[Okular-devel] [Bug 177213] High X server memory consumption

[Pino Toscano]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=177213





--- Comment #12 from Pino Toscano <pino kde org>  2009-05-25 01:17:22 ---
(In reply to comment #11)
> (In reply to comment #10)
> We can say that okular is the most memory hungry document viewer
> out there (at least on Normal memory setting). The fact that the memory is used
> by the X server is irrelevant: you can cause a huge memory consumption by just
> advancing page by page on a large document. It's true that the X server may not
> return the memory to the OS, but it's true too that at some point an instance
> of okular may be using more than 500 MB of memory (I've seen this). This is not
> right by any means. Hence my request for setting the Low memory setting as the
> default one, or throwing out the pixmap usage.

Okular dynamically adapts its memory usage depending on the total memory and
the available memory, updating its stats. The memory profile determine how
Okular will use the available memory for caching: Low is "I don't cache what I
don't show", Normal is "I cache something I have visited, but not much" and
Aggressive is "cache almost everything can fit in the free RAM".
Also, independently than the memory profile, if the free memory available
reduces a lot (for example you start kontact, evolution, openoffice.org, etc),
Okular reduces the content of its cache.
500MB could even be normal, if the available RAM prior starting that Okular
instance was like 1GB and the memory profile is eg Normal.

> OTOH, I recall that on irc you precisely explained that
> pixmaps are useful for limiting bandwith usage, as once a page is on the X
> server, viewing it again would not cause an image transfer.

Correct.

> So now pixmaps are intended for fast local viewing?

That as well, as you avoid (or reduces a lot) doing the "in RAM"->"in X server"
pixmap conversion (as you need to have X pixmaps to draw something on the X
server), which is slow and synchronous (so blocks the whole X server during the
conversion).

> > but i am not sure if *i* (not the okular maintainer) would
> > opose to a clean patch implementing non pixmap usage
> 
> Last time I offered to create such patch the maintainer answered with a
> resounding NO.

Wasn't a "resounding NO", but a "won't be done if it's just to workaround Xorg
problems".

-- 
Configure bugmail: https://bugs.kde.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the assignee for the bug.