[aklug] Re: video system questions

On Monday 20 February 2012 3:21:36 pm Christopher Howard wrote:
> On 02/20/2012 02:57 PM, Greg Madden wrote:
> > I need some help, or directions to good info, on my video
> > subsystem
> >
> > These days pdf files have pretty much replaced paper, for me. This
> > means I get construction drawings, 34x22 mostly, in sets or
> > induvidually. This is causing me to notice more time waiting for
> > images to render. The pdf files are mostly 1-4MB in size.
> >
> > I have fair amount of resources on my sysmtem, quad core & 8Gb of
> > memory, I don't use swap but the memory cache is used a lot. This
> > brings me to figuring out if my video system could be better.
> >
> > I use a Nvidia Quadro dual head 256mb of memory, low by todays
> > standards.
> >
> > The following error message is from 'mupdf' failed attempt to
> > render a page. I also have available 'epdfview, evince, & kpdf'.
> > None of the latter have the error mesage and render at different
> > speeds, kpdf seems faster, evince has some feaures I like.
> >
> > Where to look for speed improvements ? Thanks.
> >
> > pabi@myetch:~$ warning: pixmap memory exceeds soft limit 248M +
> > 233M > 256M + pdf/pdf_image.c:168: pdf_load_image_imp(): out of
> > memory | pdf/pdf_image.c:349: pdf_load_image(): cannot load image
> > (3 0 R) | pdf/pdf_interpret.c:1432: pdf_run_Do(): cannot load image
> > (3 0 R) \ pdf/pdf_interpret.c:2029: pdf_run_keyword(): cannot draw
> > xobject/image
>
> I don't think the issue here is the video system itself, but rather
> software doing the rendering. I haven't browsed through any PDF reader
> source code lately, but I'm guessing they probably aren't optimized
> for the rendering of huge construction drawing images.
>
> One idea (totally off the top of my head): could you try converting
> one of the drawings from PDF to SVG, and perhaps other image formats,
> and see how fast they render with various image display software (like
> mirage <http://mirageiv.berlios.de/>). I know there is a converter
> program called pdf2svg <http://www.cityinthesky.co.uk/pdf2svg.html>,
> though I haven't used it yet myself.

Thanks for the suggestions, tryed both, none are an improvement in speed over the
pdf viewers, though pdf2svg is recommended for those who want to edit a pdf
file...good to know, and mirage is a nice light viewer, add to the pile :-)

I have noticed, in top, that one processor hits 100%, none of the other cores are
used. by the process. If it is a cpu issue seems using more cores would help.

-- 
Peace,
Greg
---------
To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.