On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 9:40 PM, Christiaan Hofman <cmhof...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 9:29 PM, Christiaan Hofman <cmhof...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jan 28, 2010, at 18:21, Maxwell, Adam R wrote:
>>
>> > On 01/28/10 06:00, "Christiaan Hofman" <cmhof...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> I don't remember all that was said about thread safety in relation to
>> bibitems
>> >> and type info. I thought that BDSKTypeInfoManager doesn't need to be
>> thread
>> >> safe, because it wasn't used on a secondary thread since it wasn't used
>> >> anymore for file searching. That seems to be incorrect, as various
>> search
>> >> group servers create bibitems on a secondary thread, and that uses the
>> type
>> >> manager. So something has to change. Either search groups servers
>> should
>> >> always create bibitems on the main thread, or BDSKTypeManager needs to
>> be
>> >> thread safe. The latter can be very expensive in regular usage, because
>> the
>> >> various typeinfo NSString category methods are called a lot (and
>> especially
>> >> those should be made thread safe, because that type info can change).
>> So is it
>> >> feasible to create items in search groups on the main thread? I
>> particularly
>> >> want to ask Adam, because he wrote the search group servers.
>> >
>> > Realistically, the only way this could be a problem is if someone edits
>> > default field prefs while while actually creating a BibItem and calling
>> the
>> > type manager from another thread. That's a very tiny window in
>> practice,
>> > but I agree that it's worth trying to fix.
>> >
>> > I think the easiest (and best-performing) way to do this would be to use
>> a
>> > per-thread instance of BDSKTypeManager. I implemented this in my code,
>> but
>> > it's only minimally tested. The only slightly tricky part is observing
>> > notifications, but that's not too bad.
>> >
>> > Pushing all of the parsing to the main thread is probably possible, too,
>> but
>> > would require code changes and testing in more modules, and be a
>> performance
>> > hit.
>>
>> I think the parsing should go to the main thread. There are more reasons
>> for this. For instance, the bibtex parser can only be used on the main
>> thread due to global constants. Also, parsing on the background threads
>> means that the pubs are archived for transfer through DO. This also means
>> that there probbaly would not even be a performance gain at all.
>>
>> As for several type manager instances, I don't think that's a good idea.
>> There are notification observations that can give problems. Also changes
>> won't be properly passed to the instance in the background.
>>
>> I've already made some changes to the ZOOM and DBLP servers. Those are
>> actually not too bad, just do everything starting from parsing on the main
>> thread after sending the raw string there. For IS I am just very confused
>> about what's going on there. Especially for citedReferences. It does not
>> seem right to me. For instance, parsing seems to be taking place twice. The
>> indentation is a bit messy, which makes it hard to read. Is it possible to
>> split the code into getting the string(s) and parsing them to get pubs?
>>
>> Christiaan
>>
>>
> Just thought, another, perhaps easier, solution is to first create a
> dictionary containing the pubfields, pubtype, and URL, and make bibtems out
> of that on the main thread.
>
> Christiaan
>
>
Actually, this solution has a problem: passing an array of dictionaries
through DO sometimes leads to a crash. Archiving the array using
NSKeyedArchiver solves it. It makes no sense, and I blame NSPortCoder. Pity
I can't reproduce it in a simple test setting. Anyway, with this extra step
it works. Still wish I could predict when Cocoa works.
Christiaan
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Planet: dedicated and managed hosting, cloud storage, colocation
Stay online with enterprise data centers and the best network in the business
Choose flexible plans and management services without long-term contracts
Personal 24x7 support from experience hosting pros just a phone call away.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/theplanet-com
_______________________________________________
Bibdesk-develop mailing list
Bibdesk-develop@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bibdesk-develop
