Tonto question

[AKsor]

I have a quick question. Is Tonto supposed to be a CPU hog?

Every time I load it up on my P4 1.3gHz it bogs down the whole system.

I'm running win2k pro as the OS and have plenty of RAM.

Does anybody else experiencing similar problems or is it just me.

Laz

[ErnRenner]

You're not the only one... is runs real slow on my machine as well.. P4 1.7

[mrallen]

Well, it's not *supposed* to be a pig. I think this might have something to do with the JVM on Windows. I do a little testing there and on Mac OS X, but my primary environment is Linux. And on Linux with IBM's 1.3 JVM, it's extremely fast. This the same JVM that I bundle on the Windows install. From all available benchmarks, it's the fastest.

Does your CCF have a lot of graphics? This is an area that I can improve memory management which should help out. But I've loaded some pretty large full color CCF's under Linux without noticing slowdown. You can also launch Tonto using the bat file instead of the launcher and tweak the memory settings there. Try giving it more memory and see if that helps.

[brohebus]

You're not the only one... is runs real slow on my machine as well.. P4 1.7

It is the JVM - it can be a real resource hog under Windows. Makes me wonder if Redmond throws in an extra bunch of processes runing DO loops when it detects Java running. :x :?:

-Dave

[mrallen]

Interestingly, I do my Windows testing using a virtual Windows XP system running inside of VMWare on top of Linux. Even in this nested scenario, Tonto performs at about 70% of the native speed on Linux. There may be other factors at play.

[AKsor]

:evil:

I tried to launch the system from the batch file and I did edit the file but not really sure what value I should place in the -XMfield

Mind you I might need to upgrade my RAM I forgot that I donated my new MB to HTPC and my current system is running on 128Mb.

Laz

[mrallen]

If you're running on only 128M then you should crank *down* the memory setting. By default, Tonto runs with the expectation that you've got more than that. Try 64M or 48M as a setting.

[brohebus]

:evil:

I tried to launch the system from the batch file and I did edit the file but not really sure what value I should place in the -XMfield

Mind you I might need to upgrade my RAM I forgot that I donated my new MB to HTPC and my current system is running on 128Mb.

Laz

128 is pretty light for a Win2K system. Buy another 256MB...the stuff is cheap as dirt now anyway.

-Dave

[AKsor]

:twisted:

Looks like I'm gonna have to put in more RAM.

Just did a quick check Win2K min is 128Mb so i'm basically running bare min

I also have another question regarding Tonto

I have been designing my own buttons and backgrounds using Xara3D and I just noticed last night that some of the buttons become speckled with the background color when I attempt to make them transparent in Tonto using the Ctrl+Shift+T option.

Is this a bug in the software?

Some more newbie info regarding my buttons. They are saved in gif format using the 256 color palete optimized and transparent option set in Xara.

Any help would be appreciated


Thanks guys

[mrallen]

Ctrl+Shift+T is a hack for standard prontos to fake transparency. It takes the color of the top-left pixel and uses that as the transparent color for compositing a new icon. If you are using 'custom' CCF's then you no longer need to do this. You need to be using a 'custom' CCF or have converted to a 'custom' CCF before importing the GIF with transparency in order for this to work. I don't know if NetRemote 0.98 supports transparent images yet, but if not, it's coming soon. The only reason I can think that the image is speckled is that you are not using a 'custom' CCF.

[AKsor]

:twisted:

Thanks for the good support.

I think you are right about the custom ccf isue I will try it tonight.

Thanks again

Laz

[z.mash]

I believe the newest release of NR (.981) supports transparencies, but I have not confirmed this for myself.
http://www.netremote.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=487#487

-Zak

[z.mash]

My bad - I got transparency confused with alpha transparency and 24/32 bit image support. I don't know if Ben has incorporated this or not yet.

-Zak

[brohebus]

My bad - I got transparency confused with alpha transparency and 24/32 bit image support. I don't know if Ben has incorporated this or not yet.

-Zak

Not yet. I've spoken with Ben about this and he needs to write a rendering engine for netRemote. It's on his list of things to do, but he said it would be some time off (>1 month).

-Dave

[QuickCarl]

Seems to me that transparency is working...both ways. If you check the pic I posted on the DVD Jukebox thread you can see it easily.

I could be wrong... -Carl

[mrallen]

Background transparency seems to work, but alpha blending of images is not (at least in my copy of 0.981).

[brohebus]

Background transparency seems to work, but alpha blending of images is not (at least in my copy of 0.981).

Are we talking about the Win32 version of PPC version here. When I tested .98 on Win32, both window alpha and image alpha (buttons etc) worked fine.

On the PPC, window alpha is not supported (for obvious reasons), and image alpha is not yet implemented.

I haven't installed .981 yet though.

-Dave

[mrallen]

yep. I'm doing all of my testing on an iPaq 5455.

[AKsor]

:twisted:
Just un update I got more RAM added to my PC and it solved the problem I was having with Tonto.

Laz

[Ben S]

Are we talking about the Win32 version of PPC version here. When I tested .98 on Win32, both window alpha and image alpha (buttons etc) worked fine.

On the PPC, window alpha is not supported (for obvious reasons), and image alpha is not yet implemented.


Just to be clear, alpha (true 8 bit alpha) isn't supported on PPC or Win32 yet. There is a transparent color (defined in Tonto) which will be transparent, but there is not true alpha.