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Rank171
Idea#473
Toggle Parser/Formatter/Intellisense Button for Editor
Give us a big fat button we can click to switch the editor over to a 'dumb' notepad-like interface. As I type, Toad is doing nothing in the background auto-magically.
Instead of having to go back and forth to options over and over as i work on larger snippets of code or on larger databases, let me just turn it off in one fell swoop!
This would disable everything in the Editor. I don't think that everyone really knows what the parser results are for or why we parse as you type, but they are used for almost everything. No parser results would disable (to name a few) most of the code assistance features, all of the debugger functionality, the navigator, all execution actions, most of the refactoring items, reload object from DB, send to Query Builder, optimization, Action Console, etc. The feature would then need to be toggled back on just to enable the various buttons and shortcuts. In other words, the execute button could not be enabled and force the parse when needed. Architecturally that would be a coding disaster to make it work in such a manner.
In what ways are you slowed down when editing large PL/SQL? If there's anything in particular then we should address those areas first. The parser runs in background thread and cancels when you start typing. It should have no effect on performance whatsoever. The only negative effects are when people start looking at task manager and get itchy when they see 1 process using a lot of CPU without understanding the mechanics behind it. It's like having this big house and you only want furniture in 1 room and the other rooms should remain free and available for some reason.
The only features that really slow down the editing of large text are...
1. Code Insight/Param Completion (if you type the activation char and the popups are invoked)
2. Syntax highlighting. This is probably the single largest cause of poor editor performance with lots of text in the Editor. You can quickly toggle this off via rt-click|Language/Syntax Highlighting and set it to Plain Text. It is possible to tweak the PL/SQL language parser for better performance, but to appeal to the masses we have it very bloated now to support as much as we can. Language features that are unimportant to you should be disabled from the Language Management screen to improve performance.
Toad 11.1 has changes made that make the Text tab style exactly what you are asking for. I suggest working with code in that tab if you are looking for maximum Editor performance, but note that you are losing everything mentioned above including syntax highlighting.
I'll add that this request follows a Yahoo post asking about CPU usage in the Editor before we got to the end of it. In that thread, Andre alluded to something that should be mentioned here. Toad uses as much CPU as the OS allows it to have. If the OS requires the CPU for something else, Toad is throttled back. If the CPU is not needed for anything else, Toad consumes as much as it needs to perform its tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible. The background threads are running at the lowest priority so parsing should have no impact on editing unless the OS cannot manage threads properly.
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