looking for a solution, how about learning C++ [or whatever GIMP's language is] and writing a patch yourself?

Hi,

michael chang writes:

Sound logical, except if I recall correctly The GIMP loads brushes, patterns etc. on startup.

What keeps you from pressing the Refresh button in the brushes and/or patterns dialog?

Sven

On 7/2/05, Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

michael chang writes:

Sound logical, except if I recall correctly The GIMP loads brushes, patterns etc. on startup.

What keeps you from pressing the Refresh button in the brushes and/or patterns dialog?

Does that actually reload them? If so, then it sounds feisable, if you write a utility (e.g. in perl or something else with a GUI and shell manipulation capabilities) to switch these directories in and out. [I'm not sure typing ln -s /dir/ /dir/ repeatedly is better than moving folders around.] Then again, you'd probably need thumbnails in addition to directory names for said utility, which would also have long start up times...

I suppose an optional preloader [like OpenOffice.org] is out of the question?

Sven

Hi,

michael chang writes:

Does that actually reload them? If so, then it sounds feisable, if you write a utility (e.g. in perl or something else with a GUI and shell manipulation capabilities) to switch these directories in and out. [I'm not sure typing ln -s /dir/ /dir/ repeatedly is better than moving folders around.] Then again, you'd probably need thumbnails in addition to directory names for said utility, which would also have long start up times...

I suppose an optional preloader [like OpenOffice.org] is out of the question?

Sooner or later GIMP will not any longer load all data files and it will provide categories to organize them and all that. This is already planned and it might even come into existance to some extent for GIMP 2.4.

Sven