Sigil "not responding - must close" repeatedly

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

Goodness! However many have you got?

I don't have many, 7 folder shortcuts (drag drop targets), 4 symlinks (drag drop templates) and the Recycle bin, arranged along the bottom edge (taskbar's on the left).

I expect them to remain in position, if they don't then I'm likely to drop something in the wrong location, or drop the wrong thing into an application.

Perhaps Trane also relies on icons maintaining their relative positions rather than on their appearance or names.

I overcome this 'problem' via a gadget that saves and restores desktop icons positions. I've been using it since XP (before actually), when going into Safe Mode was something one did daily. . . almost

BR

[Trane]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I don't have many, 7 folder shortcuts (drag drop targets), 4 symlinks (drag drop templates) and the Recycle bin, arranged along the bottom edge (taskbar's on the left).

I expect them to remain in position, if they don't then I'm likely to drop something in the wrong location, or drop the wrong thing into an application.

Perhaps Trane also relies on icons maintaining their relative positions rather than on their appearance or names.

I overcome this 'problem' via a gadget that saves and restores desktop icons positions. I've been using it since XP (before actually), when going into Safe Mode was something one did daily. . . almost

BR

Well cough it up BetterRed! What's the gadget? (And I do rely on position too, just like you...also have custom icons for most things... but I just know where everything is and automatically click that spot when I need something.)

EDIT: PS I am SO HAPPY I finally found the time stamp setting in the CP to set the forum to my local time. Sometimes it's the little things...

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Trane

Well cough it up BetterRed! What's the gadget? (And I do rely on position too, just like you...also have custom icons for most things... but I just know where everything is and automatically click that spot when I need something.)

EDIT: PS I am SO HAPPY I finally found the time stamp setting in the CP to set the forum to my local time. Sometimes it's the little things...

Must mean we're both spatially oriented

The one I use is part of the ancient swiss army knife cFI Shelltoys shell extension. It's no longer available because cFI went bust as a result of the Lehman Bros event. It was commercial with a product key. Pity they didn't open source it when they went belly up.

A search for "windows 7 save and restore desktop icons" should find you something. I saw "Desktop Restore" and "DesktopOK", they appear to do roughly what mine does - and they're point solutions.

BR

[Trane]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Must mean we're both spatially oriented

The one I use is part of the ancient swiss army knife cFI Shelltoys shell extension. It's no longer available because cFI went bust as a result of the Lehman Bros event. It was commercial with a product key. Pity they didn't open source it when they went belly up.

A search for "windows 7 save and restore desktop icons" should find you something. I saw "Desktop Restore" and "DesktopOK", they appear to do roughly what mine does - and they're point solutions.

BR

Okie doke, I figured as much but as long as you had something you liked, figured I'd ask. I was also on Windows back in the old days (3.11) and used little programs I had from back then for years that were very handy. Most fell by the wayside once I went to W7.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Trane

Okie doke, I figured as much but as long as you had something you liked, figured I'd ask. I was also on Windows back in the old days (3.11) and used little programs I had from back then for years that were very handy. Most fell by the wayside once I went to W7.

I was an early NT adopter (incl DEC Alpha), so most gadgets I have from 20 years ago still work. The UIs tend to be clunky, or even dysfunctional, e.g. Prismatic's duplicate image finder, but I've never found anything better, so I up put with it

BR

[Trane]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I was an early NT adopter (incl DEC Alpha), so most gadgets I have from 20 years ago still work. The UIs tend to be clunky, or even dysfunctional, e.g. Prismatic's duplicate image finder, but I've never found anything better, so I up put with it

BR

I hear you.

[exaltedwombat]

The old Windows Resource Kit offered a 'Save/Restore Desktop Icon Layout' option when r-clicking on 'Computer'. I think that was 32-bit only, but there are 64-bit equivalents.

Nice bit of trouble-shooting going on in this thread!

[Trane]

Originally Posted by exaltedwombat

The old Windows Resource Kit offered a 'Save/Restore Desktop Icon Layout' option when r-clicking on 'Computer'. I think that was 32-bit only, but there are 64-bit equivalents.

Now that you mention that, I think I remember using it. (Dl'd IconRestorer. Nice clean little program for same.)

Nice bit of trouble-shooting going on in this thread!

Yes, and I have to say of all the software forums (gin joints? ) I've been in over the years, nothing compares ime to the dedicated and responsive team that maintains/develops Sigil. Hats off to DiapDealer, KevinH and any others I am leaving out. These two gentleman though have been stellar on this issue, especially considering it's a sort of minor problem since very few people seem to encounter it. (The initial beta wasn't able to get around the Qt bug but I have no doubt it will get worked out, thanks to KevinH and DiapDealer.) Sigil has a most excellent team behind it.

[KevinH]

Unfortunately, my work around just moved the segfault to someplace else. So we are back to square one.

So Trane please take the epub you test with and send to me (to my private e-mail) a zip of the contents of just the Images/ directory of the epub so that we can rule out any image file corruption problems. That way we can try to recreate the problem with your exact image set.

DiapDealer has tried and tried to recreate what you are seeing with a large variety of test images and it never ever segfaults even playing with the thumbnails. So we are beginning to think it is either something image set specific (order, corruption, etc) or system specific.

If we can detect what causes the issue in Qt, we can work around it.

