Performance under Windows

[Christopher Bahns <bahnsch access4cheap com>]

Hello All,
I am experiencing pretty horrible performance with Dia under Windows. I 
was wondering if other Windows users have the same problem, and if using 
Linux really helps that much (that's not really an option for me right 
now, but I'd be interested to know). I would very much like to know if 
an upcoming version is expected to improve performance, either under 
Windows specifically or in general. If so, which version? I'm running 
the binary distribution of Dia v0.91 on Windows 2000 SP2, PIII-1GHz 
Coppermine [dual], 384MB SDR SDRAM, Intel 440BX chipset.

Part of my problem might be my custom shapes. I made a diagram using 
"Standard", "LADDER", and "Circuit" stencils and although it was very 
slow one might considere it usable. Then I created two custom shapes for 
Ladder Diagrams: "PowerRail" and "GroundRail", each of which has about 
40 connection points (a standard construct for ladder diagrams). Any 
editing of a diagram that contains these shapes is painfully slow and in 
my opinion not usable. When I say "painfully slow" I'm talking about the 
placement, editing, and movement of new objects on the diagram (after 
the placement of my custom objects). These new objects are based on 
predefined shapes which perform much better when my custom objects are 
not present. The delay between a mouse-drag movement and the drawing of 
the shape in its new location is about two seconds.

Is there a known performance issue with editing diagrams that have large 
numbers of connection points? I searched the dia-list archives for 
subjects containing "performance" or "slow" and found nothing. Is an 
upcoming version of GTK+ for Windows (Dia v0.91 uses GTK+ v2.2.1) 
expected to have performance improvements that would affect Dia?

Thanks in advance,
Christopher Bahns
AHV Systems, Inc.