Slow Text Editing

[John-B]

Ever since the most recent update, 1.8.3, text editing has become so slow as to be almost unusable for me. It doesn't matter the document, or how many documents are open. There's a pause after every character I type, and if I type several characters quickly, the beach ball spins for several seconds (20-30) while it catches up. It's not just editing text, but anything involving the text, such as the font size popup menu that takes several seconds just to appear, and several more seconds to disappear after a size is selected. Same for setting text color, everything related to text is SLOW. I've run into a few other annoying problems since the update, but this is by far the worst. I'm using MacOS 10.14.6.

[Chris B]

Hey John-B,

I am not experiencing this. I've asked a few colleagues to see if anyone else has reported it to see if there's a known casuse.

Could you go to Preferences > Performance and screenshot the dialog so I can see what settings you're using?

Also, is it the Artistic Text Tool or the Frame Text Tool—or both?

Have you done a check in FontBook to see if any bad fonts are installed?

[John-B]

6 hours ago, Chris B said:

Hey John-B,

I am not experiencing this. I've asked a few colleagues to see if anyone else has reported it to see if there's a known casuse.

Could you go to Preferences > Performance and screenshot the dialog so I can see what settings you're using?

Also, is it the Artistic Text Tool or the Frame Text Tool—or both?

Have you done a check in FontBook to see if any bad fonts are installed?

Attached is the screen capture of my preferences, all defaults I believe, not changed since updating AP.

It's the Frame Text tool that I normally use that I'm seeing problems with. I just tried the Artistic Text tool, and it doesn't seem to work at all. As soon as I type the first character, it suddenly brings another open AP window to the front. Just tried it a few times with the same result.

I'm not sure how to find bad fonts in Font Book, but I haven't installed any new fonts recently, and this problems started after the AP update.

I've seen other odd behavior too, not sure if it's related. The color picker popup now dismisses itself after I enter a single number (RGB, HSL). Tabbing or clicking a different field causes the dialog to go away. If I want to set an RGB value, I have to open the color picker three times now.

 

[Chris B]

Hey John-B,

So you're using Separated Mode? I've reproduced the second issue where another document window replaces the one you're trying to type in. This looks like it has been fixed in the Publisher beta so we really need to wait for the Photo beta. I'm afraid I do not know when that is.

Would you mind leaving Separated Mode to see if you can reproduce the slow typing issue? 

[John-B]

I'll try to take a look at this later today. What is "separated mode"? Is that a Prefs setting?

I just tried closing all open windows and restarting AP, and the text tool seems to be working with just one, new, empty window. Previously, it didn't seem to matter what else was open.  I was going to try opening some of the other docs I'd had open, to see if one of them might be the problem, but the Open Recent menu doesn't seem to be working any more (something I noticed recently as well), it's always empty now.

I found one of the docs I'd had open when I was experiencing the problems, opened it, and slow text editing is back. With this other doc open, text editing slows to a crawl in a new, empty doc. Close that other doc, and editing text in the new doc goes back to normal speed.

[Chris B]

Window > Separated Mode. 

It essentially makes every look separated and to appear floating, as opposed to everything being grouped/stuck together. 

[John-B]

2 hours ago, Chris B said:

Window > Separated Mode. 

It essentially makes every look separated and to appear floating, as opposed to everything being grouped/stuck together. 

Yes, something I set up the first time I opened AP and never thought about since. The "everything in one window that takes over the entire screen" scheme is not well-suited to my workflow, working with multiple documents and having quick access to Finder windows in the background. If I turn off separated mode, would I have to reopen and reposition all my palettes after I turn it back on?

To summarize, so far I've found:

• Frame Text tool - editing and everything else slows, apparently only when another document, or other documents, are open

• Artistic Text tool does not allow entering more than 1 character

• Color Picker palette sometimes, but not always, is dismissed after entering a single value

• File -> Open Recent does not remember recently-opened documents

[Chris B]

If you leave Separated Mode, the app will likely return to the default layout and you'd have to make any panel positioning changes again.

This should be fixed in the beta when we get it.

14 hours ago, John-B said:

• File -> Open Recent does not remember recently-opened documents

This should be controlled by your Mac System Preferences - General > Recent items.

[John-B]

On 5/7/2020 at 4:20 AM, Chris B said:

If you leave Separated Mode, the app will likely return to the default layout and you'd have to make any panel positioning changes again.

This should be fixed in the beta when we get it.

This should be controlled by your Mac System Preferences - General > Recent items.

Recent Items is set to 20 in my SysPrefs, and other programs remember docs.  As I said, since the recent update, AP's Open Recent always has just one menu item pop up: Clear Menu. It used to remember, now it appears to have suffered some memory loss.

BTW, I'm having even more problems with text. Yesterday I was not able to edit text AT ALL with any other window open. Every time I tried to change the font size, or style, or anything, it would jump to another open window. I was never able to succeed in setting a single-character to bold or change its size. I eventually gave up and copied the text from another document (before I realized it would work if I closed all other windows).

[Chris B]

I would definitely recommend working in non-Separated mode until we get the beta. As I said this is fixed in Publisher but we're waiting on Photo and Designer to catch up.

I really am not sure why your app isn't remembering the recent documents. Where do you normally save work to? 

 

[John-B]

On 5/11/2020 at 6:28 AM, Chris B said:

I would definitely recommend working in non-Separated mode until we get the beta. As I said this is fixed in Publisher but we're waiting on Photo and Designer to catch up.

I really am not sure why your app isn't remembering the recent documents. Where do you normally save work to? 

 

Non-separated mode is very inconvenient for me, since I normally have many docs open at the same time. I turn off full-screen mode in any app that has it and lets me turn it off. Though now that I can only have a single doc open while editing text, I guess it doesn't make as much of a difference.

The Open Recent menu started working again, not sure when as I've stopped checking it. FWIW, I save files to my Home folder.

[Chris B]

On 5/25/2020 at 11:02 PM, John-B said:

Non-separated mode is very inconvenient for me

I appreciate that. The bug should hopefully be fixed in an update so this is just temporary but I realise this is frustrating.