YAM's flashing editor (RESOLVED)

@tboeckel
The MUI files in OS4.1update5 are making YAM look pretty bad for some of us. It might be more obvious on certain hardware but I think enough people have confirmed the problem to warrant a look into the issue by someone who can do something about it.

@ all
It would be nice if everyone would add their system info to their tagline so it would be easier to tell if a problem is hardware spedific.

There is already a bug report on sf.net.

The main problem is that TextEditor.mcc does its best to misobey the most basic rules of MUI programming and that it is a real PITA to fix this. Until this is done there is only one solution, namely to use a plain color background.

@xenic

I just tried to reproduce this issue myself, and guess what: it does not flicker at all for me. So from my point of view the flicker effect can only be caused by your personal settings. Could you please send me your global MUI configuration file privately, or the YAM specific configuration file if your are using even more custom settings for YAM?

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Well, you name it: for some of us, but not for all. MUI's most important feature is the ability to be able to configure each and everything. Unfortunately this requires a valid key file. I am really sorry, but until now we are not allowed to remove this restriction and to let everybody configure MUI to his/her personal gusto. Thus the built in default settings have to be enough. However, if there is a setting that I can tweak to make a certain application looking better when using the default settings without breaking all others then please tell me.

@tboeckel
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No need for config files. After backing up my system, I removed all the config files from the mui prefs directory (SYS:Prefs/Env-Archive/MUI), removed all YAM config files (.config .addressbook .user etc.) and the mail directory. When I started YAM, entered the minimal settings and edited a new email in YAM, the toolbar and other parts of the GUI flickered as I typed in random characters as fast as possible. If you can't duplicate the flashing, then I guess there is not much you can do.
As I said before, the problem disappears when I replace the Update5 MUI directory with the previous released MUI directory. I'll try to determine which MUI file is causing the problem and replace it with an older version. I can use my old MUI directory or the replace offending file if I can determine which one it is. Hopefully the next MUI release will fix the problem.

EDIT: That didn't take long. When I replaced the Update5 muimaster.library with my previous muimaster.library, the flickering disappeared (after a reboot).

Update5 muimaster.library is v20.2344 (07/29/2012) - Size 850344
Yam flickering with that library.

Old muimaster.library is v20.2336 (11/26/2011) - Size 800220
Yam not flickering with old library.

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I just compared the source of both MUI releases. 98% of all differences is either the bumped revision or the allocation scheme of MEMF_SHARED memory to not lock the memory pages. There are no changes in the graphics department and the only class with some larger changes is the list class, which has absolutely nothing to do with TextEditor.mcc.

So from my point of view there is nothing wrong or fixable, since there is no change which could really explain this behaviour.

Yes, my hardware is slightly different. X1000 & HD4850 which would probably mean the flicker is less noticable.

One more thing to try... in gui prefs/options try turning off force smart refresh. smart refresh was great on the classic gfx cards with low bandwidth and made screen updates faster but with modern agp/pci(e) cards it's faster to just refresh the whole screen. Then switch to simple refresh in the mui prefs (try it with or without clear).

@xenic

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Congratulations. You found a real bug in MUI 3.9 of update #5!

After having typed really fast in YAM's text editor by banging my head, feet and hands onto the keyboard I was finally able to reproduce and notice the flickering. I then compared all source files another time finally found the true cause for the flicker effect.

The editor in YAM's write window has a two line cursor position display in the upper right corner. During the preparations for update #5 it was reported that setting a new text containing more lines than the old one caused MUI to draw outside the object's area. This was fixed by checking whether there are LF characters in the text or not. If yes, then a relayout of the surrounding group was triggered to make MUI recalculate the required area to display all text. This might cause some flickering depending on the complexity of the group due to the necessary redraw actions.
Unfortunately this check did not include the case that the new text contains exactly the same amount of lines as the old one and thus a relayout is not required at all. Instead MUI triggered a relayout everytime resulting in the noticed flicker effect.

This will be fixed in the next release. I cannot tell if something like update #6 is planned at all, so please be patient. But thanks a lot for insisting on having spotted a bug, even if I rejected it in the first place.

@tboeckel
While I was testing Severin's theory that Simple/Smart refresh had something to do with the problem, I noticed that simply moving the cursor up, down or side to side with the keyboard arrows also produced the flicker. The only thing being intentionally refreshed was the counter. Thanks for locating the problem. On my system, the flicker made YAM look bad and I feel like YAM is one of the best written-from-scratch for Amiga programs and really hoped the flicker could be fixed. Thanks for being persistant and finding the problem. I will mark this topic RESOLVED!

Thanks to all who helped get this resolved.