Large selections—like 20k words—showing no word, par., or char. counts (bug?)

[withoutFeathers]

Hi,
Brief description:
When I select large amounts of text, characteristically over 20,000 words, nothing shows in the Stats pallette, and the bottom of the page just says "1 Selection" instead of showing the number of words.

Details:
1. This happens in three different documents (that I've tried so far), so it's apparently not the document itself.
2. I've read in the manual and can't find anything that would explain it.
3. I've restarted Nisus. Same.
4. Suspiciously, it will vary moment to moment, how many words are required to be selected before it quits displaying the number, even in the same document.

Example:
In a document, I'll select gradually larger amounts of words, extending the selection, and it will show perfectly until I get to, let's say, 22,157 words, and then when I extend further, I get all blanks in Statistics and "1 selection" at the bottom of the page. But if I reduce the selection and move through that place again, it might let me start again at, say 18k words, and this time it will go up to 28,450 words before it gives up again. Etc. It's always different amounts of words. But it always quits eventually.

So it's not an exact limit; perhaps it has to do with Nisus' background resources. Or something.

Anyway, can anyone else reproduce this with NWP 3.2.1?

I don't know if it's my own system or a general bug in Nisus.

wF

MacOS: High Sierra

[adryan]

G'day, wF et al

No problem evident here with non-contiguous selections totalling more than 25,000 words in a Lorem ipsum document (NWP 3.2.1) containing almost 27,000 words.

Cheers,
Adrian

[withoutFeathers]

G'day, wF et al

No problem evident here with non-contiguous selections totalling more than 25,000 words in a Lorem ipsum document (NWP 3.2.1) containing almost 27,000 words.

Cheers,
Adrian

Hi Adryan.
Could I trouble you to paste your Lorem ipsum in another time into the same document, so it's double that many words? And then try again, selecting say 40K words in the larger document?

I ask because I just tried this, making a 28K document like yours, and like you I couldn't reproduce the problem. But all my tested documents were larger than this. So then I pasted that text in twice, making a new 58K test document, and now when I get up to over 35K selection in that document, it happens.

In other words, I think my original estimate of 20K was low. So you might still be able to do it by making your test document twice as big.

And after you do that, even "Select All" from the menu should reproduce the problem. I don't even have to do contiguous selection; "Select All" fails to show the Stats.

?
wF

[adryan]

G'day, wF et al

No problem evident here with partial (>73,000 words) or complete selection in a Lorem ipsum document (NWP 3.2.1) containing more than 76,000 words.

Cheers,
Adrian

[withoutFeathers]

G'day, wF et al

No problem evident here with partial (>73,000 words) or complete selection in a Lorem ipsum document (NWP 3.2.1) containing more than 76,000 words.

Cheers,
Adrian

Thank you very much.
So either it's a High Sierra thing (w/Nisus), or I've got some sort of special corruption.

Anyway, I discovered the obvious workaround, which is quick: paste my selection into a new untitled document, and look at the Stats for that whole document (since the probem only happens in selections).

wF

[adryan]

G’day, wF et al

Simply relaunching a problematic application may not be enough. It might be worthwhile reinstalling it.

Cheers,
Adrian

[withoutFeathers]

G’day, wF et al

Simply relaunching a problematic application may not be enough. It might be worthwhile reinstalling it.

Cheers,
Adrian

Aha. Good idea.
Do you know if I can merely download another one, move the old one into a backup folder, put the new one where it was, and open it? And have all my preferences and windows and so forth remembered? Or will there be other steps necessary?

wF

[adryan]

G'day, wF et al

Short answer: I'm not 100% sure.

Longer answer: If you already have Nisus Writer Pro on your computer, things like Preferences, Styles and such generally remain intact when you install updates or upgrades of the application. So I don't anticipate there would be a problem.

I think Nisus stores most personalized stuff in the Nisus Documents folder (probably in your computer's main Documents folder) and in a Preferences folder located at:–

Users > (username) > Library > Containers > com.nisus.NisusWriter > Data > Library > Preferences

You could consider saving copies of these folders somewhere in case they got overwritten and needed to be replaced. Actually, it could be a good idea to save the whole com.nisus.NisusWriter folder. If it were me, I think I would do this and reinstall. If the problem persisted, I would remove these folders entirely (not just copy them) to somewhere safe and reinstall the application once more. If this solved the problem, I would then restore as much as I could from the saved folders. But other people might have other ideas.

The information in these NWP FAQs could be helpful:–

<http://nisus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=6547>
<http://nisus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=6216>
<https://nisus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=37913#p37913>

Cheers,
Adrian

[withoutFeathers]

G'day, wF et al

Short answer: I'm not 100% sure.

Longer answer:...

Thank you, that's all very helpful. I'll use it when I replace.

Since I have a good workaround, I may instead wait until the next update is released before replacing the app. It might not be a corruption, just a quirk in my OS/Nisus combination. But if I run into any other troubling oddities I'll do it right away.

Thanks again.

wF

[martin]

When I select large amounts of text, characteristically over 20,000 words, nothing shows in the Stats pallette, and the bottom of the page just says "1 Selection" instead of showing the number of words

This occurs when Nisus Writer takes too long to count the number of words in the selection. We don't want to spend too much processing time updating the display every time the selection changes. A failure to know the current word count is usually due to recent editing, if Nisus Writer doesn't have the word count immediately available (the counts are cached as they are calculated).

You should be able to force an update by clicking the stats area (eg: the label that says "1 selection"). That action tells Nisus Writer that you want to recalculate the current stats, even if it takes longer to process.

[Hamid]

It seems the number of countable words in a selection is a proportion of the total number of words in a file.
In a file of 3,083,437 words I was able to have a selection with 1,694,545 words counted. Then in a much smaller file with 507,375 words I was able to have a selection with just over 100,004 words.

[withoutFeathers]

You should be able to force an update by clicking the stats area (eg: the label that says "1 selection"). That action tells Nisus Writer that you want to recalculate the current stats, even if it takes longer to process.

Got it! Works!
Thanks Martin.

My only regret, on behalf of myself and adryan, is that you weren't here yesterday. But we must put that down to limited processing time too I'll guess.

wF

[martin]

Got it! Works!
Thanks Martin.

Great! I'm glad to hear it An extra click is much easier than copy-pasting every time.

My only regret, on behalf of myself and adryan, is that you weren't here yesterday. But we must put that down to limited processing time too I'll guess.

Haha, yes indeed! I'm sorry for the frustration as you attempted to sort this out. Unfortunately humans are not like a multi-core CPU that can truly do several different tasks simultaneously. We're more like a single-core CPU that simulates multitasking by interleaving different tasks

[martin]

It seems the number of countable words in a selection is a proportion of the total number of words in a file.
In a file of 3,083,437 words I was able to have a selection with 1,694,545 words counted.

The word limit will depend on a lot of factors, including the speed of your Mac, if your document has a complex structure (eg: tables), and how long the document has been sitting idle. Nisus Writer counts words in the background when there's free time.