Brooklyn, NYOn 21 Jan 2005, at 7:10 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
I don't know what the actual filespace usage of Finale temp files on disk
Mine are typically 11-15 MB total, which is practically nothing. It seems silly to write files that small to disk, instead of to RAM.
So, my assumption is that Finale is solving the same kinds of problems in temp files instead of in RAM precisely because the space needed is quite huge, too large for standard RAM configurations.
The space needed is trivial -- like I said, 11-15 MB. Temp files in Finale are simply a legacy from the days when 15 MB of RAM *was* a big deal. That's the only reason these are temp files and not written to RAM by default.
(Of course, they could also just fix the problem where the window handle/ID starts to map to the wrong Enigma Doc ID, but apparently that's easier said than done.)
Storing temp files in RAM (which is really not using temp files at all, of course) would do *nothing* to fix the problem if the problem is messed up pointers.
No, but segregating temp files for each document -- instead of having the same temp file map to all open documents -- *would* solve the problem. *That's* what I'm advocating -- or at least, that's a possibility I would like Coda to investigate. Their stated reason for not doing so is that it would make inter-document copying slower. I'm suggesting they try using segregated temp files for each document, but store them in RAM to make them faster. Maybe then the speed would remain about the same, and we wouldn't have the corruption problems we're having now.
I'm perfectly aware that storing temp files in RAM *alone* would do nothing to fix the problem. But I'm suggesting a (possible) two-pronged solution:
(1) Segregate the temp files so that they are not shared between multiple documents.
(2) Store the temp files in RAM to alleviate the performance issues caused by (1).
I have no idea if that's a workable solution, but I would like Coda to at least *try* it. Since the problem with the corrupted pointers is proving elusive, maybe it's time to address the root of the problem -- shared temp files. If the same temp files weren't shared by multiple documents, then the file overwrite bug would never occur. (Or at least, that's what Jari seems to be saying.)
If all you're doing is changing whether the pointers point to files or pages in RAM, you're not actually addressing the fundamental problem at all.
You may get a performance increase.
You may not.
Back in OS 9, we got a *dramatic* performance increase by storing temp files on RAM disks.
This doesn't happen with the RAM disks available to us in OS X -- I suspect because of poor implementation. (Also, I don't even know of a RAM disk that works with 10.3. Most only support 10.2 and lower.)
- Darcy ----- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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