Slow log update

[Tristan Croll]

The following bug report has been submitted:
Platform:        Windows-10-10.0.22621
ChimeraX Version: 1.7.dev202309180647 (2023-09-18 06:47:42 UTC)
Description
I was wondering why ISOLDE's frame rate seemed to be getting worse and worse (particularly when repeatedly stepping through a structure). Turns out it was because the log had gotten so big that updating it was getting really slow (I'd estimate about 250 ms). Cleared the log window and everything immediately became snappy again.

Log:
> st

[Repeated 3 time(s)]




OpenGL version: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 529.08
OpenGL renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL vendor: NVIDIA Corporation

Python: 3.11.2
Locale: en_GB.cp1252
Qt version: PyQt6 6.3.1, Qt 6.3.1
Qt runtime version: 6.3.2
Qt platform: windows

Manufacturer: HP
Model: HP ZBook Studio 15.6 inch G8 Mobile Workstation PC
OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro (Build 22621)
Memory: 34,007,068,672
MaxProcessMemory: 137,438,953,344
CPU: 16 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz
OSLanguage: en-GB

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[Eric Pettersen]

I'm not really certain we can do much about this. A large HTML page can only be redisplayed so fast.

One thing we could possibly do is that when the log gets past a certain size threshold, put up a warning to the user that they might want to clear the log to improve performance.

[Tristan Croll]

One possibility I was thinking was that when the log refresh time hits some
threshold, you could push all but the last few outputs to a cached version
and replace them with a link that will open the full log in the help
browser.

On Thu, 5 Oct 2023 at 22:13, ChimeraX <ChimeraX-bugs-admin@cgl.ucsf.edu>
wrote:

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[Eric Pettersen]

Another idea is to change from disclosure triangles for previous sessions to links that open an external window with that session's log. Would shorten logs opened from session files and increase performance in those cases. More complex to code (what does the 'href' contain?) and would require changes to log saving and bug reporting.

[Eric Pettersen]

Hi Tristan,

Does this slow log update still happen to you? We are having trouble reproducing it, so we were hoping the next time you run into it maybe you could save a session and send it to me?

--Eric

[Tristan Croll]

Hmm... so it's interesting. Seems there's a "sweet spot" (not exactly
sweet, but you get my drift) where it becomes really noticeable - where the
log update is slow enough to redraw in the middle of an animation, but not
*so* slow that it happens once it's done. To reproduce:

# create a simple animation to spam
open 3io0
view /A:160
view name view1
view /A:156
view name view2
alias tab view view1 frames 30; wait 30; view view2 frames 30

# in the Python shell, fill up the log with some random junk
from random import randint
for _ in range(1000):
   session.logger.info(str(randint(1000000,1000000000)))

... and try using the "tab" command after each addition of 1000 lines. On
my Windows machine it gets most janky somewhere around 7000 lines. Beyond
that, the log update tends to happen after the animation is done (and if I
quickly repeat the command a few times, akin to repeating the "isolde step"
command it starts skipping log redraws entirely).

On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 11:59 PM ChimeraX <ChimeraX-bugs-admin@cgl.ucsf.edu>
wrote:

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