[LH4706] Scrivenings text rendered as invisible in 2.9.9.10 Beta (Old Title: Major Data Loss)

Scrivener Windows Beta (Archived)
1

After I updated from 2.9.9.9 to 2,9,9,10, I lost about 1/3 of my book. Almost all of my chapters have multiple scenes that are borked.

The most common data loss looks like this:
[attachment=2]Problem1.PNG[/attachment]
Note how the scene states there are 1,525 words, yet they are unable to be highlighted nor copy-pasted into notepad. Does not affect spacing/page formatting.
The second most common data loss looks like this:
[attachment=1]Problem2.PNG[/attachment]
In this version, the latest revisions I made during my last pass have not been saved correctly. Not entirely unsaved either. Some odd result halfway in between. Affects spacing/page formatting.
The rarest data loss looks like this.
[attachment=0]Problem3.PNG[/attachment]
The correct placement of the image is at the top of the scene (not shown). Does not affect spacing/page formatting

Thing of Note 1) In each of the pictures, you’ll find an invisible image being selected. That is a bug that I’ve had since 2.9.9.9, which replaces my typing cursor. It works oddly. For example, I often navigated through my paragraphs using ctrl up or ctrl down. When that bug occurred, it instead swapped the first letter caught in that invisible square from superscript/normal/subscript. In 2.9.9.9, it only occurred part of the time. Now in 2.9.9.10 it occurs 100% of the time, no matter where I click.

Thing of Note 2) I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that my project has illustrations. 275+ 1920x1080 pngs. A chapter doesn’t break 50+, but a few individual scenes have over 15. None are very complex,( >1000Kb) but I figure they’re very likely affecting things.

Thing of Note 3) These problems are exclusive to the most recent back-up. When I open one from 2.9.9.9 (from about a week ago) none of these datalosses exist. This tells me that the latest save was messed up somehow. Furthermore, looking at the backup files sizes, there seems to be some problem with the saving process.
9/6/2020, the backup was 80,000kB.
9/10/2020 it jumped to 900,000kB. Later on that day, 1,400,000kB.
9/17/2020 it jumped to 1,700,000kB
During this period, I added maybe 10 illustrations, The rest were already completed last month. This filesize increase seems excessive.

Luckily, I compiled two days ago so I’ve only lost about 2 days of work. However, I find it difficult to move forward without a fix, since I have no idea when another dataloss could strike. I’m not particularly certain there’s anything you guys can do to recover the data, but if there is let me know.

And if you’re willing, if you send me a limited duration 2.9.9.9 version of Scrivener 3 I can test to see if the save is bugged in that version too.

2

Moved to beta forum. – Katherine

3

I think I may have also had some data loss - one text file is suddenly blank, but it’s showing 217 words in the word count.

Luckily everything I have is backed up to word files externally, so nothing has been lost permanently.

4

Update:
Deleting and reinstalling Scrivener fixed the invisible image box problem. Save is still messed up

5

I can’t say I’ve ever had that problem, but it sounds as though Scrivener installed a little screwy. Second possibility: corrupt project.

My suggestion about the later possibility: Copy everything in the binder and copy it to a brand new project of the same kind. Save it, exit Scrivener, restart Scrivener, load the new project without loading the old one. See if the behavior improves. Might or might not.

Unfortunately, I cannot offer a solution better than that.

6

I think I can explain. The view with the “data loss” is indeed a Scrivenings view with improperly rendered text. We found a bug which will not render properly the text when you display Scrivenings with titles. In this mode the text/data is not lost but will not be displayed/rendered properly on the screen. Load each document from the Scrivenings session in a separate single view and you will see that it is displayed properly.

We have fixed this and the fix will be available with the next update. Meanwhile I would recommend to everyone to turn off titles in Scrivenings mode via View > Text Editing > Show Titles in Scrivenings.

We have also improved Scrivenings mode so that it loads faster and you can cancel the load at any time, in case you click on a folder with many sub-documents. Hope you will enjoy it!