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.. _performance-issue:-too-many-text-updates:

Performance Issue: Too Many Text Updates
========================================

If you are using the :ref:`textnode` or :ref:`onscreentext` (or similar)
interfaces, and you have large chunks of text changing every frame, you might
find it to be a big performance hit. Panda3D does a lot of work to assemble
the text, so you will want to minimize unnecessary calls to
``setText()`` or related functions
that force the text to be recomputed.

On the other hand, if you really want to change your text frequently, you can
try putting this in your :ref:`config.prc`
file:::
    
    text-flatten 0



this will remove the call to flattenStrong() within the text generation
process. Changing the text will be much faster, but rendering the resulting
text will be slower, since you will be dealing with
:ref:`a lot of meshes <performance-issue:-too-many-meshes>` in your scene
graph.

Panda3D 1.6.0 and later contain a performance optimization that speeds up the
text generation. If you have this version, you will also need the following
line in your Config.prc, in addition to the text-flatten line, to achieve the
same effect (though this is not recommended, for the reason stated
above):::
    
    text-dynamic-merge 0