Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

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harryhoffner
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Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by harryhoffner »

I am having a problem that I do not understand, and need help and advice. I have produced a Mellel document of 2.6 MB size with a large number of cross-references and two streams of notes. In the past month it has suddenly become very unresponsive. To be specific, the display cannot keep up with even a slow text keying, and sometimes goes into total inactivity. I do not know if Mellel has some upper limit for document size. Two and a half MB does not seem to me an inordinate amount of text in a single file, even with lots of notes. But what do I know? Is it in fact too large? I am rather desperate, because I want to be able to use Mellel for this project, yet I cannot survive this slowdown, having to sit in front of the computer and wait for the program to become responsive again. I cannot divide the document into two smaller files, because I need to be able to have cross-references spanning the entire text.
Have any of you ever had such a problem? What did you do to correct it? Is there some test I can run to discover the cause? None of my other programs, including word processors, seem to have this problem.
I would be very grateful for any help any of you might offer me.
eduardus
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Re: Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by eduardus »

harryhoffner, I really like Mellel, but I know your pain. It slowed down for me too. Perhaps if you write to the Redlers, they will be able to identify your problem. But, (1) you will be lucky if you get a response and (2) the response I received was no help.

My suspicion is that you and I and several others have experienced problems like this due to some fundamental changes which were introduced in Mellel 2.8 and carried forward into 2.9. I suggest googling around for version 2.7.2 of Mellel - it's out there on the net somewhere. (As we've all paid for Mellel, I had no qualms about downloading an older version for free.) 2.7.3, I think, was the last of the 2.7s, but I couldn't find that. (Incidentally, it would be great if older versions were available on Mellel's website.)

Install 2.7.2. Open your document in 2.9.x, copy all. Open a new, blank document in 2.7.2 and then paste the whole document there.

Keep your copy of 2.9. 2.7.x will not be able to open documents created or modified by versions 2.8 or 2.9. The only way to get access to those documents is by opening them in 2.8 or 2.9. You will have to copy and paste if you want to work with the contents of those documents in 2.7.

I was relieved to have the old speedy Mellel back, despite not being able to use some of the new features introduced since 2.7.
harryhoffner
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Re: Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by harryhoffner »

Thank you, eduardus, for your reply. As I said in my post, I am not trying to knock Mellel, but the problem is making it impossible to use the program for writing this book. Although your solution to back-grade may be the only workable one at present, I would like to believe that the Redlers will respond to this forum thread with some solution within the current version. Accordingly, I have written to them this morning, quoting my posting, and asking if they have any suggestion for solving the problem within the current version. I would also hope that, if there is none, they will let us all know that this will be a priority fix in the next version.

In the meantime, I will look into your procedure and see if it allows me to continue my work on the book.

Thanks a million!

Sincerely,
eduardus
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Re: Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by eduardus »

Harryhoffner, If you hear back from the Redlers, would you post what they said? I'd love to know the solution, too, if there is one (besides downgrading to 2.7).

Thanks.
harryhoffner
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Re: Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by harryhoffner »

eduardus,

I'll be glad to. But after receiving the initial polite response from Eyyal Redlers and an acknowledgement of receipt of my document, I've heard nothing further. So I'm going to investigate your work-around a little further. Of course, we all hope that a permanent solution will be found in the latest version.
harryhoffner
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Re: Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by harryhoffner »

A new problem has arisen while I was attempting to implement eduardus' promising suggested work-around: namely, copying the (formatted) text content of my Mellel 2.9.x file into an empty newly created Mellel 2.7.2 file. It seemed to work so long as I had the 2.7.2 file open. But after I closed it and exited Mellel 2.7.2, and then an hour later tried to re-open the file from Mellel 2.7.2, I got an error message, saying something like: "The document "X" cannot be opened. Missing text model dictionary."

