UltraEdit is SLOW on remote desktop

Bjorn · Mar 10, 2015#12015-03-10T20:39+00:00

Hi.
I have installed UE v21.30.0.1024 on my work computer, which is always at my office.
Often working from home, I use my home computer to log to my office computer through MS Remote Desktop Client.
But using UltraEdit through remote desktop is painfully sloooooow, especially redrawing the text area.
Opening the same file in both Notepad and in UltraEdit, and then paging down in both editors show a significant speed improvement in Notepad.
Anyone have experienced the same speed/redraw issues using mstsc?

kind regards,
Bjørn

Mofi · Mar 11, 2015#22015-03-11T06:23+00:00

First, I would suggest to install UltraEdit additionally on computer at home. Using UltraEdit on local computer to edit remote files is always faster than running also the application remote and requires less data transfer between your computer at home and the one in the office.

Second, the number of display updates and therefore how often entire screen must be transferred and how much data must be transferred from remote computer to local computer depends on your UltraEdit configuration. Using in UltraEdit the Classic theme with Windows Classic as application style makes the display updates significantly faster and reduces the number of display updates in comparison to a stylish theme like Midnight or Slate.

Also closing all views currently not needed and disabling features with a visual indication (line change indication, status icons on file tabs, code folding, line number display, drawing graphical lines, auto-brace matching, etc.) speeds up drawing the GUI.

The more pixels are different within UltraEdit main window, the more data must be transferred from remote computer to local computer making it slow. That can be seen very easily on making a screenshot (Alt+PrtScr) of UltraEdit with a theme like Slate and all features enabled and another one with using Classic theme with Windows Classic application style and all features disabled with visual indication not really needed and saving both screenshots as PNG file. The difference in file size of the two PNG files is a good indicator for size difference on data transfer for display updates between remote and local computer.

BTW: Using also Windows Classic desktop theme for Windows reduces even more the number of bytes to transfer on each display update.

Bjorn · Mar 11, 2015#32015-03-11T14:38+00:00

Hi, thanks for the reply.
I am already using the Classic theme in UE, and this is Windows 8.1 so you cant go for the old Windows classic look anymore.
I will try some more tweaking on the visual effects in Windows 8.1 and try using Windows Classic application style, and see if this improves the speed.

kind regards,
Bjørn

mjcarman · Apr 30, 2015#42015-04-30T14:54+00:00

I'm experienced the same problem. UE is fine via remote desktop from another PC on the same (internal) network but slow enough to be flat-out unusable when connecting from home. Other desktop applications (including code editors like Eclipse) work fine. The problem seems to be an excessive amount of screen refreshing. I reported it to IDM but never received a response (which is unusual). I recommend that you do the same. If enough users complain they might look into tuning the number of refreshes.

HornerNW · Mar 14, 2016#52016-03-14T21:00+00:00

Try View - Font - Set Font and then check the option Use OEM fixed pitch font. (I have set font Terminal Regular size 9 - not sure if this matters.)
I use UE 23.00 via remote desktop all day long. This makes it work well. But only for normal text editing mode. If I do Alt+C for column mode it changes font and gets really slow again.

Mofi · Mar 15, 2016#62016-03-15T06:28+00:00

HornerNW, what happens if font for HEX/Column mode is also set to Terminal Regular 9?

Is column mode editing on remote desktop faster with using bitmap font Terminal instead of vector font Courier New in column mode?

Also interesting would be if on remote machine ClearType is enabled in Windows desktop configuration which dramatically increases the amount of data which must be sent from remote machine to connected machine on every display refresh.

mwb1100 · Mar 15, 2016#72016-03-15T23:51+00:00

Also, the Windows RDP client allows you to tune the remote control based on the bandwidth/latency of the link. Here's how to do that in the client installed on Win7 x64:

Click on the "Show Options" button in the lower left corner, then the "Experience" tab.

The default is to "Detect connection quality automatically", but if that doesn't work well you can make a manual selection which will then also let you turn on/off various features (such as font smoothing) that represent a trade-off between display quality and connection speed requirements.

