Name: vi73552 Date: 05/07/99


Dear Sir/Madam,

I was trying to run my Java1.2 application (with a lot of graphics
painting/drawing) on my new SGI Visual 320 but found the application was
extremely slow, sometimes even halted some other background jobs. The same
program ran smoothly on a less powerful Windows NT4.0 PC equipped with only
Pentium II 266MHz machine and a weaker graphical adaptor. I showed the
problem to local SGI engineer and asked them to try the demo program (e.g.
the jdk1.2/demo/Applet/Animator/example4.html) which come with the Java1.2
package downloaded from SUN microsoft, of course) but they found the similar
symptoms. Even worse, the applet run backward from the bottom instead from
the top.

SGI engineers found out that the Sun's Jdk1.2 has a hardware-dependent
bug that restrict the applets (i.e. animator/example4.html) from running
normally in 16bit or 32bit color mode.
They told me that the workaround is to run the applet in 8 bit mode (while the applet is
running, one may switch the color mode back to 32 bit after the applet is launched.
As suggested, I tried to lower my display to 256 color mode for the Java1.2 applet
demo (i.e.
the jdk1.2/demo/Applet/Animator/example4.html). I must admit that I see some
improvement, the animation sequence doesn't run backward from the bottom as
before. However, when I drag the windows within the desktop, very serious
"shadows" behind the moving window appears and the screen blinks in an
unacceptable fashion. I then tried to reset my Cobalt back to true color mode
after I launch the applet but it doesn't help much. This work around is not very
successful. Even if this "cheating" works for this simple applet, I doubt it will
work for more complicated application, such as those which allows the users to
launch another graphical application/applet thread in the middle of the program.
(My own Java1.2 applications are full of these kind of operations.)

I was also told by the local SGI consultant that there is some incompatability between the
SGI Cobalt chip set with the Sun Java1.2. But I would like to point out that I have
run the same Java1.2 demo applet on many other less powerful machines with less
powerful graphical chipsets (such as (i) ACER Pentium II 266MHz WindowsNT4.0/95
Matrox Millenium G200 4MB Video RAM; (ii) ACER Pentium II 300MHz Windows/95 ATI
RangePro 2MB Video RAM) but everything is absolutely normal. He even told me
that SGI engineers found that some low level graphical instructions such as RGBX
becomes XBGR in the cobalt chipset. I wonder if SUN has made great change regarding these
low level instructions from jdk1.1.4 to jdk1.2. As a matter of
fact, everything is normal when I ran the same program on the same
machine but using the jdk1.1.4 version.

I discussed the above phenomenon to my other colleagues and they are VERY
DISAPPOINTED with jdk1.2 in this respect. I should be grateful if
you could provide me solution to this problem as soon as possible.

Thanks you very much.

P.W. Li
(Review ID: 57933)
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Name: vi73552 Date: 05/12/99


Hi,

I think I have found a bug running Java 1.2.1 on SGI Visual
Workstation 320. This is probably the same bug as #4236332
but I'll provide you with some additional information.

When running a Java standard demo on my SGI NT machine (e.g. the
Notepad demo), the GUI is acting strangely. Redrawing of the
window is very slow. If you for example occlude it by another
window, it starts blinking and there is occasionly a severe
color defect (parts of the window turn yellow).
Also, the fonts look strange and in some demos hardly readable.

I.m running in 1280x1024, True color mode, using the latest
patches from SGI: sgicobaltgfx402.

When trying to run our commersial, java-based application,
containing several java(swing)-windows, it seems that every window gets re-draw
events whenever one window is occluded. Sometimes it even seems
to loop through redraw-events several times.

In order to plan our releases, could you please let me know
if this is considered to be a bug, and if so, your time-plan
for a fix.

Best Regards

/Peter Larsson
M.Sc. Software Engineer, Opticore AB
(Review ID: 58104)
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Name: krT82822 Date: 08/04/99


Our commercial application is 2D-3D interactive CAD system written in Java2.
The performance is good on usual PC. But it is too slow on SGI Visual Workstation,espectially when
drawing 2D drawing, selecting the element of geometry, and selecting the button consist of Swing.
Maybe 20 times slower.

Hardware: SGI Visal Workstation 320
               Cobalt Graphics Driver 4.1.1 ( or 4.0.2)
               True Color mode(or 32768 )
Software: WindowsNT4.0
                JDK1.2.1 or JRE 1.2.1
Application:Java application(2D,3D CAD)
(Review ID: 93506)
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Name: krT82822 Date: 09/17/99


Cannot use True Color on SGI's Visual Workstation!
If true color was used, java2d corrupts color map and slows down all java program using java2d.

How to produce the bug.

1-1) Purchase SGI's Visual Workstation.
1-2) Use java2D in jdk1.2 or jdk1.3beta.
(Review ID: 95384)
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