Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

The behaviour described in the bug report is either by design, or would be far too complex/time-consuming to be changed

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Vulpix
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Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *Vulpix »

I have a few folders where I have youtube-downloaded files (with japanese filenames + some "special chars" in filenames too).

Displaying such folders causes the TC interface to become very slow and unresponsive. Actions such as scrolling are impacted a lot, resizing the window literally feels like running on super downclocked computer. Minimizing/restoring too.

It's not even that many files, like 50 or so - but they all contain japanese in their filename.

w10 x64 with all updates, latest TC 10.00

EDIT:

I did some more experimenting.

Made a big folder with very long but only a-zA-Z0-9 using filenames = absolutely no problem.
Added a single kanji into one of them - instantly got a lot worse
Added some more japanese characters into other filenames - ultra choppy.

Incidentally, I guess it is not a TC problem, because the same happens in Windows Explorer too. While the choppy behavior is not as bad, it definitely is noticable even there.

I... guess this is some kind of font rendering issue which maybe impacts TC more because it redraws the interface more than Windows Explorer (?)
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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *Dalai »

Does the font for the file lists make any difference? See Options > Font > File list font.

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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *Vulpix »

I actually tried that (for example, Arial and Courier New) but it didn't really make much of a difference.

I made a zip of empty files in two folders - same names but one of them has some japanese in it and the other doesn't. The difference should be easily visible.

Open it in your tc and try to resize the TC window while you have the japanese-containing folder displayed. Then try it with the other folder instead.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/1f925ugkaan9zks/twofolders.zip/file
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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *Dalai »

Problem confirmed. Listing files when entering the directory is noticeably slower and resizing the TC window is choppy as hell. Scrolling the list is also a bit slower compared to ASCII characters only. Older TC versions are also affected.

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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *petermad »

2Vulpix
I can confirm that this can be an issue, but it highly depends on Processor power and OS.

I first performed your twofolders test on an Intel Pentium i7-4790, 3.6 GHz computer with Windows 7 - here I could NOT detect any performance difference between the two folders.

Then I tested on an AMD E2-1800, 1.7 GHz laptop with Windows 10 - here TC performed considerably slower in the "bad" directory.

To try with another slow computer I tested on an Intel Celeron 900, 2.2 GHz laptop. This computer has dual boot (XP/7).
First I tested with Windows XP - here I could NOT detect any performance difference between the two folders.
Then I tested with Windows 7 - here TC performed considerably slower in the "bad" directory - but not nearly as bad as Windows 10 on the 1.7GHz laptop.

Then I tested on an AMD A6-1450, 1.0 GHz laptop with Windows 8.1 - here the performance was somewhere between the Windows 7 laptop and the Windows 10 laptop.

Finally I tested with on an Intel Pentium i5-2320, 3.0 GHz computer with Windows 7 - here the performance was a little worse in the "bad" directory.

On all the computers with bad scrolling performance the scrolling seems a little smoother when the option "Configuration" -> "Options..." -> "Operation" -> "Main program" -> "Extra lines below cursor" was DISabled.
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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *ghisler(Author) »

This happens because the standard fonts used (Segoe UI, Microsoft Sans Serif, Arial) do not contain these characters. Windows does so-called font substition, which is unfortunately very slow.

When you use the font picker, it shows you in the lower right which characters a certain font contains. Try using a font containing Japanese characters like MS Mincho or MS Gothic. Warning: they don't look great...
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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *Vulpix »

@petermad
I see. My computer is fairly good - Ryzen 7 4800H, 16GB of RAM. I don't think it's slow; in fact I'd say it should be faster than the 4790, so I don't know how related that is.

@ghisler
While not resolved, it is better with MS Gothic (but it looks awful, yeah...).

Do you think something can be done about this or not really?
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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *petermad »

2Vulpix
I see. My computer is fairly good - Ryzen 7 4800H, 16GB of RAM. I don't think it's slow; in fact I'd say it should be faster than the 4790, so I don't know how related that is.
I failed to mention my font setting - it is Microsoft Sans Serif 8pt bold in all tests - maybe that makes a slight difference. But I do think that a reason why I might experience better results could be that I use Windows 7, while I guess you use Windows 10...
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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *Dalai »

2petermad
I conducted my tests on Win7 (with Aero) as well. My system is also fairly decent (Ryzen 2600, 16 GB RAM, GTX 1060). And I tested several different fonts, MS Sans Serif, Tahoma and Segoe UI.

Did you resize the TC window (or move the panel divider) in your tests? In my tests this was by far the worst part.

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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *petermad »

2Dalai
Did you resize the TC window (or move the panel divider) in your tests? In my tests this was by far the worst part.
Yes, nothing noticable, unless I enable the system setting to "Show window contents while dragging"
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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *Dalai »

That setting is enabled by default, isn't it? It's been enabled on all of my systems for many many years.

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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *ghisler(Author) »

Do you think something can be done about this or not really?
I don't think so. All I call is DrawText/TextOut, there isn't much to control for me.
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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *petermad »

2Dalai
That setting is enabled by default, isn't it? It's been enabled on all of my systems for many many years.
Yes - that is one of the first things I disable when I set up a new Windows Insatllation.
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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *Vulpix »

ghisler(Author) wrote: 2021-07-26, 12:14 UTC
Do you think something can be done about this or not really?
I don't think so. All I call is DrawText/TextOut, there isn't much to control for me.
Thank you for the reply. Unfortunate... well, maybe they'll fix this font substitution performance in Windows 11! (yeah, they won't :D ).

I'll still keep using TC though. Thanks again.
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Re: Displaying many file entries with special chars severely slows down TC interface

Post by *Usher »

ghisler(Author) wrote: 2021-07-25, 09:11 UTCWhen you use the font picker, it shows you in the lower right which characters a certain font contains. Try using a font containing Japanese characters like MS Mincho or MS Gothic. Warning: they don't look great...
To be honest, there is a better font already available in Windows. Starting from Windows Vista, Microsoft uses MS Meiryo font as default for Japanese Windows variants. It's a sans serif font, with Latin letters based on wide variant of Tahoma font. And it loads faster than MS Mincho or MS Gothic.
Users of MS Office 2000-2010 can install Arial Unicode MS font provided with those packages. It looks a little bit ugly when comparing to Tahoma/Meiryo, but loads even faster than MS Meiryo. Arial Unicode contains also Chinese and Korean characters so it may be a better choice for people using more than one CJK language.
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