R: [GRASS-dev] WinGRASS Plans

[Glynn Clements]

Marco Pasetti wrote:

> did you ever estimated the speed of the Python GUI Vs a generic compiled 
> GUI?
> 
> On my old Notebook (AMD Athlon64 3000+, 1.25 GB RAM DDR, integrated NVIDIA 
> GPU with shared 64 MB VRAM) I noticed that, very often, just opening a 
> module GUI or a dialoge window caused the system to freeze for a while (XP 
> Pro SP2, 32bit, very well maintained). This said, all the other GUI parts, 
> such as the GIS Layer Manager and the Map Display, always worked very well, 
> and never (maybe rarely) freezed.
> 
> Is that because the GUI is interpreted or is it only a Windows problem? 
> actually, many Windows native application GUIs frequently freeze, even if 
> they are compiled and not interpreted GUIs...

If you're talking about standalone GUIs (i.e. running a module from
the command-line with --ui, or with no arguments when it needs some),
that's probably the overhead of starting up the Python interpreter,
initialising the libraries, etc. I wouldn't expect that to be an issue
when creating dialogs from within the wxPython GUI.

In any case, using C/C++ for the GUI is a non-starter. The advantages
of being able to modify the code (whether for ongoing development or
for local customisations) without needing to re-compile everything far
outweigh any performance issues.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>