Proposed enhancement: Make item count in groups panel an optional feature that can be turned off

[AEgit]

The current JabRef 5 dev version has huge performance problems with large databases, e.g.:
#5071
#5735

The same database (ca. 20,000 items; several thousands of static groups) opened with JabRef 3.8.2 does not display these performance issues.

I wonder whether some of these performance issues could be solved by a simple workaround: Make it possible to switch off the calculation of the number of items in the groups panel. In version 3.8.2 this was possible and was also suggested to do, when having performance problems. Indeed, I switched it off for my database, since otherwise it would not be possible to work with the database due to performance problems.

However, you shouldn't get rid of the background box surrounding the group item account. This box changes colour according to whether an item selected in the main table is part of a group or not, so this information should be available. In the old JabRef version this was achieved by having the name of a group underlined, which contained a selected item.

I think this rather simple (?) change could alleviate some of the performance problems reported previously. In fact, it already did with the old version 3.8.2, so you would expect to see a similar performance increase in the current dev version.

[Gena928]

Hi Tobiasdiez,

If possible, I would like to work in this issue. Can you assign it to me?

Gennadiy

[AEgit]

JabRef 5.1--2020-06-02--46fd96b
Windows 10 10.0 amd64
Java 14.0.1

I can confirm, that this has been implemented in the current dev version. I am glad to see, that by not displaying the groups item count, the CPU performance required when starting JabRef is much lower, than when the item count is shown. So this has definitely improved performance. Well done!

Note, however, that changing the groups preference "Display count of items in group" to enable the item count will not take immediate effect. An item count is shown, but it is zero for all groups. Only if you restart JabRef, the item count of each group will be updated accordingly.
Similarly, if you disable the item count again, the groups item count will be shown until you restart JabRef.
I am not really bothered by this, but I wanted to let you know about it.

[calixtus]

Thank you very much for testing the current dev build. Glad to see that you like the improvement.
Thanks also for the issue report. It is a well known problem, that some preferences only take effect after restarting JabRef. We are already working on it, but as this is a deeper architectural issue, it will take some time to fix.

[AEgit]

Cheers! Yes, I am not really bothered by this - just restarting JabRef is not much of a hassle to me. But I am really happy to see, that the performance of JabRef (at least when starting JabRef - I have to figure out, whether this also makes any difference when assigning a large number of items to a group) could be improved by this approach. Thanks again for you hard work!