Does doing this make your Scrivener lag?[ADDRESSED]

Thanks everyone. I’m still concerned about this issue. I’m finding it hard to duplicate - even on my old XP machine with 1GB RAM. Sure the dictionary partial fix should have helped a little?

Thank you for all you detailed testing.

Lee

Further to the above, it might be worth noting that when I’m doing the test, I’ve got other things running as well. A USB mobile internet dongle; Skype in the taskbar, Firefox with two tabs open etc. CPU usage is hovering around the 10% mark as is. Could all these other processes be contributing to the slow down? I’m guessing so but I’m no expert on these things.

You’re doing a grand job there Lee at any rate!! :smiley:

I’m afraid not, sorry.

Possibly, but more to the overall responsiveness of the program. I don’t think it will be too significant, since the program is quite ok from a fresh open.

Small thing I noticed during my tests yesterday that might help is that when I was experiencing lag when typing in the documents, I still experienced no lag at all when typing descriptions for scenes.

I will be working at my desktop computer today and will see if I can replicate the problems there or if it is only occurring on the netbook. Also I will be trying to get an hour or two of actual writing in and will use the scrivener beta on whichever platform gives me the most trouble to see if the problem will arise under normal day to day use.

Succeeded in replicating problem on Desktop. (Running on Windows Vista Home Premium edition, Service Pack 2, Intel Core i7 at 2,67 Ghz and 6 gigabytes of memory).

Having read other thread about lag and CPU usage I kept an eye on the CPU usage and noted those numbers. For what they are worth here are the notes I made during these tests:

[*]Testing testing testing to see if there is any slowdown at all…
No lag. Usage 1% CPU

[*]Testing again after adding description via Inspector. No lag. Usage 1% CPU

[*]Testing again after using the corkboard to add description no lag. Usage 1% CPU

[*]Trying again after adding several documents, but before changing anything else. CPU 1%

[*]Trying again after adding description via notecard. Somehow there was a big spike in CPU but I have no idea why it showed up. No lag. CPU 1-2% 1,96 memory.

[*]Changed label of the second scene to concept while changed to corkboard mode. No lag. CPU 1%

[*]Changed status of second scene to revised draft. CPU rises to 3-4 % while just hitting keys quickly at random and to 5% while holding backspace to get rid of the text.

[*]Changed title of second scene using the notecards in the corkboard mode. CPU usage while “mashing” 5% same while holding backspace to erase.

[*]Added title to all but one of the scenes. CPU usage rises to two percent while typing normally. CPU usage 6% while mashing. 7% while holding backspace pressed.

[*]Added labels to all the documents in the draft. CPU usage 2-3% while typing normally. CPU usage 7-9% while mashing keys. Topping out at 9 percent while holding down backspace.

[*]No changes but have gone to the draft corkboard view a few times. CPu rises 3-4% while typing at my normal speed. CPU usage 6-9% while mashing keys, 8-10% while holding down the backspace key.

[*]Gone back and forth between Draft and the second scene document an additional number of times. CPU 3-4% while typing at normal speeds. CPU usage 13% while mashing keys and the same while holding down the backspace key.

[*]Changed view of draft to text view and clicked back and forth between this and the second scene about ten times. CPU usage tops at 5% while typing at my normal top speed. CPU usage 13-14% while mashing keys and 13% while holding down the backspace key.

[*]Changed the draft document view back to corkboard view and went back andf forth between that and the second scene about ten or so times. CPU usage tops at 7% while typing at normal speed. CPU usage 14% while mashing keys for extended period. IMMENSE lag before text shows up and only two lines of characters show up. CPU usage of 14% is constant (except for a brief spike of 21%) between the time I stop pressing keys and the time the text shows up. CPU usage 14% while keeping backspace pressed to delete the “mashed” text.

