Don't block when starting settings sections

[km0r3]

I'd like to work on this one to get started, if still relevant.

I'm using sugar on Ubuntu from the PPA repositories and freshly (successfully) built sugar-jhbuild, with sugar 0.87.7 as the testing environment.

I don't see any spinning cursor when visiting the Languages section in the CP with the current version, so I suppose this Ticket still needs attention.

Also loads seemingly fast here, so why a spinning cursor?

Please treat me gently for the moment, as I'm very new here. ;-)

[quozl]

Tested the delay in rendering the languages control panel section; that is the time that elapses from when the user clicks on the languages icon in the control panel to when the languages list is available for interaction.

Sugar Version	Hardware	Response Time
0.82.1	XO-1	approx 1000ms
0.84.11	XO-1.5	approx 250ms
0.87.8	sugar-emulator over X over SSH	approx 250ms

Given the frequency of use of the languages control panel section, and the time it currently takes, I don't think it is worth adding spinning cursor feedback.

Or maybe I've misunderstood the requirement.

[cjl]

As for the requirement, this relates back to #51

[tomeu]

Pushed:

​http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/sugar/repos/mainline/commits/5c991d0b

[tomeu]

Sorry, have just had to revert it because we are in freeze. We need to remember to push this one once the freeze finishes.

[adborden]

Looks like this was re-applied to mainline in September dd0fcdc103cdbeb052094e66e7812c786fe23e07

[manuq]

While looking at #4327 I came across this one as well. Commit dd0fcdc1 says it fixes this, but currently is not working. The attached patch takes commit df126bad as reference and wraps the time consuming action in a function which is called with idle_add. I have also added a blank canvas while the section is loading.

[manuq]

Patch

[erikos]

Where did you test this, on an XO-1? On my other systems I did not have issues with long waiting times?

The modem configuration section leaves a never ending spinning cursor. Looks like a regression, works without the patch.

[manuq]

Replying to erikos:

Where did you test this, on an XO-1? On my other systems I did not have issues with long waiting times?

The affected section is Language, and yes, is specially noticeable in XO-1, and gets worse with more languages. By the way I have ongoing patches for #4327 to improve this specific section. Happens too testing the patch for the proposed Background feature:

​http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Background_image_on_home_view

The modem configuration section leaves a never ending spinning cursor. Looks like a regression, works without the patch.

Good catch! Yes I was checking and this happens because of the while loop that calls Gtk.main_iteration() [1] in that section model.py .

[1] ​https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk3-General.html#gtk-main-iteration

[walter]

I think the attached mod is a bit simpler and it seems to work. Please test.

[walter]

​https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar/pull/53 address the issue with modem configuration (see #3800).
​https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar/pull/54 adds the WATCH cursor

[dnarvaez]

Walter can you update the status of this one.

[walter]

No update except to say that the current plan of record is to modify this and some other cpsection widgets (e.g., background) not to block on launch. Will try to get to it in time for the next release.

[walter]

Currently, we are not blocking and everything works, except that some cpsections (at least the background section) can take a long time to load. I've modified the background section to do a partial load (everything except the liststore) and then to put up its own WATCH cursor until the liststore is fully loaded. If this approach is acceptable, I can update other "slow to load" cpsections.

[walter]

I submitted a pull request [1] for a refactoring of the background section so that it doesn't block on loading. Checked all the other sections and all of them seem to load quickly enough as to not warrant any changes. I think we are OK to close this ticket if/when the pull request is merged.

[1] ​https://github.com/sugarlabs/sugar/pull/80

[walter]

The non-blocking background section code has been merged. Closing as fixed.