[Laszlo-user] Understanding Flash memory usage when using Laszlo

[P T Withington]

On 2008-04-17, at 09:12 EDT, Gilad Parann-Nissany wrote:
> Hi
>
> With the help from this forum we have been making progress  
> understanding our memory usage. See the separate thread: [Laszlo- 
> user] Understanding memory analysis when using _LzDebug.whyAlive()
>
> We're now at the point were we see that the "smoots" taken up by  
> Laszlo objects are not all of our memory usage. It seems a large  
> part (large percentage of total RAM usage, maybe even more than 50%)  
> may be used elsewhere, perhaps in the Flash objects that are  
> "underneath" the Laszlo objects.
>
> Questions:
>
>    1. Is there any tool or technique that allows us to analyze  
> exactly how this memory is being used by Flash? ("underneath" the  
> laszlo objects, I mean)

I am not aware of such a tool.  There may be a tool provided by Adobe.

>    2. Are there any guidelines to help us optimize this Flash part  
> of our memory usage?
>    3. More generally is there any way to use Flash-specific  
> optimization techniques (going to the ActionScript where necessary).  
> We know that in pure Flash there are several optimization  
> techniques; the following points are examples of things we wish to try
>    4. Can we in general call pieces of ActionScript from Laszlo  
> script?

Yes.  The OL compiler does not prevent you from doing that, but  
neither is it supported.

>    5. Bitmap caching:
>
>
>        • SWF resources can be translated once into bitmaps (on the  
> client side) and cached
>        • you probably know this is known as bitmap caching.
>        • Then the bitmaps are used repeatedly instead of rendering  
> the SWF objects repeatedly.
>        • Can we do Bitmap Caching for all those vector graphics  
> which do not change frequently (from Laszlo, but possibly with  
> specific usage of Actionscript if necessary)

I believe Max (cc-ed) has experimented with this.  There may even be  
support in LZX for it.

>    6.
> Garbage collection: we would like to trigger the Flash garbage  
> collection just to test what is going on (as a test not permanent  
> change). Any way for us to do this?

I am not aware of a programmatic way of doing that.  In most browsers,  
if you minimize the window the app is running in the Flash GC will run.

Again, there are probably tools provided by Adobe for these purposes,  
but I have not used them.  There are probably more tools in the open  
source Flex compiler, so the swf9 runtime should be easier to measure  
and tune in this respect.