[Qgis-developer] Disable Syntax Highlighting in DB Manager

[Lee Hachadoorian]

On 11/24/2013 08:10 PM, Nyall Dawson wrote:
>> The syntax highlighting is already usable as it is, nobody else is
>> experiencing any issue with it... Surely it can be improved, but definitely
>> it's not just eye candy, as it helps in writing queries.
>>
> I don't think it's the syntax highlighting that's the issue - I think
> it's related to the auto complete function. I regularly see this lag,
> and it always occurs for me when the sql window is trying to populate
> the autocomplete drop down list. Sometimes it will take 2-3 seconds to
> display the list, during which the window is unresponsive.
>
> (This is using the osgeo4w nightly builds with a Postgresql 9.3 server) .
>
> Nyall

I've created two screencasts [1] of me keying in a 310 character query. 
With syntax highlighting enabled this took 6 minutes, while with 
highlighting disabled it took one-quarter as long (1½ minutes). The 
query was a query I had already composed (viewing off camera), so when 
you see the cursor pause that is not me thinking what to type next, that 
is me waiting for the characters buffered to hit the screen so that I 
can continue typing. Please view the videos (Ogg Vorbis format) to see 
what I am talking about.

Occasionally there were typoes (mimicking real life typing). The latency 
introduced by syntax highlighting aggravates typo-ing, because I'm 
usually typing several characters ahead of the display, whereas without 
the latency I see the typoed character right away and backspace to fix it.

My first thought was also that it was code completion (thought it was DB 
round trips), but the second video shows that with highlighting off and 
code completion on, there is no latency.

Best,
--Lee

[1] https://www.dropbox.com/sh/arbqwx0pg12yufm/rNv25CKlFK

-- 
Lee Hachadoorian
Assistant Professor in Geography, Dartmouth College
http://freecity.commons.gc.cuny.edu