John: Posted March 3, 2020 Share Posted March 3, 2020 Hi Forum! "Struggles" is a big understatement. I have a document with several hundred image files probably averaging a few megabytes each (total overall of a couple gigabytes). During the beta, I tried it first with "embedded" and then with "linked," but of course back then the "linked" feature didn't actually function, so it made no difference. After opening the document, it would take an hour to load it up, queuing everything into RAM/virtual memory somehow, I guess, and then it would be usable, though not perfect. At some point the "linked" feature did begin working, and so I rebuilt my entire document with links, and that caused the document size to go down dramatically. It did not really have the behavior that I would have hoped, however, as all the linked documents still appear to be forced to load upon opening the document. It just was semi-sort-of-usable during the process, and also my impression is that it took longer. I would have rather had only the images actually appearing on the screen to load. Then, upon scrolling to a new page, bringing a new image into active view, only then it would load the full image. It does appear that my vision was also the vision of at least part of the developer team, because if I break the links by renaming the image directory all the images show as a very low-res placeholder, and the document works great and I can edit it. If only this vision had been fully implemented! As it is, breaking the image links is the only way to work on the document without extreme, extreme pain -- one minute.. or multi-minute... delays... sometimes for every.... single..... mouse......... click. As the months have gone by (yes, long term project), the performance has gotten worse. It now really bogs down the whole computer. (Not Responding) is its typical state. Also it does crash hard sometimes. I see in the FAQ that everyone knows about scrolling around crashing it, but also sometimes in Resource Manager, or just... whenever. The most disturbing crashes are the times when I come back to the computer after it having sat overnight and the whole computer is totally unresponsive, the screen just stays black, and computer shut down is the only solution. Also the file size has ballooned (now at 143 MB), I'm not sure why, as I haven't been adding more nor larger images, just rearranging things and making changes. Perhaps the total file history is being saved to an extent, despite not having that checkmarked and creating new files constantly with "Save As"? This is not a problem, I don't really care, unless it is related to the other problems. Maybe helps you diagnose. I have tried messing with the performance parameters. Currently I have set: RAM Usage Limit: 5120 MB (The computer has 8 GB total physical RAM. Experimented quite a bit with this and this is where it seems to work best.) Disk Usage Warning At: 45056 MB (This seems to make absolutely no difference to anything. Placebo? Placeholder? Anyway, my HD has 65 GB free currently. Happy to free more if it would make any difference.) Undo Limit: 121 View Quality: Nearest Neighbor (lower quality) File recovery interval: 610 seconds Retina Rendering: Lowest Quality (fastest) Is there anything that will help me escape the torment in which I am trapped? Even a drop of water to cool my tongue, I would so appreciate. I see that version 1.8.0 may help stop the large complex document crashes, and so maybe it improves dealing with large documents overall, so I am going to try that now (I'm currently on 1.7.3). I decided to post this first so that the full saga can be followed, and any other poor large-document souls might find it and know: you are not alone. Jowday, adrm and lacerto 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John: Posted March 3, 2020 Author Share Posted March 3, 2020 OK, I got 1.8.0.584 loaded (this is on a Windows 10 laptop, should have mentioned that) and opened the document up. Initially it seemed snappy! Meaning: it was responding, not immediately going into (Not Responding) mode. I scrolled a bit. Then scrolled up a few hundred pages to a random different part of the document. Whoop, it didn't like that. Page doesn't load and it locks up. Wait a few minutes unresponsive. Finally starts responding again, in jerks and starts, as typical. Eventually able to scroll back down to the original part of the document (near the end). Here, pages load, images display, but it's pretty slow. Activity Monitor shows that Publisher is monopolizing the hard drive, as is its wont. Disk activity at 100%, and other programs have a very hard time getting any writes in edgewise; whole computer virtually unusable. Again, this has been my typical experience for some weeks or months now. So 1.8.0 is no worse, but also no better. Closed and reopened with image links broken (so that I don't have to feel like committing hari kiri). Looked around for any new performance-related options. Found none. So, any other ideas? Is there a hidden advanced Config file where I could tweak promising settings? Do I just need More RAM and More Power, as Tim the Toolman Taylor would say? More power is, of course, always the answer. But is it the only answer in this case? Or is there anything else to try? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl123 Posted March 3, 2020 Share Posted March 3, 2020 1 hour ago, John: said: More power is, of course, always the answer. But is it the only answer in this case? Or is there anything else to try? I think your laptop may be underpowered for the document you are currently working on. For starters the "minimum" ram for Publisher is quoted at 4GB yours is set to use 5GB which for the document you have described and the 100% disk usage (paging?) you are getting would seem seriously low. It would be nice to know the model number and specs of your Laptop to be able to confirm that and to see what can be done. (If anything) Other than that I would look at seeing if I could reduce the file size/resolution of my images without impacting on the quality I need (too many people just way overdo it to be safe). Or I would look at maybe splitting the main document into smaller more manageable documents. Quote To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John: Posted March 3, 2020 Author Share Posted March 3, 2020 Yes, it's some kind of paging-type behavior. I am not up on the details of modern memory management, but I have monitored the activity in Activity Monitor and basically it works and works building up the denominator in "Committed" Memory, until it's 14.7 GB. Then the disk activity stops. So I guess if I had 8 + 15 = 23 gigs all would sail sweet? It's just a bit annoying, because the whole document including all linked images should fit into my physical RAM! Three times over! So it shows some sort of disgusting inefficiency, which I guess is inevitable given the balls of mud (Windows and Mac OS) the good folks at Affinity are building on. Oh well. Thank you very much, Carl, for the confirmation that my gut feeling was on the right track. More power it is. Here's the specs since you asked: OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Version 10.0.17134 Build 17134 Other OS Description Not Available OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation System Name LAPTOP System Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard System Model HP ProBook 6460b System Type x64-based PC Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2450M CPU @ 2.50GHz, 2501 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s) BIOS Version/Date Hewlett-Packard 68SCE Ver. F.60, 3/12/2015 SMBIOS Version 2.6 Embedded Controller Version 151.78 BIOS Mode Legacy BaseBoard Manufacturer Hewlett-Packard BaseBoard Model Not Available BaseBoard Name Base Board Platform Role Mobile Secure Boot State Unsupported PCR7 Configuration Binding Not Possible Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32 Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1 Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.17134.471" User Name LAPTOP\john Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB Total Physical Memory 7.94 GB Available Physical Memory 1.96 GB Total Virtual Memory 14.7 GB Available Virtual Memory 8.26 GB Page File Space 6.75 GB Page File C:\pagefile.sys Kernel DMA Protection Off Virtualization-based security Not enabled Device Encryption Support Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and device is not InstantGo, Un-allowed DMA capable bus/device(s) detected, TPM is not usable Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions Yes Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions Yes Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware No Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection Yes I'll see how much RAM this thing can hold... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John: Posted March 3, 2020 Author Share Posted March 3, 2020 Hmm, max is only 16. Lame. Feature request: Lame mode. I only need full resolution and stuff rarely, such as when it comes time to print out another revision to a PDF. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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