Hello,
I’ve seen a slow down in contextual menu response time since updating to 10.5.5. Other applications do not seem to be affected. Has anyone else experienced this?
MBP 2.4GHz w/ 4GB RAM 160GB HDD & nVidia 256MB VRAM
Thanks!
Which contextual menu? Any in particular or all of them? The one in the text view, or in the binder, or elsewhere? Scrivener has a lot of contextual menus… If it’s the one in the main editor (the text view), then do you get the same slow response in TextEdit?
Thanks,
Keith
Hello Keith,
It happens in the main text editor window and I do not get the same slow response in Text Edit. After highlighting a word and calling up the contextual menu [control + click] to bring up the dictionary (either on a misspelled word or to call up the thesaurus).
Let me know if there are other tests I could perform to help isolate the issue.
All the best and as always, thank you for your hard work.
Yours,
Do you get this every time, or is it just the first time you call up the contextual menu in a session? (Sometimes contextual menus can be slow the first time called and then faster for the rest of the session.)
Thanks,
Keith
Do you have any third-party applications installed which have added items to the contextual menu? It could be that one of them is not faring so well with the update, at least with Scrivener for some esoteric reason. You could try renaming “Contextual Menu Items” in your home Library folder to something else temporarily and log in and out of your account to reset the menus completely. If that directory does not exist in your Library, then it is probably not the issue, though you might check in the global system Library folder, too.
Another thing to try is logging in to your account with the shift key held down. This will inhibit anything from running in the background that might ordinarily start up invisibly. Sometimes, these sorts of background applications can cause weird conflicts.
Hello Keith,
No, the slow contextual menus happen every time and only with Scrivener.
Amber,
I tried restarting with the shift key down, but still the same results. I do not have extraneous system enhancers on my computer - simply don’t trust them.
I tried to defrag my hard drive last night and got an error message (something appears corrupt). I’ve been lusting after one of those 500GB laptop drives that are popping up and might just swipe out the old 160GB drive for one of those.
After reinstalling, etc. I’ll let you know how things go. Since no one else is reporting this issue, there’s obviously something buggy with this machine.
All the best,
Is it a large project? The Append Selection To… etc contextual menus have to be built dynamically, so can take some time if there are a lot of documents, but they should only take up time when they are called up, not when the root menu is displayed…
Best,
Keith
An update on this… Since updating to 10.5.5 myself, I can confirm that there does seem to be a change in 10.5.5 that has made Scrivener’s text contextual menus a lot slower. Having looked into it, I found that the code wasn’t building the Scrivener Link and Append Selection To menus dynamically after all, so I’ve changed this so that it does so for the next version. So the contextual menus should be fast again in the next update (the only slight pause will be when you go to the Scrivener Link or Append Selection To submenus if you have a large project).
All the best,
Keith
Goodie goodie! I was worried my system was buggered and would need a complete reformat. Keith, I know you’ve made a great deal of progress on the next version and have an incredible amount of your in front of you, but do you have a clearer idea (as of today perhaps?) when the next version will be ready for testing?
Sorry for insisting, just looking forward to all the new features you previewed in your blog…
Thanks!
It’s getting there… I just finished off the new preferences interface today, so most of the “big stuff” is now done. There are a few minor things, tweaks to the Edit Scrivenings interface, and then I need to address various bugs and glitches that have been reported over the past few months that I didn’t manage to fix or track straight away… So I’m hoping to do a small private beta sometime in November and then get a public beta out at the end of November/beginning of December. Given that the Help file is going to require a big rewrite - not to mention the tutorial - an actual release version is unlikely before January, unfortunately…
All the best,
Keith
Keith,
I would love to offer my time for the small private beta group if possible.
Oh! I updated to 1.53 and the problem seems resolved. I am soo relieved. Who knew how much I used spell-check? Well, I knew.
What I wrote before:
[i][I’m happy to see you’ve found the cause for this. Is there any way around it for now? Every time I try to look up a word to fix my crappy spelling it takes 15 seconds to bring up the menu. I guess I have a big project? (Wish it was nearer completion.)
[This didn’t used to happen, is there a former version I can use until it’s fixed?][/i]
Thanks for the work. I look forward to new things in the spring. (And I’d be happy to beta-test too.)
Unfortunately, the menu started going very slow again soon after. It’s still slow for me as of v1.53 Hope for a solution in “the update.”