iraf.net

I just upgraded my MacBookPro to Yosemite. I was using Snow Leopard and when I loaded 2048x4100 pixel images into Ximtool from IRAF using the Display routine they would load quickly in seconds in Snow Leopard. Now, to load one image takes about a minute and the Tvmark routine draws circles very very slowly. If I use DS9 everything works fine so it seems to be a problem with Ximtool. I really prefer and need Ximtool because I need to be able to move around the image easily using shortcut keys, which DS9 doesn't allow (in Ximtool I use the Control-Arrow combination to quickly move around the image). Does anyone have Ximtool loading images normally with Yosemite or is the slow load a problem for all? My friend seems to have the same problem as me with Yosemite.

Thanks for any help
Aldelphi

I can confirm that on Yosemite the display to a 4K x 4K frame buffer is slower than on my MB Air running Mavericks (some 12-13 seconds vs 3-4) with both systems running the same version of IRAF an XImtool binary. There are reports since Yosemite first appeared (with the latest XQuartz 2.7.7) of slowdowns in various applications but no known solutions that I could find. This seems to be related to the way the display protocol works in updating small chunks of the frame buffer at a time, loading the image using the ximtool File menu rather than IRAF's DISPLAY command is almost instantaneous. Likewise, using a smaller frame buffer also speeds things up.

Unfortunately, development of XImtool is essentially frozen at this point. A new version of XQuartz that might address this is overdue but promised shortly. I did try changing to use an 8-bit server and various config options with no effect, and I did go so far as to install the latest XQuartz beta to see if that helped but didn't see any change.