Quirky behavior in 3.0

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Simeon
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Quirky behavior in 3.0

Post by Simeon »

Hello friends,

We have upgraded to 3.0 and things look great, but...

There are a few issues which you should be aware of. I have a book document with 68,000 words, and when working on the file it goes through some process (auto-save, perhaps?) which causes it to slow down and sometimes stop. At the footer of the window, it starts to go through and scan every page (page 34 of 1, page 34 of 2, page 34 of 3, etc. of about 300 pages) at a quick pace, but slow enough to hinder working on the file.

What is the cause of this, and how can we keep things from slowing or stopping?

The second thing is that the upper pallette on the right flickers as any work is being done on the document. This is not a hinderance, but perhaps an indication of something off in the file or the program.

Please let me know how to address this slow-down issue.

BTW, we have not yet upgraded to Mojave. We will do it soon after we test it out on another Mac in our office.

Thanks,
Brother Simeon
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waltzmn
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Re: Quirky behavior in 3.0

Post by waltzmn »

Simeon wrote:
I have a book document with 68,000 words, and when working on the file it goes through some process (auto-save, perhaps?) which causes it to slow down and sometimes stop. At the footer of the window, it starts to go through and scan every page (page 34 of 1, page 34 of 2, page 34 of 3, etc. of about 300 pages) at a quick pace, but slow enough to hinder working on the file.
I've also been working with a long document (even longer than yours), and mine also takes a long time to fully load.

If your document was like mine, though, the document used to take a very long time to open. Now, the first page appears quickly, and the automatic repagination that used to take place before the document opened now takes place in background after the first page has appeared.

My informal observation is that, yes, it now takes longer to fully repaginate than it did before, but not a lot longer -- and you get access to the first part of the document sooner. It might be worth comparing opening times to see if it really takes much longer to get to the end of the document.
Simeon
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Re: Quirky behavior in 3.0

Post by Simeon »

Thank you, Waltmn, but the problem is not in the loading, but in the editing. Any editing causes this behavior. This can be frustrating, causing unusual delays when writing.
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martin
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Re: Quirky behavior in 3.0

Post by martin »

waltzmn wrote: 2018-10-30 06:57:38If your document was like mine, though, the document used to take a very long time to open. Now, the first page appears quickly, and the automatic repagination that used to take place before the document opened now takes place in background after the first page has appeared.
This is exactly right. Version 2 would force layout/pagination for the entire document when it was opened; version 3 now limits this to only what's required to restore the user's last scroll/editing location. This improves how quickly a user can get back to working.

If you want to force layout/pagination for the entire document here's a handy keyboard shortcut: Command + Down Arrow. That will move the insertion point (caret) to the very end of the text, forcing layout immediately.
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Re: Quirky behavior in 3.0

Post by martin »

Getting to Simeon's problems:
Simeon wrote: 2018-10-29 14:26:45I have a book document with 68,000 words, and when working on the file it goes through some process (auto-save, perhaps?) which causes it to slow down and sometimes stop. At the footer of the window, it starts to go through and scan every page (page 34 of 1, page 34 of 2, page 34 of 3, etc. of about 300 pages) at a quick pace, but slow enough to hinder working on the file.

What is the cause of this, and how can we keep things from slowing or stopping?
This could simply be background layout for your document. If you start editing on page 100, then Nisus Writer must verify and redo layout for pages 100 through 300. This is expected, since any edits you make could affect the layout of subsequent pages. I have two recommendations:

1. Can you work in Draft View? It's often faster than Page View as pagination can be intensive.
2. If you feel the responsiveness of Nisus Writer is poor, please consider sharing your document with us privately via the menu Help > Send Feedback so we can investigate.
The second thing is that the upper pallette on the right flickers as any work is being done on the document. This is not a hinderance, but perhaps an indication of something off in the file or the program.
This sounds like some kind of bug or misbehavior.

Do you always see this kind of unwanted flickering, or just in certain documents or when working with particular text? Also, which palette or palettes specifically do the flickering, or is it the whole palette dock? Thanks for any help you can give us in trying to narrow this problem down so we can see it firsthand.
Simeon
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Re: Quirky behavior in 3.0

Post by Simeon »

Hello Martin, thanks for your helpful reply.

I have sent you via "send feedback" a sample large document so you can examine the behavior. Of course, this time when we experimented with the document, the pallete did not flicker. But this is an intermitent issue. As noted in the feedback we sent, it was the top pallete alone in the sidebar that was the issue

Working in Draft view is a good idea which Abbot George will try.

We will also do a full shutdown on the Mac, as sometimes if the computer is left on for several days strange behavior can happen.

Thanks as always for your great support.
Brother Simeon
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martin
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Re: Quirky behavior in 3.0

Post by martin »

Thank you very much for the feedback report and document Brother Simeon! We'll take a look and experiment to see what we can learn.
waltzmn
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Re: Quirky behavior in 3.0

Post by waltzmn »

Martin, asking about flickering palettes, wrote:
Do you always see this kind of unwanted flickering, or just in certain documents or when working with particular text? Also, which palette or palettes specifically do the flickering, or is it the whole palette dock? Thanks for any help you can give us in trying to narrow this problem down so we can see it firsthand.
I doubt this is the same issue, but I'll mention it here. I have one document where the whole DOCUMENT flickers -- text moves up and down by a point or two. As someone with a sensory sensitivity, this is actively nauseating.

