Re: [tlug] mozilla

["Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon" <ronfaxon@example.com>]

Botond Botyanszki wrote:

>Mozilla is just too slow on my p333 laptop, clicking on a menu
>and having to wait until it actually opens is just a joke (are they trying
>to compete with openoffice or what?) 
>  
>

That is an irritant, although I've gotten somewhat used to it as the 
delay is always the same.  Now that you mention it though, I wonder how 
many minutes a day I'm losing with those two or three second delays 
every time I send an e-mail....

>While doing some javascript development with xml/xsl I noticed that indeed
>it (the gecko engine?) leaks memory heavily (IE didn't, so I guess it
>wasn't my fault).
>

What does the term "leak memory" mean?  The same as to "use" or "tie up" 
memory?  I did a quick Google search, but it just keeps coming up in 
other sentences without explaining... ah... wait a minute.... "computer 
terms" search.... Here!:


memory leak

</programming 
<http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/contents/programming.html>/> A leak 
<http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?leak> in a program's 
dynamic store 
<http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?dynamic+store> allocation 
logic that causes it to fail to reclaim memory in the heap 
<http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?heap> after it has 
finished using it, eventually causing the program to fail due to lack of 
memory.

These problems were severe on older machines with small, fixed-size 
address spaces, and special "leak detection" tools were written to 
diagnose them.

The introduction of virtual memory 
<http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?virtual+memory> made 
memory leaks a less serious problem, although if you run out of virtual 
memory <http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?virtual+memory>, it 
means you've got a *real* leak!


Ah.... so the program grabs memory, uses it, loses it, and keeps 
grabbing more... resulting in ever less available memory?  Sounds quite 
nasty... is this a common problem?  Does it do this while open or only 
in opening and closing the program?  Hopefully not while open......