I’ve been having the same issue – Scrivener crashes on trying to open in Full Screen mode. I finally managed to get it to open, immediately took the project out of full screen mode – it opens fine with Full Screen mode off, but that’s not an ideal fix.
I’m attaching Apple’s Crash Log in case that’ll help. I note this line: Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception ‘CALayerInvalidGeometry’, reason: ‘CALayer position contains NaN: [nan nan]’
The permanent fix, if it happens, I believe is on Apple. Just try to get out of full screen mode before closing the project and it’ll be fine. BTW, no one should lose data for these crashes, it’s just a little annoying
I’m getting another wrinkle with this one in El Capitan, to go along with the Quit Unexpectedly on Last Open report (even if Scrivener didn’t quit unexpectedly, but closed and backed up a zipped file to Dropbox as always).
I can predict with some regularity when this will happen because the function that automatically turns – into an em-dash stops working, and so does the pop-up dictionary. The Binder then begins to scroll glacially, and the only way out is to restart; quitting Scrivener and opening it again alone doesn’t restore the functionality. This isn’t project-specific; all my projects, big or small, new or old, go through the same thing periodically; this happened after the El-Cap upgrade.
BTW, I’ve noticed other glitches with other programs using full-screen in El Capitan that weren’t present in Mavericks, and have simply stopped using full screen; it causes more problems for me than it solves, and there are sufficient work-arounds in Scrivener to achieve much the same effect.
IMO calling full screen mode “a mess” is a gross exaggeration.
May i respectfully suggest that trashing Apple is not a great strategy. While I realize it is frustrating to work with such a large company that can at times be unresponsive to developers; it does not make for a good experience for the end user. The bottom line is that we all want software that works.
I don’t know if this is the best forum for this but… I suggest Scrivener remove the functionality that saves the full screen mode state when reopening a file. Especially if this is found to be the cause of the crashes in Scrivener. As far as I can tell NONE of Apple’s own software automatically opens files in full screen mode. I’ve already checked Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Final Cut and Logic and they all open in a window even if the project was saved in full screen mode. If Apple creates a feature that even they don’t use, it might indicate that they know there is a problem and may not get around to fixing it in the near future.
As you say, it is your opinion. In mine Full Screen was never fully implemented in the first place back with 10.7. It has numerous limitations and bugs that have remained since then (a number of them Keith had to solve with patches, so you won’t even see them from the Scrivener side, but they are there), and the overall level of stability and quality of the interface has degraded—specifically with the addition of this new alternative way of using the Split mode. So calling it “a mess” is a demonstrable thing, again in my opinion, and certainly worth being called a mess for all of the secondary problems it causes.
I might be using the phrase a bit less harshly than you would, as I would put it more toward the middle of flawless vs. awful. A mess, in the sense I meant it, means it is there and it does its thing most of the time, but it has problems with basic functioning and isn’t easy to work with as a programmable system. Something can be a mess and still be on the whole a working system.
That has been discussed as being the solution (and this is as good a place as any to discuss it, no worries). As you note it isn’t typical for software to remember this setting per-document and across sessions. It’s been a nice capability for Scrivener users up until now, but if the next OS X patch doesn’t clear this up we’ll most likely have to scale back the session persistence a bit.
Hopefully not, because this has worked fine for about five years, leading me to doubt Apple has avoided that for reasons of stability—the fact that it doesn’t work fine after a minor x.2 patch is part of what I mean by things being a mess.
Just wanted to post and say that I’ve been having this issue too (Scrivener crashes when trying to load a project into Full Screen mode) and the simplest fix was what someone posted earlier in this thread:
Confirmed: is easy, doesn’t change any other preferences. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread, good to have recognized this issue and know where it’s coming from.
Thanks for the ui.plist workaround. It solved my problem and saved me a lost day. I do all my best work in Scrivener, so a day with it crashing repeatedly would be a bad day indeed.
Also I am grateful for the ui plist solution. Have used it a few of times by now. Full screen is my preferred working mode, and a few times now I have forgot to leave full screen before closing down a project, and I’ll probably do it again.
Will be much more grateful once this bug is straightened out, though
We’re still trying to find a reproduction case. If I can reproduce the issue, I should be able to fix it, but so far we can’t reproduce it on our end even though it’s affecting a number of users. What I may do is just disable the full screen restoration code which puts Scrivener into full screen during project open. It never works brilliantly anyway because of the flakiness of OS X’s full screen animations, and this would at least work around the issue.
Speaking as someone who, to avoid this issue, tries (and fails) to always exit full screen before closing projects, I’d be more than happy to have Scrivener do that for me. I’d rather have to re-enter FS manually every time than to be annoyed by crashes.
Here is the question, is anyone here who gets a crash on full-screen load not using FileVault? If you don’t recall whether you are, that will be indicated in the “FileVault” tab of the Security & Privacy system preference pane.
I have a report from one person who indicated not having issues with this problem, even after having run .2 for some time, until recently trying out FileVault. It would be the first time I’ve heard of anything other than .2 itself being a trigger, but that’s exactly the kind of thing I’ve been looking for—something universal to the system that even a safe boot or brand new Mac account won’t dodge.
ok, this is not what you asked, but i got a few of those crashes (must say, not recently) on two laptops and a desktop, and I use filevault in all those machines
I’ve got another clue, for anyone who is interested in testing: does anyone have a custom shortcut for bringing up Mission control, and if you set that shortcut to a dash (none), does the bug vanish?
I have one initial report that suggests that. I tried it myself, but I can still open projects in full screen on my machine.
Adding my voice and crash report as well, PLUS my thanks for those who have gone before me and their help in solving the issue.
For the record, I have a MacBook Pro and an iMac, both running El Capitan, fully updated. No FileVault enabled on either machine. I save Scrivener files to Dropbox so I can work from either computer as needed.
Scrivener will open and save in full-screen mode on the MacBook, but crashes when opening that same file on the iMac. I have to minimize and save it on the MacBook, then it opens fine on the iMac.
Again, thanks to everyone on this thread for helping me solve this. Much appreciated!
Once again, please do it. It would be so much easier to click a green spot after opening the project, than to click a green spot before closing it, or risk CLOSE/OPEN/CRASH/RESTORE/OPEN/CLICKTHESPOT … and whatever you do, click the spot again before closing down the project.
