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Topic: Turning BB into ASM code (Read 1160 times) |
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Matt
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #15 on: Jun 2nd, 2013, 6:51pm » |
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on Jun 2nd, 2013, 1:49pm, Michael Hutton wrote:| what are you trying to do? Manipulate or view the data? If you you want to manipulate the data do it outside of the list view, if you are just viewing it there is no issue, however long the computer takes to fill it there is no way a human can read it faster. |
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In reality, it's probably viewing. Any manipulation of the data is already done outside the LV. However, each time manipulation is done, the list needs to be re-listed due to various parameter changes. I will have to consider the idea of threading, as the list needs to be complete for the user to act on any of the items.
With a little change (mainly listing row for row, rather than column for column), your ASM code passes 10,000 lines through in 10 seconds, which is far faster than before.
Quote:| If you are worried that the program stalls while it is loading the list view then look below as the solution is to create another thread to fill it while you can carry on with the main program... I hope you see the important lines are the CreateThread and the WaitForSingleObject. |
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Thanks. Much appreciated. I'll examine it and see whether I can implement it.
Matt
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admin
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #16 on: Jun 2nd, 2013, 9:33pm » |
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on Jun 2nd, 2013, 6:51pm, Matt wrote:| In reality, it's probably viewing. |
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I must support what Michael has said. If you need to display 10,000 items in a List View the design of your user interface is probably not optimal. I would suggest you forget about the speed issue completely, step back, and look at things from the point of view of your final user. A different design of user interface will probably solve the problem without any need for assembler code, multi-threading and so on.
Richard.
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Matt
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #17 on: Jun 3rd, 2013, 04:37am » |
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on Jun 2nd, 2013, 9:33pm, Richard Russell wrote:| I must support what Michael has said. If you need to display 10,000 items in a List View the design of your user interface is probably not optimal. I would suggest you forget about the speed issue completely, step back, and look at things from the point of view of your final user. A different design of user interface will probably solve the problem without any need for assembler code, multi-threading and so on. |
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I'm unsure what you mean by 'A different design...'. There are three ways that I'm aware of that I can list the items: a Listview (tried), a list box (guessing, the same results) and directly in the main or a child window. Would you be suggesting that I try using the third, or is there another way I haven't thought of? Or are you simply suggesting using what I have but in a different way? (Or am I just missing the point of you comment altogether?)
Matt
Edit: A thought has just occured to me that I could display the first, say, 1000 items and wait for the user to move down the list to the bottom and than send the next 1000 items. Displaying 1000 items in the normal way (array and send to LV through basic) takes a mere 3 seconds. However, I need to know how to test whether the scroll bar of the Listview is at the bottom. Will investigate.
Edit: This appears to be:
Code:
SYS "GetScrollPos", hlist%, SB_VERT TO hBarPos%
However, for 1000 items this only goes up to 966. The shortfall appears to be the number of lines on display.
If I can get this working, it will overcome the main time problem.
Thanks to both of you for your input. It has been much appreciated and very enlightening. Please comment further if you can as I feel I'm learning a lot about this (both ASM and LVs)
Matt
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| « Last Edit: Jun 3rd, 2013, 05:46am by Matt » |
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admin
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #18 on: Jun 3rd, 2013, 08:28am » |
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on Jun 3rd, 2013, 04:37am, Matt wrote:| I'm unsure what you mean by 'A different design...'. |
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I am suggesting that you are presenting the information to the user in the wrong way. You say that you are listing 10,000 items, and that the speed matters. But no human being can assimilate and act upon 10,000 pieces of information presented to him on a screen! How does he find what is relevant and what not? Is he supposed to scroll throught it, or search it, or what?
Surely you can pre-filter the data so that you only display what the user needs to know, or use a different representation (e.g. tree view), or completely re-think the interface.
I suspect you have not spent long enough thinking of the 'human factors', but rather concentrated on the technicaliities.
Richard.
