Other IDE repaint bug?

[Rick A.]

Known issue?

Sometimes things vanishes or get garbled on the IDE screen. Just in B4A, not any other of my Windows apps. Sometimes passing the cursor over those areas fixes them, sometimes don't; in special the menu items. Sometimes resizing the window, repaints and fix those areas for a time, but sometimes, resizing makes things worse.

Check the demo video. Put it full screen and HD to see some details.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6w6JZen_vW2V3pfdldOTkNQazQ/view?usp=sharing

 

[giga]

Strange. Are there any other large programs running at the time?
What are the specs of your computer?

 

[Rick A.]

Just to remember, ANY other program running side by side does not suffer of ANY problem.
Just the B4A 5.02 IDE. So, the problem is isolated on it and its dependencies.

Just for the sake of curiosity, and who knows, help; this system is:

OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate - PT-BR - x64 - 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1

System MAC-MINI Apple Inc. Macmini4,1 model
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz, 2394 Mhz, 2cores
RAM 5,00 GB

Video adapter NVIDIA GeForce 320M
Video RAM 256 MB
Nvidia driver 9.18.13.4144

Dual monitor. 2 x AOC F22 HDMI HD displays [1920 x 1080] each.

 

[Rick A.]

Hmmm. Seems something Java related. When I run the "C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_51\bin\javacpl.exe" its menu has bad visual entries too.

 

[giga]

Have you tried to re-install the java? problem with old versions? Computer specs seem to be fine.

 

[Rick A.]

I've found the problem, Java, and the probable solution for java apps, setting some properties like "java -Dproperty=val JavaApp"; but I don't know how for the B4A.exe.

For some NVidia systems, we need to turn off the Java 2D system's use of Direct3D

On some systems, the use of Direct3D can cause problems. To turn off the use of Direct3D, set the d3d to false: java -Dsun.java2d.d3d=false myApp.jar

If problems persist, we need to try setting the ddoffscreen property to false. If that doesn't solve the problems, we need to try setting noddraw to true.

 

[giga]

Hardware-acceleration problem. I hadn't seen one in a while forgot about that.

 

[Rick A.]

I think I need Erel's knowledge here, about "How" and "If" I can set those options to B4A.exe. Are there command line switches or a settings file to set such options?

 

[Erel]

I wasn't able to see the video (unknown error).

The IDE is a .Net application. It is not related to Java in anyway. Make sure that .Net 4.5.2 is installed and that you are using the latest display driver available.

 

[Rick A.]

Yes. I do, both. I've noticed B4A is a .Net app just one minute before you wrote. It's related to a hardware acceleration problem for sure anyway. I've set the environment variable J2D_D3D=false and the java apps got fixed. Now I'll track its .Net counterparts.

 

[Rick A.]

Ok, there is no user solution anymore, before .Net 4 we had a registry key that could fix this, but for the 4.5 it's gone. It must be handled by the software.

So, Erel, may I ask you to adjust B4A.exe to have some setting like "B4A.exe -softrender" (or loading a setting file at start like b4a.ini, or look for its java counterpart environment variable J2D_D3D=false) and internally setting softrender for this WPF app?

// Process wide at start
if (b4a_needs_softrender) {
RenderOptions.ProcessRenderMode = System.Windows.Interop.RenderMode.SoftwareOnly;
}

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.media.renderoptions.processrendermode(v=vs.110).aspx

 

[Rick A.]

I wasn't able to see the video (unknown error).

Try again. I see no problems, it uses the youtube engine. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6w6JZen_vW2V3pfdldOTkNQazQ/view?usp=sharing

 

[Rick A.]

Ok, I found a workaround. Creating the same registry entry from old .Net still respected. For those with same problem, the .reg file is attached compressed here.