Howdy!

I have an application that generates a canvas with a large number of items in it. When it is building the canvas, I see it steadily slow down as it adds items. A typical instance may have several thousand items, each with multiple tags.

The bulk of the display is a grid of cells arranged in columns. Each cell can be clicked on to change its state. As implemented, each cell is composed of a number of items all in the same space.

I'm looking to make it more responsive.

I have several ideas that I want to try, but I thought I'd take the lazy approach and ask for any discovered wisdom.

My ideas:

Multiple canvases

Each canvas will contain a smaller number of items. My hope is that messing with items from a smaller list will reduce the time costs for access and update. The total number of items will not change; they will be spread among more containers instead of being piled in one.

No canvas; use frames and buttons

Each button would be small and bear an image. Each column would be a Frame with the Buttons packed on the bottom.

Replace multiple items with single images

I'd have to construct a suitable set of images, but each cell would only add one item instead of three or four as presently done.

Combinations?

I could use multiple canvases with images.

Other considerations

I do want to keep open the possibilities for selecting multiple cells for group actions, either by some variation on shift-click or by dragging a selection rectangle (or a diamond). I see this action as being a different operating mode from normal cell manipulation.

I'm open to pointers to FMs to R; I'll be examining Mastering Perl/Tk as well, for any clues it offers.

yours,
Michael

In reply to Perl Tk Canvas and buckets of items by herveus

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