Applying QuartzGL for a specific application
As already mentioned, the convenient thing about Quartz Debug is that it makes it easy to enable QuartzGL only for specific applications, without having to enable QGL system-wide. The basic procedure to use with a specific application (in this case Omnigraffle) is to:
1. enable QuartzGL in Quartz Debug BEFORE launching Omnigraffle.
dock icon will show that QGL is enabled:
2. launch Omnigraffle.
3. when Omnigraffle is up and running, disable Quartz GL in Quartz Debug.
4. kill (force quit) Quartz Debug (Alt-Cmd-Esc, select the app and force-quit it)
Open any of your existing works in Omnigraffle, grab and move a stack of elements around and see if you experience how much faster Omnigraffle is. Compare performance with QuartzGL disabled and than enabled and please report about your experiences.
Even after applying this trick, Omnigraffle might slow down to its “normal” mode after a while. Having only a few applications open and freeing up some RAM might help, as well as restarting Omnigraffle (again with QuartzGL enabled, disable after launch).
Having QGL enabled works well and stable with some other applications (Preview), while with others you might experience some drawing artefacts and even crashes (Photoshop, even Safari). On certain systems (particularly with older graphics cards) even kernel panics with QuartzGL aren’t uncommon, so use this feature how you find appropriate. At the moment I am using a MacBook Pro, machine model 1,1 with 2 GB RAM, Radeon X1600 w/256 Mb VRAM and Omnigraffle works blazingly fast in QGL mode without any crashes.
Hope this tip is helpful.
Oh and by the way: today is Omnigraffle’s 8th birthday! Happy BD!
