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Bug 413837

Summary:	Editor cursor: slow caret blinking/updating
Product:	[Eclipse Project] Platform	Reporter:	Illya Chekrygin <ichekryg>
Component:	SWT	Assignee:	Platform-SWT-Inbox <platform-swt-inbox>
Status:	CLOSED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	P3	CC:	carsten.pfeiffer, daniel_megert, ericwill, jan.public, ppalaga
Version:	3.8.1	Keywords:	triaged
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	PC
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:

Description Illya Chekrygin

2013-07-26 13:59:06 EDT

After some time eclipse editor blinking cursor become very slow, specifically when moving cursor left<->right or home<->end. The appears to happen in all document typs (.java, .txt, .json, etc.). 
For example: on a given line pressing keys in sequence "Home", "End", "Home" renders cursor invisible, and it takes roughly over 1 to 2 sec to repaint it in 
the correct position and resume blinking. 
Another example: on a given line press: 'Ctrl+Left' several times (move to the next word in line), will skip several words at the time without cursor repaint.

Also, in Java editor, turning 'Smart Insert' mode off to 'Insert' mode improves performance back to normal. However, in other editors (.txt, .json, etc) there is no option for 'Smart Insert' all together and 'Insert' mode is default, however, the issue is still present.

This issues does not appear on clean install. However, it appears after few days of usage. Perhaps it is plugin installation related.

Restarting eclipse does not resolve this issue, neither changing to new workspace.

So far the only work-around was: re-install eclipse.

OS: Ubuntu 13.04 64-bit

Thank you.

Comment 1 Illya Chekrygin

2013-07-26 14:08:10 EDT

In addition to the Java/Text Editors, this issue is also detected in 'Console View'

Comment 2 Dani Megert

2013-07-29 05:49:10 EDT

> Restarting eclipse does not resolve this issue, neither changing to new 
> workspace.

This indicates an OS issue, given that the blinking (rate) comes from the OS. Moving to SWT for further comments. Might be related to bug 407210.


> Also, in Java editor, turning 'Smart Insert' mode off to 'Insert' mode 
> improves performance back to normal. However, in other editors (.txt, .json, 
> etc) there is no option for 'Smart Insert' all together and 'Insert' mode is 
> default, however, the issue is still present.

Once it's slow, can you try whether
1. disabling General > Editors > Text Editors > Accessibility: Use custom caret
   fixes the problem
2. re-enabling that preferences brings back the problem

Comment 3 Alexander Kurtakov

2016-05-18 10:25:43 EDT

Is this bug still reproducible with Neon? Now that Eclipse defaults to GTK3 this might be fixed.

Comment 4 Carsten Pfeiffer

2016-07-12 04:32:36 EDT

I'm suffering from a similar problem on my Lenovo P50 on Linux. 

The problem is not as visible when the editor window is small, but gets worse when the editor is > 1000 pixels wide. The painting of cursor and text cannot keep up with the input.

I suspects it's a combination of bad performance of the video driver (here: Nouveau), SWT and the text editor implementation.

The behavior is slightly different with GTK2 and GTK3:
- with GTK2, the input speed is limited by the painting spped. When stopping intput, drawing of characters continues until the input buffer is emptied
- with GTK3, "empty characters" are painted when the painting is too slow for the input speed. After stopping input, the actual characters are painted. This way, the text input is not limited by the painting speed, which is an improvement. Adding and deleting lines however still causes lags and visual artifacts.

Note: I have not found any other editor that exhibits similar problems on that machine.

Comment 5 Carsten Pfeiffer

2016-07-12 04:34:49 EDT

Oh, and changing the custom cursor setting in the accessibility preferences does not make a difference.

Comment 6 Peter Palaga

2017-09-15 03:14:10 EDT

Still an issue on Oxygen, Fedora 26.

@akurtakov any ideas how to workaround this?

Comment 7 Carsten Pfeiffer

2017-09-15 04:07:15 EDT

FWIW, my problem is resolved (499349).

Comment 8 Eric Williams

2018-08-16 15:08:28 EDT

(In reply to Peter Palaga from comment #6)
> Still an issue on Oxygen, Fedora 26.
> 
> @akurtakov any ideas how to workaround this?

I think you may be experiencing bug 517487.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 517487 ***