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Blinking Cursor Turns 54

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Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#31

Post by munificent »

chhickman wrote: post #8
newsbinator wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And moving your mouse around made Windows 95 faster! https://www.extremetech.com/computing/294907-why-moving-the-...

You can still observe a related effect to this in Windows 10. Open up any large(ish) file in NotePad++ or most any other editor and place the cursor in the text and drag to the bottom of the screen so it starts scrolling. If you hold the mouse still at that point it will scroll through a couple dozen every half second or so, but if you wag the mouse side to side it will scroll through hundreds at a time in the same s…

I always assume that it's because the apps simply scroll on both timer events and mouse move events. Wiggle the mouse to raise a bunch of mouse move events and you get faster scrolling.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#32

Post by mbg721 »

csdvrx wrote: post #4

Interestingly enough, disabling cursor blinks on the intel 950 iGPUs resulted in increased powersaving: https://lwn.net/Articles/317922/ and http://tuxdiary.com/2015/09/29/save-battery-intel-linux/ A few years later, I checked that with powertop when I was using my thinkpad in uni and it was true and measurable! I'm not sure if it's still the case, but it's funny how UI features can tax the power budget in unsuspecte…

Any idea what the processor cost of hitting "insert" and having the big rectangular cursor was?

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#34

Post by csdvrx »

fxtentacle wrote: post #24
jpe90 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“A blinking cursor can have a significant effect on battery life, as such we decided to change the default to non-blinking.” Sublime Text 4 Update FAQ, May 2021 https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/sublime-text-4-update-faq/58...

Haha, that's probably an electron app. Or they use a really buggy UI framework. Otherwise, I wouldn't know why updating a 4x8 pixel block would cause a significant amount of power usage. Especially if a 286 could do it no problemo.

The tone of your reply is inappropriate. Any apps that cause a change in the content displayed risk causing wakeups on the GPU.

It's true whether it's a terminal emulator, a browser or an office suite.

GPU power saving loves static content (OLED screens don't, but that's another story)

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#35

Post by csdvrx »

mbg721 wrote: post #32
csdvrx wrote: post #4

Interestingly enough, disabling cursor blinks on the intel 950 iGPUs resulted in increased powersaving: https://lwn.net/Articles/317922/ and http://tuxdiary.com/2015/09/29/save-battery-intel-linux/ A few years later, I checked that with powertop when I was using my thinkpad in uni and it was true and measurable! I'm not sure if it's still the case, but it's funny how UI features can tax the power budget in unsuspecte…

Any idea what the processor cost of hitting "insert" and having the big rectangular cursor was?

The shape of the cursor isn't the problem - the fact that the shape regularly changes when blinking is.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#36

Post by csdvrx »

Teckla wrote: post #7
tpmx wrote: post #3

I've been using Emacs since 1996. One of the many reasons I like it is the default non-blinking full block cursor. It brings a certain calmness to the editing process. No stress or distraction. It feels so clean. It's interesting how very subtle design decisions like these matter so much.

I prefer a blinking cursor, otherwise I often find it hard to find the cursor on the screen. Also prefer block cursor to underline cursor for the same reason.

On Windows Terminal and others, I think you can use a non standard color (example: red, pink...) which should help you easily locate it.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#37

Post by adamrezich »

jareklupinski wrote: post #16
chhickman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still observe a related effect to this in Windows 10. Open up any large(ish) file in NotePad++ or most any other editor and place the cursor in the text and drag to the bottom of the screen so it starts scrolling. If you hold the mouse still at that point it will scroll through a couple dozen every half second or so, but if you wag the mouse side to side it will scroll through hundreds at a time in the same s…

every time I use this trick, I think of how running diagonally in some games is faster than running in one direction...

always normalize your input vectors!

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#38

Post by jablan »

zamadatix wrote: post #26
fxtentacle wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, that's probably an electron app. Or they use a really buggy UI framework. Otherwise, I wouldn't know why updating a 4x8 pixel block would cause a significant amount of power usage. Especially if a 286 could do it no problemo.

Sublime is a native C++ app. It uses a minimal custom framework built on top of I think skia which actually mediates the drawing on hardware devices (or the CPU). As described by the articles the power usage comes from causing the hardware to repeatedly exit a low wattage deep idle state to update the UI not to do with the amount of work required to render the update. This is actually more noticeable for efficient ap…

> repeatedly exit a low wattage deep idle state to update the UI

There's a considerable difference in doing that once a second and dozens (hundreds? thousands? depending on how it was implemented) times a second, which I would assume what the previous default ("smooth") setting meant.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#39

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

fxtentacle wrote: post #24
jpe90 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“A blinking cursor can have a significant effect on battery life, as such we decided to change the default to non-blinking.” Sublime Text 4 Update FAQ, May 2021 https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/sublime-text-4-update-faq/58...

Haha, that's probably an electron app. Or they use a really buggy UI framework. Otherwise, I wouldn't know why updating a 4x8 pixel block would cause a significant amount of power usage. Especially if a 286 could do it no problemo.

One of sublime's selling points is that it's not an electron app.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#40

Post by 323 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #24
jpe90 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“A blinking cursor can have a significant effect on battery life, as such we decided to change the default to non-blinking.” Sublime Text 4 Update FAQ, May 2021 https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/sublime-text-4-update-faq/58...

Haha, that's probably an electron app. Or they use a really buggy UI framework. Otherwise, I wouldn't know why updating a 4x8 pixel block would cause a significant amount of power usage. Especially if a 286 could do it no problemo.

No, it's caused by modern desktops being composited. Changing a single pixel in a window requires a full surface flush of that window to the GPU.

There are ways around it, but it requires direct interaction with the compositor, which while supported by the APIs, it's more complicated.

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