After this test I closed the project and opened a new blank project. Without changing anything else I just clicked back and forth between draft and the untitled scene under draft in the binder a number of times. CPU usage when just pressing keys quickly 7-8% about same when erasing the text again by holding down backspace.
Then, without any changes I clicked back and forth between draft and the untitled scene several times again (10 to 20 clicks?) and CPU usage rises to 12-13% when “mashing” keys and 11-12% when keeping backspace pressed.

Hope this helps!

I attach a file called ‘LotsOfWords.zip’ which contains an RTF file that I’ve been experimenting with in the Windows Beta. It contains 144,414 ‘words’ according to the counter, although the content is just a repeated numbered list of the voice names in one of my synthesizers so it’s not ‘proper English’.

If you transfer this file into Scrivener by any means (I used cut and paste) and navigate to the middle somewhere, then type really fast you may see the same lag I’m experiencing.

Rather than type ‘properly’ just mash lots of keys:
sdfksdjf lks fklsjhf skjfhs kdfhs fkjshdf ksdjfh skdfhs klfjshd fkls :slight_smile:

I turned off ‘Check spelling as you type’ but it didn’t seem to make much, if any difference. Actually, I turned it off while in the middle of the file, and Scrivener crashed completely as soon as I unchecked the box. I waited 10 minutes to be sure, then task-manager’d Scriv to death and re-ran it. It loaded the project back ok, albeit with a few seconds delay. The spell check was disabled on re-run so it must have crashed after that setting was saved.

I also get about 3 seconds delay when I select the file in the binder.

The test machine is 2.2Ghz Xeon, 1Gb RAM, plenty of free disk space.

I’m sure you guys are doing similar tests, but this is the data I was getting the bad lag with so maybe, just maybe, it’ll help :slight_smile:

Eddy
Screen shot 2010-10-28 at 13.13.33.png
LotsOfWords.zip (202 KB)

I think there are two things at work here, but are probably intertwined.

We know for a fact that working with extremely large .rtf files within Scrivener (40k+ words?) will cause immense lag when trying to type within the program for that particular .rtf file.

What we want to try is to isolate what could lead to greater lag or performance slowdown independent of large .rtf files.

Mirrorscape’s testing has, perhaps, suggests that the problem may have to do with some underlying problem within Scrivener itself for Windows, but it is hard to determine the root cause. The best guess we have right now is going through the procedures that causes observations of lag spikes until we try to narrow down on the likely possibilities. It perhaps has to do with how Scrivener handles files within the program, or how Scrivener tracks them.

Updated my 2008 C++ Redistributable and .NET Framework to .NET Framework 4.

The lag seems to have decreased, but repeating the same steps in the first post will eventually result in lag again.

Other observations:

  1. There is little/no lag when I edit the synopsis in the Corkboard view despite being extreme lag in the editor mode.

  2. There is little/no lag in Outliner Mode, but it is there in Editor Mode.

As promised I have been using Scrivener for my writing today. I used a new project from the short story template and did not change anything other than the title of the project. I used the netbook as during my tests the lag was worse on that machine as well as surfacing earlier.

Using scrivener for two hours of normal (for me) use I noticed no real lag. Only time I experienced anything like lag was when I paused and then started typing again before the autosave feature was done saving my work. I used the F11 distraction free mode and only created a new document once to start a new scene.

I intentionally did not mess around with labels or status changes and did not needlessly change documents.

I am using a regular laptop, and once I started adding files and renaming things my text started lagging big time. Sometimes as much as ten seconds. My stats are:

Toshiba Satellite A-105
1GB Ram
1.6 MHz Intel Celeron Processor
Microsoft XP SP3

I posted on the second page about lag, but I started a new project and am getting the same thing. Just wanted to add about it, since it’s under different circumstances.

Under my draft folder, I have one page (Title Page), a WIP folder with 5 folders and each folder has 7 pages. (There is absolutely no text on anything except Title Page–which has 18 words.