To be fair, it's an immense document -- a 20 MB HTML file with something like 12,000 links that I am trying to convert to PDF with the links intact. I don't really expect NWP to be able to do the job; no other program available to me can manage it. :-( I just thought I would try it in NWP 3.0.

I want to emphasize: I would NOT class this as a bug (in this case, I'm the bug, since I'm asking for the near-impossible), and I am NOT asking for a fix. But I offer this for whatever use it may be. No need to respond.
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Re: Quirky behavior in 3.0

Post by martin »

waltzmn wrote: 2018-10-31 11:12:35I doubt this is the same issue, but I'll mention it here. I have one document where the whole DOCUMENT flickers -- text moves up and down by a point or two. As someone with a sensory sensitivity, this is actively nauseating.
I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds like maybe there's a line positioning inconsistency that jitters text up and down. Does this happen while you're typing?

We'd be happy to take a look and see what we can do to prevent this problem, no matter how complex the document. Would you be able to email us your document? You might save it using the Nisus Compressed Rich Text (ZRTF) file format. That should reduce its size down from 20MB.
waltzmn
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Re: Quirky behavior in 3.0

Post by waltzmn »

Martin wrote:
waltzmn wrote: ↑2018-10-31 14:12:35
I doubt this is the same issue, but I'll mention it here. I have one document where the whole DOCUMENT flickers -- text moves up and down by a point or two. As someone with a sensory sensitivity, this is actively nauseating.
I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds like maybe there's a line positioning inconsistency that jitters text up and down. Does this happen while you're typing?

We'd be happy to take a look and see what we can do to prevent this problem, no matter how complex the document. Would you be able to email us your document? You might save it using the Nisus Compressed Rich Text (ZRTF) file format. That should reduce its size down from 20MB.
I should have kept your e-mail address around. I keep hoping that I'll be done bothering you. :-) Since I didn't keep it, I'll have to reply here.

First, I want to stress that this isn't a complaint. I don't expect NWP 3.0 to deal with this file -- nothing else will. (So far, I've mostly liked NWP 3.0, despite all my posts here, although I've yet to really delve into the new features.) I just wanted you to know that I did see some flickering -- but only in dealing with this huge file. My next-biggest file (about 10 MB) has not shown this behavior, although it does have an odd tendency, when editing in a table cell that fills a whole page, to abruptly move the cursor somewhere else.

But, anyway, to explain what is happening. Please note that I do not ask you to do anything about this. In fact, I'd suggest you stop reading now. Truly. This isn't your problem, unless you want to see the flickering.

I have a very large HTML file (turns out it's 30.5 MB) that I have reason to wish to convert to PDF with the links intact. The HTML is quite clean -- it's all HTML 2.0, really; I wrote the code to create it myself (in FileMaker, but not using FileMaker's HTML commands; it's all automatic and, because it's automatic, pretty reliable :-)).

I import this HTML file into NWP. This takes almost an hour on my machine. There are two quirks about this. First, all the links break. This means that NWP cannot process the file for me anyway, so the whole exercise is academic. I mentioned it only because of the flickering -- which I don't care about, really, because I can't use the file. :-) Second, EVERY SINGLE BULLET LIST in the document gets its own individual style -- it has Bullet List 1, Bullet List 2, Bullet List 3, etc. (Meaning that I can't change the format for any single bullet list and have all the others conform. Any such attempt affects only the one Bullet List. This is an actual bug in the HTML importer, I would say.)

Once the document has opened and is displaying, the flickering starts. It has nothing to do with me typing; I don't type in this document. My only goal is to get the formatting right and save it as a PDF.

The RTF document is about 30 MB, like the HTML. As best I can tell looking at the top of the document, the import went well.

Observations: The document is many thousands of pages long (as a wild guess, 10,000 pages. That's only a guess). It has never yet finished repaginating. (I don't blame it. :-)) It just sits there and flickers. I'm not sure if it would be possible to save it as a PDF, because I haven't had time to let it repaginate fully. :-)

I can send you the HTML file, or the RTF file, or both, but they're both huge, and they both take a very long time to open. My genuine advice is that you ignore this. I will not send any files unless you really want to see it. And I think it's more important that you work on the other issues people have raised.

Apologies for going on too long. I'm obsessive. :-) So I'll advise you to drop the matter, because I don't drop matters once I get started. :-)
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Re: Quirky behavior in 3.0

Post by martin »

waltzmn wrote: 2018-10-31 14:36:53Please note that I do not ask you to do anything about this. In fact, I'd suggest you stop reading now. Truly. This isn't your problem, unless you want to see the flickering.
You know, after reading about this crazy 10,000 page document of imported HTML, I think I will just go ahead and agree with you :drunk: It really does sound like a pretty insane document that we maybe shouldn't spend time focusing on troubleshooting.

If you ever decide you do want help with a document (more reasonably sized or not) please let us know and we'll be happy to investigate!
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