Slow switching of Views - Long thread

[jnikkir]

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me... I just set up this plugin yesterday and I love it, however I'm experiencing a delay of 3-5 seconds when trying to switch VM views... Is this normal? It sounds like others don't experience this, so I wanted to ask.

I thought at first the delay was related to Action Chains (which I had set up to automatically switch the VM view when I switched VLs), but I uninstalled that and am still experiencing the delay when manually switching VM views. I've uninstalled/reinstalled the plugin, tried building new VM view profiles, but nothing has helped the delay in implementing a view. Any advice?

TIA!!

[JimmXinu]

VM doesn't actually do much at all itself, it's just changing Calibre's settings.

I would guess that it has to do with one or more of:

• How many books are in the library
• How many columns you have defined to show
• How many columns are you sorting on
• How fast your computer is
• If you are applying Search/VL options

My views switch in something like 50-100ms I would estimate--it's not instant, but it is quick. I have ~5700 books, a baker's dozen of custom columns, generally only look at 8 columns total and only sort on 3 columns.

[jnikkir]

Thanks for replying! This is my current setup:

• How many books are in the library - About 225 in the whole library, between 10-110 in my 3 VLs.
• How many columns you have defined to show - about 14
• How many columns are you sorting on - Just 1
• How fast your computer is - Generally pretty fast? Running Win 11 64bit, Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8400 CPU @ 2.80GHz, 12GB RAM
• If you are applying Search/VL options - Nope, not applying any of those.

I do have a bunch of custom columns, but I even removed all of those from my VM Views and made extremely pared-down versions and it still takes 3-5 seconds to load the view. =?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by jnikkir

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me... I just set up this plugin yesterday and I love it, however I'm experiencing a delay of 3-5 seconds when trying to switch VM views... Is this normal? It sounds like others don't experience this, so I wanted to ask.

I thought at first the delay was related to Action Chains (which I had set up to automatically switch the VM view when I switched VLs), but I uninstalled that and am still experiencing the delay when manually switching VM views. I've uninstalled/reinstalled the plugin, tried building new VM view profiles, but nothing has helped the delay in implementing a view. Any advice?

TIA!!

FTR: I regard View Manager as my most valuable plugin.

On an 8,500 book library the Virtual Library switch time is instantaneous (no discernible delay), and the View Manager switch times are about 1 second (the Views sort on 3-4 static columns)

Firstly try running calibre with the ignore-plugins option - that will 'prove' whether or not it's a plugin

Do you have any 'composite' custom columns templates that use file system functions - e.g Date Modified or Size.

BR

[ownedbycats]

Since you are using action chain for tabs, disable "switch to VL" settings in VM. That helps a bit. It means your VL wont change if you use menu manually though.

[JimmXinu]

Running "calibre --ignore-plugins" from a command line also disables View Manager. But you can do the sorts at least manually pretty easily for comparison.

I didn't think of file system custom columns--that's a good idea.

[ownedbycats]

I can confirm from experience that composite column in the sorts can slow things. Filesystem checks are the obvious, but also others depending on complexity.

[jnikkir]

Thanks so much for all the suggestions, I really appreciate the help.

Action Chains isn't responsible - I removed all my events/modules/chains and even uninstalled it to test, but still getting the lag when switching VM views manually.

I don't have "switch to VL" enabled in VM... I'm also not sorting by anything (in the VM view settings) except Date or Title.

At this point I think it may be related the number of columns I'm viewing, because when I add more, it does get slower; and faster with fewer columns. But it's still laggy (2-3 seconds) even with only 2-3 basic columns showing (title, author, series).

This might just be something I have to get used to.

[BetterRed]

To eliminate plugins and customisations you could install a fresh portable on a hard disk and drop a symlink to your library into it. Then see if VL switching is faster on that - FWIW Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right arrows can be used to switch VLs.

My previously mentioned 8500 media library has 20 columns in the View that I use most often - sixteen of which are custom columns - none are made via a template.

[ownedbycats]

Do you need the symlink even? I thought you could just switch to your existing library from within the portable. Though unless its changed it defaults back to the portable library on a restart.

[jnikkir]

Okay so, I installed a portable on an external hard drive, ran it, made a symlink to my library (though I don't think that actually mattered), added it as the portable's library, and installed the View Manager plugin.

All my customized 'column coloring' and 'column icon' settings transferred over into the portable, along with the VM views I had created on the normal install -- I guess they transferred from the Calibre settings file in my library? (I really am a beginner at all of this...)

But unfortunately switching between VM views in the portable is just as slow as the other... So I guess that says it's not being affected by a different plugin I have installed. But I'm not sure if something else in the transferred-over cusomizations could be the problem.

I've also tried removing all the column color and icon customizations -- no difference in speed. And my columns aren't that complex, I didn't think... I'll attach a screenshot of them anyway.


I might just be stuck with very slow view-switching, but I appreciate all the input from everyone!

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by jnikkir

All my customized 'column coloring' and 'column icon' settings transferred over into the portable, along with the VM views I had created on the normal install -- I guess they transferred from the Calibre settings file in my library? (I really am a beginner at all of this...)

Theyre stored in metadata.db.

[BetterRed]

I prefer a symlink because it saves me having to re-hook the library, and I've had Link shell extension in my toolbag since it was beta'd on NT4, I often forget it's not part of Windows .

Can you post the templates used for the Formats and Annot? columns

IIRC there are two format functions one that lists what the database 'thinks' exists (its name is something like approx_formats), and another that lists what the file system actually has. Can't comment on Annot?

BR

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I prefer a symlink because it saves me having to re-hook the library, and I've had Link shell extension in my toolbag since it was beta'd on NT4, I often forget it's not part of Windows .

That happened to me when I switched to a new computer a few years back. Went to symlink some of my appdata folders... wait, did Windows 10 get rid of it? I'd forgotten it was third-party.

Originally Posted by BetterRed

IIRC there are two format functions one that lists what the database 'thinks' exists (its name is something like approx_formats), and another that lists what the file system actually has. Can't comment on Annot?

BR

approximate_formats() is the speedy one; theres a few formats_xx() functions that check filesystem directly and are slower.

Annotations are annotation_count(); I suppose there might be very very tiny performance differences depending on the code but I wouldnt suspect that to be the culprit.

One thing I've done in the past to rule out the number of books for performance impact is use create library to make a new library copying the structure. Then copy 4-5 books over to it and see if it's still acting slow. If it is, start tearing apart all the columns and stuff in the test library until I figure out what's making it slow.

[jnikkir]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Can you post the templates used for the Formats and Annot? columns

IIRC there are two format functions one that lists what the database 'thinks' exists (its name is something like approx_formats), and another that lists what the file system actually has. Can't comment on Annot?

BR

For the Formats column: {:'approximate_formats()'}

For Annot? ..... Well, it USED to be a custom column that input Yes/No based on whether there was text in the #mm_annotations column -- from the Annotations (1.16.0) plugin. I didn't like how the text in the default column looked. But I just realized I can hide the text with a column icon, so I got rid of that Annot? column.

...Still very laggy.....

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

One thing I've done in the past to rule out the number of books for performance impact is use create library to make a new library copying the structure. Then copy 4-5 books over to it and see if it's still acting slow. If it is, start tearing apart all the columns and stuff in the test library until I figure out what's making it slow.

Yeah I'm going to have to try both of those things tomorrow. I will be surprised if it's my 200 books that are slowing it down this much, so I'll probably end up trying to disassemble my columns even more than I did today... This kind of thing always bugs me because I never want to let it go until I've fixed it!!