Choppy deletion

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eduardus
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Choppy deletion

Post by eduardus »

Hi Everyone,

My problem is that whenever a paragraph is longer than about five lines (regardless of length or complexity of the document), and sometimes even when the paragraph is shorter than 5 lines, deletion becomes slow and very choppy. This problem has been mentioned before in the forum, but it seems no one was able to explain exactly why this happens or how to fix it.

I opened up Console alongside Mellel. I discovered that for most of my Mellel documents, Console registered an error for every character typed in Mellel. The console messages were of this sort: "pageModelForOffset: couldn't find page model for offset:1" where the final number represents the position of the character in Mellel. I.e., the "1" is for the first character typed, "2" for the second, etc.

I totally uninstalled Mellel, deleted preferences, styles, etc., then redownloaded and re-installed Mellel. But the problem persists.

Does anyone have a clue about the slow, choppy deletion problem, and whether the Console messages have anything to do with that problem?

I'd love to hear any suggestions or ideas!

Thanks,

Tom
ozean
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by ozean »

Could this be related to fonts? You might want to clear your font caches and try a different font (say, Helvetica, as a standard and reliable testing font).
eduardus
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by eduardus »

ozean, thanks for the suggestion. I cleared the fonts caches (user and system) using Onyx, restarted, then opened a new document, selected Helvetica and typed a few words. Unfortunately, I've still got the same problem.

It only happens with Mellel. Typing in no other application - MS Word, Pages, TextEdit, Safari... - reproduces what Mellel does.

I don't have a clue what the error messages mean or what's wrong.
ahankinson
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by ahankinson »

Does this occur across different style sets? It might be something related to Page Styles.

When you reinstalled Mellel, did your old styles still show up? It might be a corrupted style set. Quit Mellel, then go to your home directory -> Library (if you're on Lion, this will be hidden :evil: Hold down option and select the "Go" menu.) Then Application Support. Rename the "Mellel" folder (Mellel-old), and then open Mellel.

See if that helps.
eduardus
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by eduardus »

Thanks ahankinson. I wish I could say that solved the problem, but I didn't have any luck. I deleted the Mellel folder in ~/Library/Application Support, downloaded and reinstalled Mellel, created a new document before I opened up any of my old Mellel documents, and both problems are still there - (1) choppy, slow deletion; (2) a console error log that grows as fast as I type.

Maybe fonts are the problem, but I don't know much about them. I purged the fonts caches as suggested previously. I resolved all font problems in Font Book (i.e. wherever Font Book indicated a problem with the yellow exclamation mark, next to duplicate fonts). But maybe there's something more to do that I just don't understand.

I'm all ears for anything I'm missing here.
ahankinson
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by ahankinson »

Could you copy/paste the output of the console here? That might help.

I suggested page styles because a "pageModel" sounds like it might have something to do with page layouts. That's only a guess, though.

I can't seem to replicate it on my machine. What OS/hardware are you running? Are you on 2.9?

Does it persist if you create a new user account on your machine and run Mellel while logged in as that user?
eduardus
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by eduardus »

Well, I'm not sure what to do. Mellel is still sluggish and choppy and Console is still reporting an error for every character I type in Mellel.

I have ...
-tried a guest account;
-deleted all fonts not necessary to the system;
-deleted the fonts caches;
-rebooted in safe mode;
-entirely deleted everything Mellel on my computer save for my documents;
-downloaded and re-installed Mellel and opened a new document with all the default settings;
-done a totally clean install of Lion by itself with none of my own stuff on a blank partition on an external hard drive, then installed Mellel on that.

Unfortunately, none of that solved the problem.

I have a Macbook, late 2008 (aluminum)
I use a 24 LCD Apple Display
The only hardware modification I have made: 2x2GB memory sticks in place of the factory 1x1GB memory

I can't load an image I don't think, since I don't have a url for it, but, the console says repeatedly, with the last number ascending by 1 for every new character:
"Mellel[186] pageModelForOffset: couldn't find page model for offset:1"

(That first number - 186 - changes after a reboot or after, I think, quitting and restarting Mellel.)

