An object, in its dormant state, consists of a block of data written in a persistent form, for example, a series of appnames in the INI file, or a file's extended attributes. Conversely, when an object is awake, it is instantiated in memory. To reduce the number of objects that exist in memory, when objects are no longer visually exposed, they are added to a list of sleeping objects. The Sleepy time thread maintains this list of objects that may need to be made dormant, and progressively ages them until they are either removed from the sleepy object list, or until they need to be made dormant. Incidentally, when an object is locked it cannot be made dormant. This prevents objects that may not be visibly exposed to remain in memory on demand. The Sleepy time thread sends a notification to the Object thread, which will cause the object to be made dormant, when it has been on the sleepy object list for the OBJECTSNOOZETIME period specified in the CONFIG.SYS file.


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