MartyMacGyver · Dec 19, 2016#82016-12-19T10:20+00:00

This is a regular annoyance despite both host and client being on a LAN and having plenty of bandwidth and processing power (I'm using Windows 7 x64 on both.)

There is something strange about how UltraEdit (through v23.20 at least) is drawing the screen when TrueType fonts are in use. Even if I have every bell and whistle enabled - ClearType, Aero, all the fancy animations - UltraEdit alone draws slowly. Chrome, Acrobat, Word, PyCharm... they all dash along and are all using TrueType fonts with smoothing / ClearType enabled, while UltraEdit lags if a TrueType font is involved.

Just comparing two code editors, each with "themes" enabled and each using Consolas, PyCharm doesn't even stutter, while UltraEdit painfully redraws the entire page every time you scroll - whether by one line or one page - and when I say "painfully" I mean you literally see the sweep of the screen being redrawn.

(Edit: PyCharm does disable Windows animations if it detects RDP is in use... but disabling this even system-wide has no effect on this problem.)

I tried other bitmap fonts instead - particularly Terminal (being the poor cousin of Comic Sans) and Courier (being optically awful)... the screen redraws fast with them, but try selecting something (recall I'm using themes) and watch the rendering misaligning the visual caret that's supposed to be on firm monospaced lines. Select some text and watch the line shrink... and woe betide anyone trying to read italicized comment text in Courier. Contrast this with Consolas and a theme: proper rendering, readable rendering, but slow-as-molasses rendering remotely.

That said, as a long-time user I love UltraEdit for lots of things and so I've finally found exactly one setting that makes a huge difference (and doesn't involve sacrificing a readable font that respects its caret):

Edit the RDP session, and de-select "Experience -> Desktop Composition". Then start your remote session. The windows will now have archaic borders, but UltraEdit will draw at a more user-friendly pace if TrueType fonts like Consolas are being used.

This is a workaround... and frankly it should be entirely unnecessary. There are those that prefer things such as un-smoothed bitmap fonts, solid borders, and Windows controls from the glory days of Windows 98: please by all means use them by disabling other options as well (likewise if your connection is just plain slow).

But regardless of personal preferences, on a fast link there's zero reason for UltraEdit's screen to redraw this slowly just because the font is a TrueType one and the full suite of Windows experience options is enabled over RDP. This is buggy behavior in UltraEdit, period. I don't know if v24 will solve this (being, as I understand it, a complete rewrite) but I strongly suspect it's an artifact of the older Windows frameworks underpinning the iterations of UltraEdit for many years now.

Mofi · Dec 19, 2016#92016-12-19T17:46+00:00

MartyMacGyver, great post, very informative. Such posts are very welcome for user-to-user forum.

You have hopefully sent this report also to IDM support by email because otherwise there won't be a change in a future version of UltraEdit which would be very pity taking into account the excellent analysis of this issue.

MartyMacGyver · Dec 20, 2016#102016-12-20T01:09+00:00

I sent support an email after I posted that, referencing the post and summarizing the bug. Hopefully they do something about it.

Dec 22, 2016#112016-12-22T17:47+00:00

Update: If you are experiencing this problem, as a workaround DISABLE "View -> Spaces/Tabs" (if you have it enabled) and DISABLE "View -> Line Endings" too (if you have it enabled). See if the problem goes away.

From what I can tell, those settings don't play well with TrueType fonts over RDP currently (especially showing spaces/tabs, *particularly* if you have lots of them on the screen - I created a test file with many lines of the form "1 2 3 4 5...." and it ground almost to a halt). This seems to be the entire problem.

The bug has been updated and I'm hoping it can be easily reproduced now by IDM support.

Edit: Actually, with a small enough font (e.g., 8 points or less) and lots of spaces on the screen, I see a huge CPU spike just running this locally with spaces/tabs visible while scrolling - and while the effect is less pronounced with a bitmapped font like Courier, it's evident even then. For some reason rendering spaces/tabs is unusually costly *locally* - and when the remote client is asked to render all that in RDP using Desktop Composition, the effect is even more obvious. I've passed that info along as well.