Mellel support hasn't offered any suggestions, but I'll post a solution if anything is forthcoming.
ozean
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by ozean »

I didn’t have much time for testing, but I just saw that I have the same messages in console. As soon as I find the time, I’ll also try and check if this affects performance here too. (MacBook Pro 2,2 with 3GB RAM, OS 10.7.1)
nicka
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by nicka »

I'm seeing this too. OS 10.6.7. Mellel 2.9.0 build 29. The error looks like this: 19/08/2011 1:06:58 pm Mellel[40001] pageModelForOffset: couldn't find page model for offset: 20

The final number changes each time, mostly incrementing by 1, but sometimes coming up with '99' or '9230'.

But here the trigger seems to be the first character in each new paragraph. I can't get deleting to produce it.

Still, deleting with a held-down delete key is very very slow -- about one character per second.
DylanMuir
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by DylanMuir »

You guys should also send a support request by email, to make sure the Redlers see this issue.

DRM
nicka
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by nicka »

Good point. I've emailed Ori.
eduardus
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by eduardus »

Eureka, I think.

I knew that Mellel had worked much better for me in the past - it was quicker and just generally more responsive. So I found a copy of the 2.7.2 dmg file that I had kept and installed that. Voila, the console didn't go crazy with error reports when I used Mellel, and, what I really cared about, the whole program is quick and responsive. The wow factor is back. There are no delays with deleting as with versions 2.8 and 2.9.

Maybe for some reason I'm the weird one here. It could be that there's something quirky with my computer so that versions 2.8 and 2.9 work worse for me than version 2.7. But it's a pretty standard setup - late 2008 aluminum Macbook, updated to 4GB RAM. There's nothing funky about my system - I think I have avoided any plug-ins, hacks, and any other intrusive 3rd-party fixes that would affect this. My fonts are in good shape.

I used 2.7, 2.8 and 2.9 on Snow Leopard (latest versions available) and tried 2.9 on a clean install of Lion (10.7.0 and 10.7.1). 2.8 gave me problems on SL (didn't try on Lion); 2.9 gave me problems on both SL and Lion. 2.7.2 on SL is the s*it for me - love it and I'll guess I'll stick with it unless there's some kind of change in future versions of Mellel that address the problem I was having.

It'd be great if most Mellel users did not share my experience with 2.8 and 2.9. If few other people did not experience the slow-down with versions 2.8 and 2.9, I'd love to know what the difference is between my computer/system and theirs. But that will probably be hard to pin down.
redlers
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by redlers »

eduardus wrote:Hi Everyone,

My problem is that whenever a paragraph is longer than about five lines (regardless of length or complexity of the document), and sometimes even when the paragraph is shorter than 5 lines, deletion becomes slow and very choppy. This problem has been mentioned before in the forum, but it seems no one was able to explain exactly why this happens or how to fix it.

I opened up Console alongside Mellel. I discovered that for most of my Mellel documents, Console registered an error for every character typed in Mellel. The console messages were of this sort: "pageModelForOffset: couldn't find page model for offset:1" where the final number represents the position of the character in Mellel. I.e., the "1" is for the first character typed, "2" for the second, etc.
We'll look into the matter soon. Thanks for noting that. The problem seem to be related to the new features in Mellel. We'll check and notify.
Eyal Redler
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by Eyal Redler »

We've investigated this a bit further. This issue will be fixed soon but in the meanwhile there is workaround for this. The issue is apparent when you're typing/deleting at the very end of the document (regardless of how long it is), if you add some text after the end, the messages will not appear. Simply add a dummy paragraph at the end and then continue working before that paragraph.
This should resolve the console messages issue and I would be interested to see if this also solves the performance issues so I would appreciate if people who experienced the performance issues could try this workaround and report the results...
Eyal Redler
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eduardus
Got the auto-title mojo working
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Re: Choppy deletion

Post by eduardus »

Just some feedback for the Redlers and anyone else following this thread...

I tried out 2.9.1 and noticed that there are no more console error messages.

However, the real problem for me - choppy, slow deletion - persists. I encountered the problem in 2.9.0 so I downgraded to 2.7.2 which for me is very fast and very responsive.
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