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Matt
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #19 on: Jun 3rd, 2013, 4:59pm » |
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on Jun 3rd, 2013, 08:28am, Richard Russell wrote:| You say that you are listing 10,000 items, and that the speed matters. But no human being can assimilate and act upon 10,000 pieces of information presented to him on a screen! How does he find what is relevant and what not? Is he supposed to scroll throught it, or search it, or what? |
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You're right in that no one can assimilate that amount of data that quickly. However, because of the information presented, the entire list needs to be available for the user. Speed is only important, as the list needs to be accessible for the user pretty quickly in the situation they are in.
Quote:| Surely you can pre-filter the data so that you only display what the user needs to know, or use a different representation (e.g. tree view), or completely re-think the interface. |
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A 'tree view' is good idea, but unfortunately not relevant in this program.
Quote:| I suspect you have not spent long enough thinking of the 'human factors', but rather concentrated on the technicaliities. |
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The program is a bespoke one that requires this listing to be presented in this type of format. If it were was more generic I would possible agree. [/quote]
Matt
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admin
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #20 on: Jun 3rd, 2013, 5:16pm » |
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on Jun 3rd, 2013, 4:59pm, Matt wrote:| However, because of the information presented, the entire list needs to be available for the user. |
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I don't mean to be rude, but I don't believe it. There must be a better way. I can understand that all the data needs to be available 'on demand', but surely not presented all at once on tbe screen.? Perhaps you need to speak to somebody with more experience in user interface design. This is not the right forum to seek that kind of advice, and IMHO speeding up the display is absolutely not the solution to your problem.
Richard.
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Matt
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #21 on: Jun 3rd, 2013, 7:27pm » |
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on Jun 3rd, 2013, 5:16pm, Richard Russell wrote:| I don't mean to be rude, but I don't believe it. |
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Thanks for your honest, but the people I'm doing it for do require it this way. The only way I think I can get away with an increase in 'speed' is by passing sections at a time for them to scan down as stated above. As I said, if this had been a more generic program I would agree with you, but it's a bespoke version following a previous pattern of a spreadsheet style that they already use (read only). Changing it's basic format is not an option, unfortunately. As well as listing all records the listing routine is also used for a search facility, listing all the found records. My reason for writing this was to increase the ease by which information can be changed and edited, which is in a seperate part of the program.
Quote:| speeding up the display is absolutely not the solution to your problem. |
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As it happens, I now agree with you.
Thanks though.
Matt
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DDRM
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #22 on: Jun 4th, 2013, 09:29am » |
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Hi Matt,
At the risk of teaching my much more experienced grandmother to suck eggs, would an approach like this, using a trackbar, enable you to "fake" the list view within BB4W, so that you can read the selection position using MOUSE?
Code:
INSTALL @lib$+"WINLIB3"
MODE 20 :REM 800 x 600 pixels
maxdata%=10000
lines_onscreen%=25
temp%=maxdata%+1
ON CLOSE PROC_removetrackbar(tb%):PRINT "Closed":END
ON ERROR PROC_removetrackbar(tb%):END
REM Set up dummy data
DIM m$(maxdata%)
FOR x%=0 TO maxdata%
m$(x%)="This is the text of message "+STR$(x%)
NEXT x%
REM Set up a trackbar to control which bit to look at
tb%=FN_createtrackbar(@hwnd%,600,10,20,580,2)
PROC_showtrackbar(tb%,maxdata%-lines_onscreen%)
REPEAT
top%=FN_trackbarpos(tb%)
IF temp%<>top% THEN
bottom%=top%+lines_onscreen%
b$=FNblock(m$(),top%,bottom%)
CLS
PRINT b$
ENDIF
temp%=top%
UNTIL FALSE
PROC_removetrackbar(tb%)
END
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DEFFNblock(m$(),t%,b%)
LOCAL x%,t$
FOR x%=t% TO b%
t$+=m$(x%)+CHR$(10)+CHR$(13)
NEXT x%
=t$
10,000 lines is a lot to control with a trackbar, but I find that this will just do it on an 800x600 window: moving the trackbar 1 pixel moves the list about 18 components. You could add "single item scroll" arrows (like an up/down control) at the top and bottom to give more fine control if required. If you are prepared to have a 1024x768 window it will probably be nicer: you could have 48 items listed, and the trackbar will be longer, and so more sensitive.
I haven't implemented the selection mechanism, but I'd just use MOUSE (or ON MOUSE), then calculate the offset from top%. That should be quick and reliable.
