I have just started using Scrivener. So far I like it except for one problem: When I start typing I usually have to wait a second or two between the time I press a key and see a character on the screen. I do not have a slow computer; it’s plenty fast for videos and games. Does anyone else have this problem? The only other time I have encountered it is when I try to use Word on an old, slow machine.
You might want to give the new beta build a try, before trying to troubleshoot the problem any further. We’ve made a number of optimisations to the text engine in recent times. The older engine could indeed be quite slow under some conditions, even on a fast machine.
I have the same problem. But just recently. I started a new project, and since then, everything ist slow. I loaded the beta already, but it is not better…
First I blamed my keyboard. But everything takes longer, and the program always makes a backup, when I close it. It did not do that when I just had one project. (Maybe it did, but then it was really fast, now its like 22, 23, 24, 25).
I changed nothing else (consciously…).
Scrivener’s default settings create a zipped backup whenever you close the project; this will take longer for larger projects, so it sounds here as though your earlier project was small enough that it zipped quickly and you never noticed, whereas your new one contains some larger files and takes a little longer. This could be just from having a lot of text or from importing some big media files or PDFs.
Did you happen to import or copy and paste much text for this project? The slowness may be from some original formatting that didn’t transfer well, such as styles in a Word document or invisibles tables pasted in from a browser, in which case it should be fixable by cleaning up that document or deleting it and re-importing the text.
I did install the beta version and it’s running faster now. What happens when the beta expires on Feb 1? I also doubled the size of my paging file (virtual memory). That may be partly responsible for increased speed. 8)
After installing it a second time (my husband did it, maybe it is the male touch that helped…) the beta works better. The “backup” curiosity: it was the other way round. My new projekt is still at the beginning, I imported text, but not so much (from Open Office). The old project war really long and with a few pictures.
Anyway, everything seems to work fine now. I appreciate the effort to translate some things into german.
I had a purchased copy (it was a present for christmas from a friend). What will happen at february 1st?
She (the friend) also told me to write a mail to you, informing you of my email adress, so I can get all the news.
To whom should I adress this mail?
Don’t put your Serial Number here! It can be read by anyone on the internet, so someone could use it to register their own copy and cause you some problems.
When the beta expires, there will either be a new one available in the same place you got the current beta, or they will release the changes as a new (free) update.
Lutrina - I’ve removed the registration information from your post, since as Robert said, that’s not information you want to share publicly! I’m glad to hear that the beta is working better for you now–sounds like it might have just been gremlins and a clean uninstall and reinstall cleared it up, but let us know if you run into the problem again. Like I said, sometimes some hidden formatting in imported text can cause lag; I’ve seen this mainly with Word documents using a lot of styles or with text pasted from webpages (Gmail for instance uses a lot of tables in the layout that can get pasted into the editor and cause a lot of slowdown until they’re removed), but it’s possible you were experiencing something similar with the text from OpenOffice.
Regarding the backups, this may be all working swiftly for you now as well, but also know that if you do end up with a large project that doesn’t seem suited to the automatic backups, you can always exempt a given project by turning on File > Back Up > Exclude from Automatic Backups. Just be sure if you do this that you are diligent about manually making backups of the project! You can do this any time from within Scrivener using File > Back Up > Back Up To…, choosing the name and location for the backup.
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