[Trane]

@KevinH... I will feel horrible if it's an image of mine that caused all this. But I like to do things I can do, and this is something I can do.

In fact it's funny you brought this up b/c I just got back from walking the dog and was thinking maybe I should delete all but the first 10 images (in alphabetical order as listed) and see if it goes away. If it does, I'll add images back and test between until I get the fault...

Then when I got home and read this, I saw an easier way. I will work on this today and report back. If I can't find a problem within the images I will do as requested.

[Trane]

My word, I feel awful. DiapDealer first brought up images early on here, suspecting that may be the problem. At the time I glanced down my list of images and nothing looked amiss. (There was a mix of images, from clipart png's to photo gif's and jpg's.) But an image was indeed the problem.

What I did:

1. Opened project in Sigil.
2. Went to Images folder, opened, and shift+clicked to select all
3. Saved As... to a new desktop folder.

Now here's where I knew there was a bad image.... when I pasted in the images to the dupe folder, most appeared instantly as thumbnails, but as I scrolled down the page a handful in the middle had the default icon for image, instead of a thumbnail, even though the window had been open plenty of time to load all thumbnails. I shift-clicked to select them, thinking they must be the problem, but a moment after I did that, their thumbnails appeared... then I noticed the top of the window had the green progress bar going, which only happens when the window has a problem loading whatever is in it. So obviously at least one image was bad, but not necessarily the ones that loaded thumbnails last.

So ... figured I'd first go through and delete all images I ended up not using in the project.

4. Minimized the dupe folder alongside Sigil
5. Looked at each file in Sigil Images folder by finding it's corresponding thumbnail in the duplicated desktop folder. When I got to an image I had not used in my project after all, I deleted it within Sigil using its delete feature [and in the dupe folder to make comparing easier]. I ended up deleting 74 files. And I noticed two of them were clipart pngs with exceedingly long names...the names were sentences with hyphens between the words. The only images left were ones I was actually using (129).
6. Saved Sigil then clicked the toolbar icon to insert an image, and the file insertion window opened (thumbnails were turned off)... turned them on and .... yup. Worked perfectly.

I suspected the long-named pngs so went to Trash and clicked to Restore the longest one, then went looking for it to add to Sigil, but I could not find it in either the dupe folder or within Sigil (in case trash restored it there). So next I went back to trash and instead of hitting restore, dragged the other long-named file to desktop, but when I did that the long name got truncated. When I clicked on it to rename, to see if the longer name would appear, my speakers lightly popped. I think it's pretty clear either one of both of these pngs were to blame.

I never noticed the names were long b/c everywhere I viewed the files the names were truncated. When I actually used a file, I'd rename it (and would have noticed), but I never ended up using those.

Will continue to test but I am sure that was it.

I can't tell you how sorry I am for all the work and time this caused. DiapDealer and KevinH, if you were here I would take you both to dinner and treat you to several libations of choice. As they said in Spartacus, "Apologies."

[Trane]

Went back to the png file with the long name that had been truncated when I removed it from the recycle bin, and renamed it 1AAA.png to see if it was the file itself, or the long name that screwed things up.

The file placed perfectly with the short name. I tried turning thumbnails off and on, and all was fine.

Deleted the placement, then deleted the file from the Sigil Images folder.

Went back to the file in the dupe folder on the DT and renamed to something similar to what it was... a long sentence like:

1AAA-raindrops-falling-in-a-puddle-blahblah-moreletters-saying-more.png

Went back to Sigil and clicked on Images folder to add existing images, choosing that file.

Clicked on the top icon to add a pic, and the insert files window opened and.... solarized and crashed.

Since the files even screwed up Explorer (loading them into the dupe folder caused the progress bar to appear) they might have exceeded the MS Windows standard... never mind Sigil and Qt.

[KevinH]

No worries! Things like this happen. Just how long was the original bad filename? We might be able to add a check and at least spit out a reasonable error message to prevent things like this in the future.

KevinH

[Trane]

Originally Posted by KevinH

No worries! Things like this happen. Just how long was the original bad filename? We might be able to add a check and at least spit out a reasonable error message to prevent things like this in the future.

KevinH

I thought I lost them via the recycle bin [truncating them when moved from there to the desktop]... but when I saw your reply here, did a search for *.raindrops as I remembered they started with that word, and found the originals as I have been copying my project folder nightly to a separate folder for archiving! Duh! I didn't even think to look there... these are the original file names (they were jpg's not png's) ... the file name I made up to test was probably close to the length of the first one... I did not test various lengths to see where the breaking point is...

raindrops-falling-on-blank-background-with-puddle-4eLOGw-clipart.jpg

did-you-know-that-raindrops-are-not-really-shaped-like-drops-they-are-OVG3fC-clipart.jpg

Appreciate your gracefulness.

EDIT: Just tried renaming a file to the first shorter name, and it did not cause an event when placing a picture. Then renamed the file within Sigil using the Images Folder -> rename function, to the longer name, and after renaming and going to place a picture, when the file insertion window opened, it solarized and hug AFTER pressing the thumbnail +/- buttons a few times.

Looks like anyone can try this by just renaming a file something long.

[DiapDealer]

I'm currently at:

DSCF0662asdkasjhkjkh4534k5jhaskdjakjtrkerjtetr-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-1234-damn.jpg

and can't get it crash.