Text gets invisible

[Biff]

Hello Jim,

Many thanks for testing. And great you found the cause.

I played around with it a bit, and apparently you've encountered some limitations in Scriv 1.9 Scrivenings mode.

Limitations...well...

It seems that when word counts in individual documents get into the 8k-9k range, 1.9 Scrivenings simply can't handle it, and the result is that these display issues present themselves.

Yes, I had experienced the same here, though with about 15.000, 20.000 words, do not remember anymore exactly. But I couldn't imagine the issue really might be caused by the amount of words, it would have been too ridiculous, senseless. Very strange limitation, the amount of words / characters for a writing program lmited...hard to believe...sounds ridiculous, I would think.

As a workaround, I would suggest you either avoid Scrivenings mode in 1.9, or make your documents smaller.

Avoiding scrivenings mode? Such an important option? That is not so easy, I guess. And adapting the (structure of) the text / content to the limitations of an obviously poor / poorly pgramed program? So use more documents (not being needed / being superfluous)...I am not sure. What would be the best way doing that?

FYI, I could not reproduce this in the v3 Beta Scrivenings mode, which could easily handle documents of 60k+ words, so you won't have this problem when v3 is released.

That sounds really good...may be there is another restriction then...a limitation of using the small "e"...at the end of a word...and the beginning...or such...or too long sentences...or...Adjectives...or spaces...or characters generally...

Thank you very much for your great help, again!

[lunk]

It seems that when word counts in individual documents get into the 8k-9k range, 1.9 Scrivenings simply can't handle it, and the result is that these display issues present themselves.

Yes, I had experienced the same here, though with about 15.000, 20.000 words

As a workaround, I would suggest you either avoid Scrivenings mode in 1.9, or make your documents smaller.

Avoiding scrivenings mode? Such an important option? That is not so easy

If you have several individual Binder documents with 8-9 k words, or even 15-20 k words (!), why would you need scrivenings mode? Scrivenings mode is meant to stitch together a large number of small documents so they look like one continuous document in the Editor. If your text is already a long continuous document, you don't really need scrivenings mode.

[Biff]

If you have several individual Binder documents with 8-9 k words, or even 15-20 k words (!), why would you need scrivenings mode?

Sounds like an extremely astonishing question. I would say, for most of the other items (not having "8-9 k words, or even 15-20 k words (!)"). And even if there are items having a bigger (than whatever) amount of words I wanted to use them with, see them in the scrivener mode (and not one by one).

If your text is already a long continuous document, you don't really need scrivenings mode.

Sorry, only because there might be somme bigger documents I actually absolutely would not think I would not need scrivenings mode.

[Kinsey]

If you have several individual Binder documents with 8-9 k words, or even 15-20 k words (!), why would you need scrivenings mode? Scrivenings mode is meant to stitch together a large number of small documents so they look like one continuous document in the Editor. If your text is already a long continuous document, you don't really need scrivenings mode.

People work in different ways, just because it's different to yours doesn't make it invalid. The good news for Biff is that the impending release of V3 will solve this issue.

[lunk]

People work in different ways, but if the text is one long continuous text, there is no need for a technique that stitch together several short documents to emulate them as being one continuous, is there? And if scrivenings mode cause problems, not using it in a situation where it isn't necessary seems to be a simple solution.
... or splitting the text into shorter chunks to help scrivenings mode handle them.
L&L aren't likely to do any major changes to Win Scriv 1.9 so avoiding problematic situations is a simple solution for those that don't want to use the Win beta.

[krastev]

There is definitely no such problem with Scrivenings mode. I tested it extensively, on Scrivener 1.9.12, and never encountered the problem you have. (It would be nice if you share the example project with everyone so we can test it instead.)

What version of Scrivener are you using? Windows version?

Here is one example of my tests: 500 000 words in 5 documents.

Clipboard Image.png (142.29 KiB) Viewed 234 times

As you can see everything looks fine.

[Biff]

Yes, indeed, it looks fine, thank you for trying, sorry, it actually is not the Scrivening mode not working (as far as I know at least) but a folder / document that contains (I guess) at least one item. And that in connection with a setting as it just turned out (I turned off now, so the text got visible again): viewtopic.php?p=310654&sid=8f24c6350244bc2fe0d97c4881921810#p310654

Attached the test project.

I have this Win:


And this Scrivener: Version: 1.9.14.0

[krastev]

I've done some additional testing (in Scrivener 1.9.16), and it looks like the OP is correct, and there IS a bug. As @JimRac reported, it manifests when you activate scrivenings mode on documents containing more than 9000 words. The text does not disappear, but its size changes to less than a pixel.

Now, as I've shown in my previous post in this thread, the problem does not appear in Scrivener 1.9.12, so I guess it must have been introduced in some of the later versions.

It will be nice if we could get a fix for it.

Regards,
M

[JimRac]

Hey there Krastev,

I was wondering if this was a version thing, so thanks for sharing your results!

I ran these tests on 1.9.16. Below are the steps I followed.

First have a look at the attached project Example.

Click on 36k folder and put it in Scrivenings mode. For doc 36k, after 11k words, display of text is cut off. Display of text resumes for doc 36k-1, then is cut off after 11k words. Same result for doc 36k-2.

Click on 54k folder, results are inconsistent. Sometimes results are same as 36k folder, but sometimes 18k doc is fully displayed and text is completely blank in 18k-1 and 18k-2 docs.

Click on 27k folder, no issues


The above tests were done with split editors (Scrivenings on left, single doc on right). If I repeat with single editor containing only Scrivenings, then 22k words (twice as many!) is displayed before text is cut off.


If second Project Example 2 is open concurrently with Example, Scrivener's memory usage shoots to over 1 GB. All docs in Example 2 appear blank in Scrivenings mode.

If I close project Example, and run Example 2 project by itself, then 22k words (using single editor) seems to be when text is cut off.


This may be a difference between the versions. Early last year I was working with 1.9.Idon'tremember on a novel with some very large documents, and I don't remember ever seeing Scrivenings choke like this. That said, I'm not really a fan or daily user of Scrivenings, so it's quite possible I just never noticed it.

It could also be due to environmental differences, i.e., maybe my notebook with 8 GB isn't sufficient to handle large Scrivenings, but your PC is?

All that said, I would have thought, if this were a common issue, we would have seen many more people complain.

Anyway, I am very happily plugging along on the beta, and as I said, I don't use Scrivenings very much, so not an issue for me. Just thought I'd share my findings.

ETA: Ah, I see this post is somewhat obsolete! I took too long to type it up! This is in reply to Krastev's earlier post, where the issue wasn't being found in 1.9.12. Sorry for confusing things...

Best,
Jim