Text editing lag

[Guest]

I'm using Designer, Photo, and Publisher v1.9 on macOS 11.2.1 and I'm finding entering text in a text frame or artistic text element is noticeably laggy compared to editing text in any other app on my system. It always feels like Affinity apps are struggling to keep up with whatever I type, and the key repeat doesn't repeat except for delete and the cursor keys which seem to jump around/over text trying to keep up, with the app deleting characters in chunks after the fact.

It's useable, but it's not what I'd call a good user experience. I don't recall it feeling this 'janky' in previous versions.

[Sean P]

Hi Bryan,

Have you got the Paragraph Panel visible at all? There is a known issue in 1.9 that the Paragraph Panel can cause a performance hit. Would you mind trying the 1.9.1.1 beta and see if that responds the same for you? If so would you mind getting a quick screen capture showing the sort of performance issues you're getting.

Thanks!

[Guest]

Hi Sean,

I do typically have the paragraph and character panel visible when I'm working with text. Closing the paragraph panel seemed to make a slight improvement, but it definitely didn't resolve it. I've attached a quick screen recording demonstrating it. You'll notice the cursor appears to struggle to keep up (I'm not that fast a typist), and there is a definite lag holding down a repeating key (cursor, delete, etc). Typing in any other app (Pages, DevonThink, Scrivener, Pixelmator, etc) is very responsive and unremarkable. I only notice in Designer (Photos and Publisher also exhibit the same behaviour upon my Mac, but text entry on the iPad is smooth/buttery).

I'll give the beta a try later today.

 

[Guest]

40 minutes ago, Sean P said:

…would you mind trying the 1.9.1.1 beta and see if that responds the same for you?

The 1.9.1.1 beta is definitely an improvement. There's still a slight lag, but it's not as frustrating.

[Guest]

Using Publisher 1.9.1 (and Designer 1.9.1) and I'm finding the text lag is back. Entering any non-trivial amount of text (more than two-three words) within Affinity apps is becoming painful, the app just can't keep up. I don't have any problems entering text in any other application I use - just the Affinity apps. Even Google Docs running in a web browser is far more performant than the 'native' Affinity Suite at handing text.

[walt.farrell]

Often such issues are document-specific and often related to text-wrapping surround complex shapes or reflowing and hyphenation.

Is your problem with all documents, even new ones? Or with some specific document?

[Guest]

Hi @walt.farrell, unfortunately it's with any document. I had first thought it might have just been limited to one document, but I've since created several new documents from scratch and all suffer from the same text editing lag (to varying degrees). Sometimes I think it might have to do with the amount of text in the document, other times I suspect it depends on how long I've had the application open (it does seem to get worse the longer I leave the app open; not too bad after 15 minutes, worse after an hour, and I usually have to restart the app after 2 hours). No complex text-wrapping, reflowing or hyphenation—just straight, styled text in a frame.

[User_783649]

On 3/22/2021 at 7:34 PM, Bryan Rieger said:

Hi @walt.farrell, unfortunately it's with any document. I had first thought it might have just been limited to one document, but I've since created several new documents from scratch and all suffer from the same text editing lag (to varying degrees). Sometimes I think it might have to do with the amount of text in the document, other times I suspect it depends on how long I've had the application open (it does seem to get worse the longer I leave the app open; not too bad after 15 minutes, worse after an hour, and I usually have to restart the app after 2 hours). No complex text-wrapping, reflowing or hyphenation—just straight, styled text in a frame.

So sad to see all these topics related to problems with text performance. There are lots of similar topics covering the same issue over and over. Some of them were made more than year ago. Yet no significant improvements in performance, unfortunately.

For me, text tool is one of the most important, cornerstone aspects of any graphic design tool. It definitely needs more love and attention from Affinity developers and testing teams.