Under Research, I have: 3 folders, a blank page and a copy of the shortcuts for reference. 2 folders have 3 pages with probably under 30 words each. The third folder has 12 pages with a one or two line Synopsis–no text on the actual pages. There’s also a few sentences under Document Notes (probably less than 500 words total, including all 12 cards). Last night, I got a ridiculous amount of lag when I was I typing a few sentences under the Document Notes. Like, 10 second lag to type 3 words.

Something I did notice, though–if I’m typing on the card itself (not on the page or Doc Notes), there doesn’t seem to be nearly as much lag. I was typing there, then cutting/pasting into the Notes.

I’m only mentioning this because I assumed originally that the lag was caused by having so much text, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. On my end, it seems that the amount of folders/pages is what is causing the lag. Also, the lag seems to be better after reopening Scrivener.

I have exactly the same problem when working with a lot of folders/subfolders etc. It causes a lot of lag when trying to type into the documents, but restarting Scrivener seems to fix it and then it works fine, until I move stuff around… it’s definitely a source of lag.

I have about 72 files in a folder (yaaaay phases!) and I tried to type into the document notes of one of them (the synopseshad been working fine - no lag or anything) and Scrivener almost froze. It lagged for a good 20 seconds.

So…I don’t know if that’s helpful or not, but still! :slight_smile: I’m running Windows Vista 64-bit w/4GB RAM.

Exactly this. You explained it a lot better than I did up-post :laughing:

It might be how Scrivener handles the meta-data and links of each file within the program. This does narrow down the issues though.

I copied a 50k word file in, and created 24 more files to split the document into scenes for revising, and the slow response occurred while the original file contained more than 30k words. As soon as I’d stripped out 20k or so words, it speeded up.

Maybe not exactly what you were looking for, but close, perhaps.

My settings:
Acer Aspire Laptop
Windows 7
4GB RAM
Intel Core Duo processor T7300

I’ve installed the exe updates from Oct 29 and I’ve disabled the check spelling. That said, I’ve been using Scrivener to prepare all my research, so I’ve got about 80++ ( :open_mouth: ) files and folders all set up. There was a little bit of lag while compiling all this information, but nothing that hindered me. Admittedly, I was mostly importing files, filling up character/location sheets and making short notes.

That said, today, while I kicked off for NaNo, I found it lagged a lot while trying to type continuous streams of prose. I’ve tried shutting down the the program and/or rebooting my machine, but while the lag goes away initially, it comes back pretty quickly. (Or perhaps I’m just typing too fast?)

Unfortunately, I’ve had to migrate to Word to do most of my typing, and then copy and paste into Scrivener to keep it all together.

I’ll try to do a more structured procedural test later,… after I’ve met my NaNo quotas. :wink:

Thanks everyone for the excellent feedback here. We will look into resolving this obvious issue.

Lee

Lee has just posted an update on the issue. Hopefully, we can try to break (:P) Scrivener this way again when we get our hands on beta 1.3

Just to add some computer information to this bug hunt, since i have also been experiencing a lag after adding and moving about sufficient files to start writing. The lag seems to have vanished after I closed and reopened Scrivener, so I can’t say exactly what it was that caused it, because I am not able to replicate it for some reason. The initial lag happened last night and just a few minutes ago as I was setting up things to begin writing. Vanished when I restarted Scrivener to attempt to reproduce for reporting.

(Side Note: Scrivener had froze and locked up as I typed (70 wpm) and when I restarted it had the text, even if I had not been able to see it before closing and restarting.)

System info:

64 bit HP a4313w running Windows 7 Home Premium
AMD Sempron Processor LE-1250 2.20 GHz
2.75 usable RAM
Running Dual monitors via an Arkview 2.0 USB adapter, with Scrivener on primary monitor

Using Scrivener 1.2
Added 3 folders and 16 files in varying arrangements of category and sub-category.
Also added 3 new labels with color tweaks for push pins.

Most of the file moving had been done within the Outliner view from the main “CHAPTER” Folder to move around sub folders and documents in there.