Windows (10) Reaper GUI updates blocking reaper.defer() calls

[ausbaxter]

So I haven't spent as much time as I may need to, and do not understand windows vs mac under the hood well enough to know if this is just a windows limitation, but here it goes.

It looks like when reaper updates gui elements, for example when a user moves an item, it blocks calls to reaper.defer().

I caught this when moving some defer editing scripts over to mac, the performance was leaps and bounds better than on windows. These scripts rely on getting item info as the user start's their edit. Because defer is blocked for a short time when gui elements are redrawn (i'm guessing this is the case) the efficacy of the scripts are dependant on the user's edit speed.

Here's a comparison of defer calls on Mac and Windows. (both are captured after various edit commands, moves/trims etc.)

Just want to call attention to this in case this is something that can be resolved, or it'd be nice to know if this is a known limitation of deferred scripts on windows.

This is the code:

call_count = 0

function main()
    call = os.time()
    call_count = call_count + 1
    
    if call ~= prev_call then
        reaper.ShowConsoleMsg("Defer Call:\t" .. call .. "\tCall Count:\t" .. call_count .. "\n")
        call_count = 0
    end
    
    prev_call = call 
    reaper.defer(main)   
end

reaper.atexit(function()gfx.quit()end)

main()

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On windows you can see that the # of calls severely diminishes when user activity increases with some of the calls being blocked for over a second.

Windows:


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Mac is very stable at 31-32 calls per second

Mac:

[Lokasenna]

Try it with reaper.time_precise() - I had to stop using os.time() for my GUI stuff because it behaves different on Mac vs Windows (8 here) and some controls weren't receiving user updates properly.

[lb0]

Also - I don't know the difference between calling ShowConsoleMsg on Windows and on Mac - but on Windows - it is really really slow - and should probably not be used when trying to do any performance related testing.

Would be better to write the output to a string or table then output the results to the console after the test period.

Because if the Mac console output is quicker then it's not really a fair or accurate comparison between the two. Of course if Mac console is just as slow - then ignore me

[Lokasenna]

Originally Posted by lb0

Would be better to write the output to a string or table then output the results to the console after the test period.

ShowConsoleMsg is a huge performance on hog on Windows, absolutely. Even just a few basic "starting function ___" messages in a GUI script will bog things down, and if you start printing too many it will freeze all of Reaper until the script times out.