I have no idea what a "text model dictionary" is, nor how to find or supply it to the now unopenable file. If anyone can elucidate this matter and (better yet) tell me how to fix the problem, I would be extremely grateful. I am still hopeful that the Redlers will be able to solve the original problem of lag (and occasional error) in screen display of text entry in the latest version (Mellel 2.9.x). But in the meantime, I need to be working on this book, and eduardus' suggestion seems promising in many ways.

Many thanks.
harryhoffner
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Re: Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by harryhoffner »

I myself found the answer: There was a bug in Mellel (at least in Mellel 2.8.1) that produced this phenomenon, and it was corrected in 2.8.2, according to the release notes. I suppose this means that there is no hope for me, working with 2.7.2. Eduardus, I presume you never had this denial of access to a document that you copied by into 2.7.2. I wonder why I get it? Ideas?
eduardus
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Re: Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by eduardus »

harryhoffner, I did encounter exactly the problem you describe with the "missing text model dictionary" error message. However, I think you will find that if you open a new, blank document in 2.7.2 and then choose open from the file menu and then select your document, that the document will open properly. Either that, or quit both versions of Mellel and just try again.

I've been using 2.7.2 for a long while now and I'm constantly converting documents from 2.9 into 2.7. I've never failed yet with opening one of those documents converted from 2.9 to 2.7.2. Basically, just keep trying and (I'm very confident that) the document will eventually open.

Thanks for the update. I've written the Redlers too and will let you know if I hear anything.
eduardus
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Re: Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by eduardus »

One more suggestion, which has worked for me...
I put the Mellel 2.9 app in trash - I just keep it there without emptying it from the trash. I take it out of the trash when I need it.
This way, if you click on a Mellel document, by default Mac OS will open it with the Mellel 2.7.2 app in your applications folder.
I found that with this method of working with Mellel, the error message seems to have gone away, or at least shows up less frequently.
harryhoffner
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Re: Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by harryhoffner »

Thanks, eduardus, for your most recent suggestion. I will keep that in mind. But the good news is that I have now heard from Eyal Redlers, after I sent him a copy of my large file. He admits that this is a serious problem, and I am sure that he will work on solving it for us all. In the meantime, he suggested a work-around that might work only for my type of file, not yours. You will have to see for yourself.

In my file I have two note streams. One is endnotes numbered continuously throughout the document. But the notes of the second stream (notes on Hebrew paragraphs) are placed below the text and their numbering restarts on each page. Eyal suggested that I change the style of that second stream to continuous numbering throughout the document, and just change it back when I am ready to publish (if by that time he has not fixed the problem in the app). I have only just now made that change, and it is a little early to give you a verdict on how the screen display of keyed text has sped up. But I can tell already that it has definitely improved. So I will use this for a while, and only go back to your plan if this seems to offer too little improvement.

If you have at least one note stream that renumbers on each page like mine did, you might try Eyal's suggestion. If you don't, or if it doesn't work, I would suggest that you write to him and send him a copy of your file too. That way he can see if there is a different work-around that would fit your situation.
Hans-Reinhard Koch
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Re: Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by Hans-Reinhard Koch »

harryhoffner wrote:To be specific, the display cannot keep up with even a slow text keying, and sometimes goes into total inactivity.
Mellel changed the file format some time ago. Mellel files are now saved in compressed form. The compressing can take a lot of time. With my book document it is most frustrating. Whenever Mellel does an auto-save, it becomes unresponsive.

To avoid this you can save your file in the old, uncompressed format by clicking "save documents as packages" in the "preferences > open and save" dialog. This will shorten save (and auto-save) time substantially in large documents. Perhaps that will help with your problem!

Regards
Hans-Reinhard
Hans-Reinhard Koch, Bonn, Germany
harryhoffner
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Re: Mellel becoming sluggish and unresponsive

Post by harryhoffner »

Thank you very much for this suggestion. I had already gone into preferences and turned off the Auto Save, since I had already figured out that was periodically rendering the program unresponsive. But I will also do what you suggest. Perhaps that will make periodic manual saving faster than before.
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