64 bit : Timers fire just fine during MouseDown, MouseDrag, or PopupMenu dropdown

General
1

In another thread, I was told that contrary to 32 bit, MouseDown, MouseDrag in a canvas, or PopupMenu prevented timers from firing.

That can be a big problem in some of my classes, so I wanted to make certain.

I created a small project with 2017R1.1 that contains a canvas, a multiple 1000 ms timer, and a TextArea to receive messages that I would have sent to System.Debuglog in 32 bit.

This archive contains both the project, and a 64 bit build for Windows.

stall.zip

To my great surprise after what I had read, it appears the timer fires happily through MouseDown and MouseDrag in the Canvas, as well as during the PopupMenu dropdown display.

Then I proceeded to macOS Sierra and 2017R1.1 with a 64 bit build of the same project. Same result.

That should be good news for whomever uses timers in 64 bit.

2

Now there’s a compelling reason to finally bite the bullet and upgrade from RS2012 :slight_smile:

3

I use 3 versions depending on the task - 2012r2.1, 2016r4, and 2017r3. We still have some old Max OS Carbon and Windows XP users, so that’s why 2012r2.1. For Linux before GTK-3 and Windows 7-10, we use 2016r4 for existing projects, and new development is using 2017r3.

This is working pretty well for the myriad of users we support.

4

I much prefer the RS IDE to Xojo, but I have some issues with UI processes like window-dragging interfering with timers, so maybe this will help.

5

Is this a 64 bit thing? I’m pretty sure on the Mac at least that it was the switch to Cocoa that allowed this to start happening. Or maybe even the switch to Carbon? I know in order to make it happen in 32 bit apps in the very distant past I used the carbon timer API either through declares or in the MBS plugins to make a timer that could fire even while a menu was down. But i can’t recall when I stopped having to do that.

6

It was the switch to Cocoa on the Mac.

7

The CarbonEventsTimerMBS timer did fire more often than a regular Xojo Carbon Timer.

http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.net/class-carboneventstimermbs.shtml

8

Also TimerMBS is useful to get a timer firing faster than 1000 times a second.

9

FWIW, back in prehistoric times (2007) someone named Frank Condello wrote a window class, “Async Drag Window”, that was supposed to not be blocked by mousedown and dragging:

http://developer.chaoticbox.com/

There’s a demo project that puts up two little windows, one standard and one of the “Async Drag” flavor, each with a smoothly updating progress bar. You’re supposed to drag each around to see the effect on progress bar updating. I see no difference between the two under Mac or Windows, and under Mac I see little or no impact from clicking or dragging, but under Windows 10, a 64-bit build has an extremely obvious pause of nearly a second each time either title bar is clicked, and recurring random-length stutters as either window is dragged around.