[Bug-gnu-emacs] Frantic window manager

[John Abbott]

This bug report will be sent to the Free Software Foundation,
 not to your local site managers!!
Please write in English, because the Emacs maintainers do not have
translators to read other languages for them.

In GNU Emacs 20.5.1 (i386-redhat-linux-gnu, X toolkit)
 of Fri Feb  4 2000 on porky.devel.redhat.com
configured using `configure  --prefix=/usr --libexecdir=/usr/lib
--sharedstatedir=/var --with-gcc --with-pop --with-x-toolkit
i386-redhat-linux-gnu'

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

OPERATING SYSTEM:
$ uname -a
Linux indet.mast.queensu.ca 2.2.15-2.5.0 #1 Sat Feb 5 00:28:02 EST 2000
i686 unknown

VERBAL DESCRIPTION:
According to the "top" program when executing the commands below
graphical emacs causes my window manager (twm) and X server to consume
large amounts of CPU while the repeated "C-x e" macro is running.
The problem does not occur using "emacs -nw" inside an xterm.

TO REPRODUCE PROBLEM:
Create a file as follows (Unix/Linux shell commands):
yes "aaaaaa: bbbbbb" | head -100000 > file

In (graphical) emacs visit this file (I used C-x C-f) and
define a keyboard macro as follows
C-x (
M-z :
C-n
C-x )

In another window start "top" running.
Now execute the macro 99999 times:
M-99999 C-x e

Observe that "top" reports that emacs, the window manager and the X
server are all using a lot of CPU.  The same operations under a
non-graphical emacs (started with "emacs -nw" in an xterm) result
in only emacs using CPU, and moreover the total CPU time needed to
complete the 99999 applications of the macro is considerably less
than with a graphical emacs.

John Abbott