FM8 seems to be sluggish on my PC

[Dave Reynolds]

Thanks for the detailed reply, Mike.  This thread has confirmed the 
behaviour I noticed last year when we upgraded from Frame 6 to Frame 8.  
In fact, I posted to the list about it in September, but I think I only 
got one reply.  This is what I found last year:

**********
Hi

I've noticed at times that moving the cursor around in a Frame 8 file 
can be rather sluggish.  This is when I'm using the arrow key to move 
the cursor along a line of text.  I've also noticed that using the 
shift+arrow keys to select text can be really slow as well.  However, at 
other times the cursor moves at what I consider to be a normal speed.
The other day I think I found out why.  The movement of the cursor slows 
right down when I have Paragraph Designer open.  I did a timed test on a 
random line of text.  With PD closed, it took 4 seconds to run the 
cursor from one end of the line to the other, but with PD open it took 
14 seconds.  If I selected the line using Shift+arrow, the times were 
about the same.  I repeated the test with PD closed and Character 
Designer open, but this time it took about 5 seconds.

I've duplicated the test in Frame 6, and both PD and CD have no 
noticeable effect on the speed of the cursor movement.

Has anyone else noticed this behaviour?  It's not a big problem, just a 
nuisance.

I'm on Frame 8.0p277 and Win XP.  Pentium 4 dual core 3GHz with 1GB RAM.
***********

It's almost as if the Designer is scanning the paragraph for information 
each time the cursor is moved.  For example, if I open PD and select the 
Default Font Tab, put the cursor in a row of body text and press the 
right arrow to move the cursor along the line of text, I notice that the 
word "Black" in the Color field in PD flashes in time with the movement 
of the cursor.  Does this mean that PD is checking the font colour and 
redisplaying it each time the cursor moves?

Regards

Dave


Mike Wickham wrote, on 21/01/2009 8:52 a.m.:
> I have the same slow cursor speed with FrameMaker 8.0p277 on Windows XP Pro 
> and on Vista.
>
> 1. If the Paragraph Designer is the only palette open, it takes 8 seconds to
> scroll across a 50-character column using the right-arrow key.
>
> 2. If the Character Designer is the only palette open, it takes 4 seconds to
> scroll.
>
> 3. If any of the other palettes are open alone, it takes only 2-seconds to 
> scroll, which is about what I expect.
>
> Opening palettes in combination slows the scroll rate further. There are six 
> palettes that I like to have open: the Paragraph Designer,
> Character Designer, and Table Designer, and  the Paragraph Catalog,
> Character Catalog, and Tool palette. I've discovered that two of these are
> causing the issue. Here are some notes:
>
> 1. If all six palettes are open, it takes about 13 seconds to scroll across
> a 50-character column by holding down the right arrow key. Yikes! Too slow!
>
> 2. If I then close the Paragraph Designer, it only takes about 5 seconds to
> scroll across the column.
>
> 3. If I also close the Character Designer, it drops to around 2 seconds.
> That's about as it should be.
>
> 4. Closing any or all of the remaining palettes also results in a 2-second
> normal scroll rate.
>
> So the slowness problem appears to be linked to having  the Paragraph
> Designer and Character Designer palettes. Hopefully, this issue will be 
> fixed with FrameMaker 9. Yes, I'm an optimist. :)
>
> Mike Wickham
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Avraham Makeler" <amakeler at gmail.com>
> To: <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 6:30 AM
> Subject: Re: FM8 seems to be sluggish on my PC
>
>
> I have demo-ed to myself that it is the Para Designer dial box that clobbers
> my editing speed. It's repeatable on my machine.
> Every computer architecture is different. So I just found a weak spot in my
> arch. as compared to some other machine.
>
>
>
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-- 
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Dave Reynolds                         Phone: (64) (3) 358 1029
Senior Technical Author               Fax: (64) (3) 359 4632
Tait Electronics Ltd                  Email: dave.reynolds at tait.co.nz
PO Box 1645
Christchurch
New Zealand


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