kakarukeys wrote:
On Sep 20, 6:24 pm, Dave Angel <da...@ieee.org> wrote:
Jiang Fung Wong wrote:
Dear All,
Thank you for the information. I think I've some idea what the problem is
about after seeing the replies.
More information about my system and my script
PIII 1Ghz, 512MB RAM, Windows XP SP3
The script monitors global input using PyHook,
and calculates on the information collected from the events to output some
numbers. Based on the numbers, the script then performs some automation
using SendKeys module.
here is the memory usage:
firefox.exe, 69MB, 109MB
svchost.exe, 26MB, 17MB
pythonw.exe, 22MB, 17MB
searchindexer.exe, 16MB, 19MB
My first guess is that the script calculated for too long time after
receiving an event before propagating it to the default handler, resulting
the system to be non-responsive. I will try to implement the calculation
part in another thread.
Then the separate will have 100% CPU usage, hope the task scheduling of
Windows works in my favour.
(You top-posted this message, putting the whole stream out of order. So
I deleted the history.)
All my assumptions about your environment are now invalid. You don't
have a CPU-bound application, you have a Windows application with event
loop. Further, you're using SendKeys to generate a keystroke to the
other process. So there are many things that could be affecting your
latency, and all my previous guesses are useless.
Adding threads to your application will probably slow the system down
much more. You need to find out what your present problem is before
complicating it.
You haven't really described the problem. You say the system is
unresponsive, but you made it that way by creating a global hook; a
notoriously inefficient mechanism. That global hook inserts code into
every process in the system, and you've got a pretty low-end environment
to begin with. So what's the real problem, and how severe is it? And
how will you measure improvement? The Task manager numbers are probably
irrelevant.
My first question is whether the pyHook event is calling the SendKeys
function directly (after your "lengthy" calculation) or whether there
are other events firing off in between. If it's all being done in the
one event, then measure its time, and gather some statistics (min time,
max time, average...). The task manager has far too simplistic
visibility to be useful for this purpose.
What else is this application doing when it's waiting for a pyHook
call? Whose event loop implementation are you using? And the program
you're trying to control -- is there perhaps another way in?
DaveA
Hi,
Sorry I wasn't sure how to use Google groups to post a msg to the
newsgroup, I used Gmail to write my previous reply. What you and the
other guy have provided me isn't useless. Now I understand the non-
responsiveness may not be caused by high CPU usage, as the OS, be it
Windows or Linux, has a way to prioritize the tasks. This is a vital
clue to me.
By "not responsive", I mean, for some time, the mouse pointer is not
moving smoothly, to such extent that I can't do anything with the
mouse. It's like playing a multi-player game on a connection with a
lot of lag. It's not caused by global hook, because it happens under
certain condition, i.e. when fpa.ProcessEvent(word) is computing.
I included my main script for your reference. Comments:
(1) The automation method tc.Auto() is slow, but it doesn't cause any
problem, because the user would wait for the automation to finish,
before he continues to do something.
(2) all other methods invoked are fast, except fpa.ProcessEvent(word)
(this information is obtained from profiling). It is this method that
causes 100% CPU usage. I'm planning to move this method to a separate
thread, so that OnEvent(event) can finish executing, while the
separate thread goes on to finish its calculation. Is this a good
idea?
import pyHook
import TypingAnalyzer
import GUI
def OnEvent(event):
if hasattr(event, "Key") and event.Ascii == 9 and event.Key == "Tab"
and event.Injected == 0 and event.Alt == 0:
tc.Auto()
return False
else:
recognized = rk.ProcessEvent(event)
if recognized:
tc.MatchChar(recognized)
paragraph = rc.ProcessEvent(recognized)
if paragraph:
for word in paragraph:
fpa.ProcessEvent(word)
return True
hm = pyHook.HookManager()
hm.MouseAllButtonsDown = OnEvent
hm.KeyDown = OnEvent
hm.HookMouse()
hm.HookKeyboard()
rk = TypingAnalyzer.ReadKey()
rc = TypingAnalyzer.ReadChar()
fpa = TypingAnalyzer.Analysis()
tc = TypingAnalyzer.Automation(fpa)
if __name__ == '__main__':
app = GUI.AWAApp()
app.MainLoop()
Thank you for your attention.
I can't readily comment on your code, since it's entirely written to
three imports that I have never seen. I have to assume that
TypingAnalyzer contains logic to automate your external program. I have
no idea where GUI comes from, but I have to hope it knows how to
efficiently use the CPU, like most gui event loops. If you don't do
the pyHook, is the system quite responsive?
I actually doubt if moving some of the logic to another thread is going
to make any difference. In Python, threading helps to overlap CPU bound
stuff and I/O bound stuff. But theoretically, as soon as you return to
the event loop, your main thread is going to block, so it'll schedule
the other thread. The real question is whether there's communication
going between the two processes in those various rk, rc, etc pieces.
It's easy for such protocols to become very inefficient.
Since I can't directly help, at least I could suggest looking at XP's
ControlPanel->System->Advanced. That gets you to a dialog entitled
Performance Options.
On the Advanced tab of that dialog, the first section is "processor
scheduling". Mine is set to "Programs" which means give extra priority
to the GUI program that has the focus. Presumably in your environment
that'll be the typing code, not your python app. Setting it to
"Background services" would give more priority to the CPU bound of your
python app.
But once these two apps are aware of each other, they could be doing all
sorts of things to confuse the scheduler.
DaveA
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