file sharing painfully slow

[John C. Welch]

On 3/22/07 06:43, "Chris Murphy" <lists at colorremedies.com> wrote:

>>> Since the generic icon is determined by the system hosting the files,
>>> my Finder is asking that system for each files, and the remote system
>>> is sending a 128px * 128px * 4 channels, that's 64KB of data per
>>> image redundantly being downloaded. That is high order sabotage to do
>>> this. What a bad bad idea. And that's consistent with the bandwidth
>>> available and the amount of time it's taking for the list view to
>>> load in and for the Finder to recover.
>> 
>> and you have seen the data on this from your server?
> 
> yes
> 
>> 
>> There's two ways to get icon data. You can download it, or you can
>> create it
>> yourself based on file metadata.
> 
> OK how do I compel either the server or client to not download icons
> and just create it based on file metadata?

Point blank, you probably can't. The problem is, you have to get the icon
data somehow, and that's not a process you can change. Even if it's not
downloading the icons, then your machine would have to query the server to
see what kind of file it was, get the answer then build the icon if
available.

If the icon wasn't available, then you either don't have one, or, it asks
the server for one.

That's not a much better system, as while less data intensive, it's still
hardly lightweight.

However, calling the current system "high-order sabotage" is engaging in
just a *bit* of hyperbole.

The issue here seems to be that list view is kinda stupid compared to column
view. In column view, you get the icons you can see in the finder window
first, then the others at a much reduced rate, unless you scroll up or down.
So the delays are far less.

>From what you're saying, list view seems to attempt to download everything
at once, which would account for the delay in folders with large amounts of
files, something I don't see, but then again, I never use list view.

In short, file a bug with Apple. List view's behavior in this case is
incorrect. As far as what to do *now*? Column view.

-- 
John C. Welch         Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com              Mac and other opinions
jwelch at bynkii.com