Obviously doing it this way will mean you will have to do a lot more "graphic design" work to make it look pretty than if you use the Windows controls, but on the other hand you don't have to wait 90 seconds for the list to repopulate....
On the whole, I'm with Richard: 10,000 items in one list is too many, but the customer is king! :-)
Best wishes,
David
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Michael Hutton
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #23 on: Jun 4th, 2013, 1:38pm » |
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I like your solution David, very BB4W!
Quote:However, each time manipulation is done, the list needs to be re-listed due to various parameter changes.
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How much would the Listview change after each manipulation? You could suffer one long period where the listview is being populated first time but then change/update only the information which has changed the next time. This may help to reduce the re-population time if the user is changing things.
(for the life of me I can't imaging the data you are working on.  I don't want to appear silly but surely a statistical summary/method for 10,000 different data points is better? Forgive me if I am barking up the wrong tree, but I sometimes deal with massive data sets on an infrequent, but frequent enough, basis).
I would be interested in your solution. Have you thought of using COMLIB, or rather saving the information to a file maybe and viewing it all in another spreadsheet (Eg. Excel)?
Michael
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Matt
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #24 on: Jun 4th, 2013, 9:07pm » |
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on Jun 4th, 2013, 09:29am, DDRM wrote:| At the risk of teaching my much more experienced grandmother to suck eggs, would an approach like this, using a trackbar, enable you to "fake" the list view within BB4W, so that you can read the selection position using MOUSE? |
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If the implication is that I'm more experienced than you, then I wouldn't bank on it.
Thanks for your input. It's an interesting idea. I will certainly consider it.
Matt
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Matt
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #25 on: Jun 4th, 2013, 9:25pm » |
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on Jun 4th, 2013, 1:38pm, Michael Hutton wrote:| How much would the Listview change after each manipulation? You could suffer one long period where the listview is being populated first time but then change/update only the information which has changed the next time. This may help to reduce the re-population time if the user is changing things. |
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Most of the time, with the people who use the current version, they simply track up and down the list searching for the right record (illogical perhaps, but reality). Occationally, a search is required. This will create a new list with the selected records. The new program would allow manipulation of the records.
Quote:I don't want to appear silly but surely a statistical summary/method for 10,000 different data points is better? Forgive me if I am barking up the wrong tree, but I sometimes deal with massive data sets on an infrequent, but frequent enough, basis).
Have you thought of using COMLIB, or rather saving the information to a file maybe and viewing it all in another spreadsheet (Eg. Excel)? |
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The current information is viewed in Excel, but it's a very fixed format. That's the main reason for designing a program around the data.
I have to say that I do agree with most of what has been said in this thread, and, as said before, if I were designing it in a more generic way, than I would do it differently. Probably with a hierarchy style (I think Richard suggested this). However, as David said: the customer is king! If I'm going to get the customer to accept it, I'm going to have to follow his main wishes, which is to have something that resembles, on the surface, what is currently being used.
Matt
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admin
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #26 on: Jun 4th, 2013, 10:00pm » |
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on Jun 4th, 2013, 9:25pm, Matt wrote:| I'm going to have to follow his main wishes |
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If it was me, I wouldn't! At the very least I would attempt to develop, and present to the customer, an alternative approach in addition to what he is currently asking for.
Richard.
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Matt
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Re: Turning BB into ASM code
« Reply #27 on: Jun 5th, 2013, 04:55am » |
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on Jun 4th, 2013, 10:00pm, Richard Russell wrote:| If it was me, I wouldn't! At the very least I would attempt to develop, and present to the customer, an alternative approach in addition to what he is currently asking for. |
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Unfortunatly, I'm not much of a sales person (nor programmer, by the looks of things). I like writing programs, but 'pitching' them to a client is a different matter. This chap I'm doing this for is a old guy, pretty much set in his ways. Although not impossible, teaching an old dog new tricks can sometimes be quite difficult (which occationally, I have to be honest, also includes me!). However, all this talk on variations of the theme, does have me seriously considering other options. I'm going to play around with a non-listview option, similar to what David suggested, and hierarchy style as you did.
Thanks
Matt
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