Vista issues?

[Bruce Sherwood <Bruce_Sherwood ncsu edu>]

This may not be a gtkmm issue; maybe it's a gtk issue, or ....?

The beta version of VPython application (Python plus a 3D visualization 
module; see vpython.org) is a gtkmm project currently running on Windows 
and Linux. There is a drawing area devoted to OpenGL displays. All works 
quite well on Windows XP and Ubuntu, for example. But there's something 
VERY strange on Windows Vista, and I'm hoping someone on this list will 
recognize where the problem might lie.

Upon the first attempt to display text through OpenGL, there is a 30 
second delay while the cpu runs flat out, after which all other aspects 
of the scene, including additional text items, display fast. And the 
scene stays fast and responsive, so the rendering per se of text isn't 
time-consuming, it's the setup to render the first piece of text that is 
somehow fabulously expensive.

In some programs, the Python computation thread manages to proceed (and 
may complete long before the rest of the scene appears), but I've seen 
at least one case in which Python computation was also blocked during 
that time.

Bruce Sherwood